Staging a revolution
Presented by Belarus Free Theatre, co-produced with the Young Vic
2 – 14 November 2015
We’re live streaming every show and discussion for free world-wide! Find out more and watch the live stream recordings.
Belarus Free Theatre presents a two-week Festival of performances and discussions in London featuring some of our most acclaimed original productions, reinvigorated classics and the world premiere of our brand new work, Time of Women.
We have spent the past decade excavating taboos on the world stage alongside launching transnational campaigns in defence of freedom of speech and artistic expression. Pioneering a unique model of performance-inspired campaigning tackling social and political taboos, from mental health and torture, sex and inequality, BFT now present Staging a Revolution a festival of ideas that will put ten taboos centre-stage to invigorate and inspire UK audiences to see themselves as positive change-makers.
Following each performance, a curated panel of experts, including artists, campaigners, journalists and activists will discuss an area related to each taboo topic and generate fresh ideas around taking up action. It is an approach drawn directly from BFT’s work in Minsk where the space for free exchange of ideas and open debate is as valuable as the space in which to see independent theatre.
The first week of events, 2 – 8 November, will take place at undisclosed locations around the city of London. For the second week, 9 – 14 November, the company will return “home” to the Young Vic theatre.
Tickets: £25 (Limited £10 concessions available)
Tickets include entry to the performance, platform discussion, one free drink and Belarusian food.
Performances at the Young Vic (9-14 November) are in the Maria.
Underground performances (2-8 November) at undisclosed locations have a strict arrival time of 6:20pm
(excluding 2 November when you will need to arrive at 6pm)
Young Vic performances (9-14 November) are in the Maria. Start time: 7pm.
Latecomers will not be admitted.
PLEASE NOTE
Underground performances (2-8 November) will take place in unexpected locations in Greater London. These locations will not be identified prior to the performance. Audiences will receive an email confirmation but no ticket will be issued. 24 hours before the performance, audiences will receive a text message detailing a designated meeting point and a time of arrival. There, they will be met by a member of the front of house team and be led from the meeting point to the performance. On arrival at the location they will be asked for a form of identification (in Belarus, audiences members bring passports anticipating the likelihood in case of arrest).
You MUST bring a valid passport or photo ID as proof of your identification (in Belarus this is in case of arrest).
UNDERGROUND PERFORMANCES & PLATFORM DISCUSSIONS:
4.48 Psychosis
by Sarah KaneMonday 2 November | Watch the live stream recording
Staging A Revolution kicks off with Sarah Kane’s final play, 4.48 Psychosis, the first production Belarus Free Theatre ever mounted underground in Minsk in 2005. BFT’s commitment to exploding taboos was cemented by the immediate condemnation of Lukashenko’s regime, who denied that themes touched upon in the play – suicide, mental instability, sexual and political violence – could ever exist within Belarus. Conviction in the artist’s duty to tell human truths and illuminate both obvious and hidden taboos within society has been a through-line in every BFT production over the past decade.
LET’S ACT: STIGMA
Platform discussion: mental health and young people
Following Sarah Kane’s painfully open exploration of living with depression, based in large part on her own experience, the audience will be invited to discuss issues about the taboos surrounding mental health in young people that are raised in the play with theatre director Dominic Dromgoole who knew the playwright, together with Dr. Ann York, a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, and Sarah Brennan, CEO of campaigning charity Young Minds.
Partner: Young Minds
What you can do to take action now
Price of Money
Tuesday 3 November | Watch the live stream recording
Money makes the world go round. Whether you have it or you don’t, its grasp is inescapable as is its power to determine our lives, thoughts and actions. Inspired by Aristophanes' Plutus, the first political satire from ancient Athens, Ben Johnson's work on the emerging ethics of capitalism, and the inspirational text of 93-year-old Stéphane Hessel, which became the manifesto for the Occupy movement, Price of Money (2014) is a scathing attack on inequality and excess.
LET’S ACT: INEQUALITY
How does money dictates our behaviour? How can we resist the power of money and take action for justice? Jamie Kelsey-Fry, teacher, writer and activist, and contributing editor for New Internationalist magazine, Christine Berry Senior Researcher at the New Economic Foundation working to get meaningful banking reform on the UK agenda, BFT Founding Co-Artistic Director Natalia Kaliada, and BFT Associate Director Vladimir Shcherban discusse taking collective mass action.
Partner: New Economics Foundation
What you can do to can take action now
New York ‘79 & Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker
Wednesday 4 November | Watch the live stream recording
A UK premiere and a unique opportunity to see New York ‘79, BFT’s dramatic response to experimental novelist, feminist and punk icon Kathy Acker’s eponymous text about American sexual identity, performed with its partner piece, Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker (2011). Minsk, 2011 is both a love letter to a country that has lost its way and a raw examination of scars of repression in the Belarusian capital where sexual freedoms are oppressed and perverted by the authoritarian regime.
