Saturday, September 5, 2009

Free Theatre of Belarus Visits Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles

The Free Theater of Belarus is returning to the United States.

This dissident independent company from Minsk will perform Generation Jeans on September 15 and Discover Love on September 16 in Washington, D.C. In addition, the troupe will teach at CalArts from September 18 to October 3. At REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre in Los Angeles, Discover Love will perform October 1 to 3. And on September 24 in San Diego, there is a conference entitled "Bearing Exquisite Witness" in which Discover Love will be the opening-night event. Here is the link.

September 16 is the 10th year anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of Anatoly Krasovskiy and Victor Gonchar. Krasovskiy supported the Belarusian opposition financially, and Gonchar was vice-speaker of the Belarusian parliament. Using Discover Love, a play about the story of Anatoly and his wife Irina, Free Theatre wishes to attact media attention to the case of enforced disappearances in Belarus.
Those who might like to become acquainted with the situation of the Belarus Free Theatre as dissident artists in the former Soviet country might visit the Free Theater's website. You may also read Randy Gener's essay on the Free Theater which was published in the May/June 2009 international-theatre edition of American Theatre magazine, which is devoted to the post-Soviet theatre of several countries in Eastern and Central Europe. The essay is called "Fomenting a Denim Revolution: The guerilla artists of Belarus Free Theatre perform underground while arguing openly for regime change." [Gener]

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