Opinion
Backstage of theatre hit Centralny
June 12, 17:38
Backstage of Belarus Free Theatre’s hit performance about the iconic bar at Centralny supermarket
Citizen Journalism: Storytelling for a ballet dancer
Nicolai Khalezin
March 18, 10:49
After a week’s watching of choreographic performances from all over the world at the festival Tanzplattform 2018 in Germany, I came to a disappointing conclusion regarding the current state in the industry. Compared to the 1980-1990s, the level of choreography, of course, has grown, I mean both technique and shows. But. The main thing always comes after “but”.
Vasiliev Parautopia Abdullaeva
Pavel Gorodnitskij
February 19, 19:33
Recently I’ve come upon a book with two authors mentioned on the cover: Vasiliev and Abdullaeva. Anatoly Vasiliev is a threatre director who pushed the limits of theatre in its traditional understanding, living genius, tireless explorer and the author of his own theatre technique. Zara Abdullaeva is a film critic and art historian.
Citizen Journalism. Zmitser Bartosik: Self-portrait attempt
Aramais Mirakyan
November 27, 18:08
Zmitser Bartosik has won three prestigious literary awards in Belarus this year – the Jerzy Giedroyc Literary Award, the Ales Adamovich Award and the Maria and Alexander Stahanovich Award – for his book The Master and His Talking Sparrow. In the column Self-Portrait Attempt, we talk to the author about his youth, work as a writer and private life.
Citizen Journalism: Murder attempt
Nicolai Khalezin
November 23, 13:47
We are living in an incredibly interesting period, when all established institutions are questioned, when technological creativity neighbours on social deconstruction, when society has decided to end one of its development stages, sentencing a god named Tolerance to death.
Citizen journalism: Resistart. Guy Fawkes’s cobblestone
Nicolai Khalezin
September 06, 10:34
The question “Can art resist effectively?” has always been relevant, but has never had a clear-cut answer, partially because it’s impossible to find the equivalent of effectiveness, partially because the question itself belonged to the field of rhetorical discourse.
CORRECTION OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Nicolai Khalezin
May 13, 15:15
There’s an absolute evil in contemporary art, in theatre in particular, that nips the creative process in the bud – it’s called ‘political correctness’.
Mind The Gap, Keep Calm and Carry On or We are all Fucked!
Natalia Kaliada
January 26, 14:07
Speech by Belarus Free Theatre artistic director Natalia Kaliada that became a major event at the Congress Arts, Power + Politics organised in New York by the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA).
Bye, Pasha
Nicolai Khalezin
July 21, 6:56
Pasha has gone. This car explosion stunned all his friends and everybody who knew him. It’s so hard to find words. Memories fill your head, allowing only to pump air into your lungs but not to breathe normally.
Letters: Actors, artists and writers look in the mirror and see a future in the EU
June 15, 9:58
SIR – The EU referendum is the biggest democratic decision of our time, and will have far-reaching consequences for generations to come.
Belarus - The Land Of Freedom Awards And Our Ignorance
Pavol Demes
June 02, 17:14
Since the fall of communism, there is hardly any other country in Central and Eastern Europe that has produced as many award-winning freedom fighters as Belarus.
How to make it as an Emerging Theatre Director
Josie Underwood
June 02, 8:48
It’s hard to pin-point when exactly your journey as a theatre maker begins. It could be when you first step into the real world as a graduate, with a vague idea of what you want to do and how you might do it. Or before that, when you first start your training having decided that this is the profession you maybe want to go into. Or even earlier, when have your first drama lesson in high school, and realise that this is something that you not only enjoy, but you’re not too bad at it either. Or it could be that you haven’t ever had any of these experiences, but you just happened to go to the theatre for the first time last night and it has changed your life forever. Whenever it is, once you start thinking about the future it always feels like you have much more work ahead of you than you have left behind – which is scary.
Svetlana Alexievich. Power of power
Nicolai Khalezin
May 30, 16:36
A conversation with Nobel Prize Literature winner Svetlana Alexievich took place in London’s Southbank Centre on May 29 as part of Power of Power festival. The event was opened by Natalia Kaliada, a co-artistic director of Belarus Free Theatre, who introduced the prominent Belarusian writer to the London audience. Svetlana Alexievich talked to British writer and literary critic Marina Warner and answered questions from the audience. The announced topic was “Putin and Power”, but the conversation was much deeper. Below are keynotes of Svetlana Alexievich’s speech.
How to Write an Opera (a young composer’s rubrics)
Blanka Barbara Stachelek
March 04, 12:10
If we imagine the entire path of a composition, from its origin to its completion in a real interpretation and performance, we can see a line passing from infinity, through the finite and definite elements of the written score, and back to infinity or eternity.
Nicolai Khalezin: “I've changed the coordinate system”
Sergey Elkin
March 02, 22:00
An interview with director of Belarus Free Theatre Nicolai Khalezin.
Are we not men?
verity healey
February 26, 15:34
Some thoughts on Peter Brook’s Lord of the Flies, Tell me Lies, The Tightrope at the French Institute and Battlefield at the Young Vic.
A trip from New York to New York
Nicolai Khalezin
February 03, 17:20
I fell in love during my first visit to New York at the turn of the millennium. I fell in love with the city that was haunting me in literature and cinema and luring me by the greatest cultural phenomena of the past century, the city that I, as it seemed to me, knew better than any other one in the world. We met finally, and for a long time it secured the top position in the ranking of my favourite cities I have visited for many years of trips across different continents.
Vladimir Shcherban: 10th anniversary is what we need to get used to
February 02, 9:47
Vladimir Shcherban stages a new play after large-scale celebrations of the theatre's 10th anniversary. Read his new interview about the new work, plans for the future, post-festival thoughts and principles of his work.
Yuri Andrukhovych: "A Lot of Ex-hipsters Are Now Soldiers"
Paula Erizanu
January 18, 12:23
Yuri Andrukhovych is one of the most prominent writers of Ukraine. He has been a spokesman for the Maidan protests in Kiev last year. But in the latest months, Ukraine has fallen from the radar of the Western media. He offers us an update on Ukrainians after the Maidan and during the civil war.
Death Penalty: 'The UK government revised human rights obligations to promote trade'
Julia Farrington
December 16, 17:22
Maya Foa speaks to Julia Farrington from a lawyers office in Washington DC about her work as Director of Death Penalty Programmes at Reprieve and author of SLIP (Stop Lethal Injection Project) campaign.