LET’S ACT: DISCRIMINATION
Platform discussion: sexual taboos in London 2015
New York in 1979, Minsk in 2011 – what about London in 2015?
Sam Roddick is an artist and sex workers’ rights activist and founder “erotic lifestyle” emporium, Coco de Mer. Jide Macaulay is Nigeria’s first openly gay preacher and the founder of House of Rainbow Fellowship, a secret gay church in Lagos. This taboo-challenging session is lead by cabaret artist, compere, stripper and one time Circus Ringmistress, Ophelia Bitz.
Partner: Kaleidoscope Trust
What you can do to take action now
Generation Jeans
Thursday 5 November | Watch the live stream recording
Generation Jeans (2006) is an autobiographical duologue about rock music and resistance written and performed by BFT co-founder Nikolai Khalezin, with music by DJ Laurel. When Belarus was part of the Soviet Union its people were prohibited to wear jeans or listen to rock music. The buying or selling of either one could result in arrest at the hands of the KGB. Detained during a demonstration in 2004, Khalezin offers a candid account of the degradations of incarceration, the blossoming of young love and how denim became a symbol of freedom under the dictatorship.
LET’S ACT: RESISTANCE
Platform discussion: individual resistance in the surveillance state
Gus Hosein of Privacy International, who has worked at the intersection of technology and human rights for over 15 years, and former member of cyber hacking group LulzSec, Mustafa Al Bassam, join Richie Tynan, Technologist at Privacy International with a specific focus on the area of surveillance mechanisms and strategies employed by cyber-criminals, who will lead this conversation on surveillance, hacking and privacy. Tricks of the trade will be played on the audience - you have been warned!
Discover Love
Friday 6 November | Watch the live stream recording
Discover Love (2008) is a stirringly powerful original drama, researched over nine years, based on the true story of Irina Krasovskaya and her husband Anatoly, a businessman who supported the Belarus opposition movement. One fateful evening in 1999, Anatoly called to say that he would be coming home late. Irina never saw her husband again. His car was later discovered, but his body has never been found; he simply “disappeared”.
LET’S ACT: TRUTH & RECONCILIATION
Platform discussion: the problems of forgiving and forgetting
Marina Cantacuzina, founder of The Forgiveness Project, leads a discussion with Irina Krasovskaya, whose husband was disappeared by Lukashenko’s regime in 1999, asking whether it is always possible or appropriate to forgive. Facilitated by Kaye Adams, a television and radio presenter for BBC Scotland.
Partner: The Forgiveness Project
What you can do to take action now
Zone of Silence
Saturday 7 November | live stream starts at 19:00
Zone of Silence (2008) is a modern Belarusian epic in three independent chapters offering a panoramic view of everyday life under dictatorship and the taboos that are vehemently repressed. In Childhood Legends, the Company share stories from their earliest years, lives lived under the shadow of authoritarianism. Diverse is a vibrant collective portrait of extraordinary Belarusians on the margins of society, from the self-proclaimed Best Dancer in the Universe to an armless guitar-playing former mafia member. The trilogy ends with Numbers, a cascade of grim statistics about life in Belarus.
LET’S ACT: TRANSPARENCY
Platform discussion: beyond the headlines in the Russia - Ukrainian conflict
Leading experts on the region Peter Pomerantsev, Arkady Babchenko and Oliver Bullough look at media representation of the conflict as it is reported in the UK, Russia and Ukraine.
Partner: The Frontline Club
What you can do to take action now
Trash Cuisine
Sunday 8 November | live stream starts at 19:00
Belarus Free Theatre serve up food, music, dance and Shakespeare as they share true stories from inmates, executioners, human rights lawyers and families of the executed. Provocative and urgent, Trash Cuisine (2013) pierces the imagination with moments of the darkest humour as it challenges the ongoing existence of capital punishment in the contemporary world. 36 countries retain the death penalty in both law and practice, and Europe remains on the list of continents where capital punishment still exists – in 2015 – because of Belarus.
LET’S ACT: INJUSTICE
Platform discussion: delivering justice
Leading human rights lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith and Maya Foa, Director of the Death Penalty Team, will stage a live capital trial, with “death row defendants” video linked in via live-stream and members of the audience selected (and vetted) to be jurors.
Partner: Reprieve
Time of Women
Monday 9 & Tuesday 10 | live stream on Tuesday only - starts at 19:00
The world premiere of a play about women on the forefront of a movement for a democratic Belarus, women with an unflinching and unswerving dedication to the truth. One is Irina Khalip, the PEN Pinter prize-winning journalist, arrested in Belarus for her coverage of Lukashenko’s regime and described by Sir Tom Stoppard as, “the writer I wanted to be”. Another is journalist Natalya Radina who was also imprisoned after the presidential elections of 2010. Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience and demanded her release, as did the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today she lives in exile in Poland and continues to run the Belarusian independent media portal Charter 97. This will be the UK premiere of Time of Women.
LET’S ACT: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Platform discussion: media freedom health-check
Monday 9 November
Media freedom is contested in this country more than ever before, in particular with regards to social media. Led by Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip and reporter Abigail Fielding-Smith this discussion will take a comparative health-check on freedom of expression in Belarus and the UK from women’s perspectives. Facilitated by Shereen Nanjiani, radio presenter with BBC Radio Scotland and former chief news anchor at STV Central.
Partner: Rory Peck Trust
Tuesday 10 November
Media freedom is contested in this country more than ever before, in particular with regards to social media. Led by Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip and Rachel Oldroyd, this discussion will take a comparative health-check on freedom of expression in Belarus and the UK from women’s perspectives.
Facilitated by Shereen Nanjiani, radio presenter with BBC Radio Scotland and former chief news anchor at STV Central.
Partner: Rory Peck Trust
King Lear
Wednesday 11 & Thursday 12 November | live stream on Thursday only - starts at 19:00
Shakespeare's great play about speaking the truth was one of the highlights of 2012's Globe to Globe Festival. Drawing on their first-hand experience of tyranny and exile, the Company present a fresh reading of the text drawing parallels between Lear's spiralling court and Belarusian society, whilst also interrogating the universality of power unwisely yielded. A stripped-back set and BFT’s characteristically arresting visual style make this a vigorous and thoroughly contemporary King Lear.
LET’S ACT: MORTALITY
Platform discussion: the future of old age
Wednesday 11 November
Lear raises the most profound questions about age and power. But what would happen to power if humans didn’t grow old? How near are we to that future? And, how, until we get there, if indeed we want to, can we manage death better? Anders Sandberg, transhumanist philosopher with the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, and Avi Roy, President of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, discuss the future of death and beyond with the audience and facilitator Akshat Rathi, science and health reporter for Quartz digital magazine.
Partner: Biogerontology Research Foundation
Thursday 12 November
Lear raises the most profound questions about age and power. But what would happen to power if humans didn’t grow old? How near are we to that future? And, how, until we get there, if indeed we want to, can we manage death better? Charlotte Casebourne started Public Health and Longevity - a new initiative to harness the most innovative science and technology promoting health in longevity and Dr Jeremy Chattaway, Consultant Neurologist, discuss the future of death and beyond with the audience and facilitator Akshat Rathi, science and health reporter for Quartz digital magazine.
Partner: Biogerontology Research Foundation
Being Harold Pinter
Friday 13 & Saturday 14 November | live stream on Saturday only - starts at 19:00
Being Harold Pinter (2006) incorporates testimonies from Belarusian political prisoners with excerpts from Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter's lifetime of writings. First performed in the UK in Leeds in 2007, it has become one of Belarus Free Theatre’s most acclaimed works. Blurring the lines between art and reality, it traces the relationship between power and violence in Pinter’s words, taken from five plays and his Nobel speech, to deliver a poignant contemporary commentary on institutionalised violence, freedom and human dignity.
LET’S ACT: DETENTION
Friday 13 November
As support for human rights is coming under attack, those who care about justice can't leave the moral compass in the hands of one or two outspoken individuals anymore, however brilliant and inspiring they might be. This important conversation with survivors of torture living in the UK will bring themes in the play closer to home and will raise important questions about justice and compassion in our society. John McCarthy CBE is a British journalist and one of the hostages in the Lebanon hostage crisis. Perico Gonzalez is a case-worker and counsellor for Freedom from Torture. He gave evidence in Argentina at the trial of members of the Military Junta responsible for the murder, disappearance and torture of thousands of people the 1970s. Perico was himself imprisoned and tortured for three years following the 1976 military coup led by General Jorge Videla.
Partner: Freedom from Torture
Saturday 14 November
Michael Attenborough, theatre director and trustee of Belarus Free Theatre and Natalia Kaliada in conversation – reflecting on the past ten years of the company and looking forward to the next.
Partner: Freedom from Torture
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Staging a Revolution is supported by The Eranda Foundation, The Roddick Foundation, Unity Theatre Trust and an anonymous funder.
All productions featured in the festival were rehearsed at Falmouth University’s Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA).
