The Bravest Theatre Company In The World

Here’s playwright Morwyn Brebner talking about The Belarus Free Theatre. They are a company who, along with their audience, are subject to arrest whenever they perform in their native country.

“Last week in London I saw a show called Being Harold Pinter by The Belarus Free Theatre, presented at The Soho Theatre. It was galvanizing, theatrical, and above all, political in the smartest possible way. The show’s text was compiled from Harold Pinter’s Nobel address and bits of his plays, including The Homecoming and Ashes to Ashes, and transcripts of interviews with protesters who had been jailed by Belarus’s repressive regime. Instead of yielding a pastiche, the agglomeration of words was a surprisingly moving indictment of fascism and made a case for Pinter as a supremely political writer; specifically his understanding of how the human body and mind are fragile, and the ways in which fascism fundamentally dehumanizes people on both sides of its power equation.

The show, which was no-budget, began with an actor, not as “Pinter” but speaking the beginning of the Nobel speech, talking about how he fell and hit his head. (In Belarusian with surtitles, fyi.) Another actor sprayed red paint over the “Pinter” actor’s eye. A third actor put a bandage over it. It was witty, but also a weirdly personal and threatening moment. Much excellent use was also made of a paper airplane, which was carried off-stage, on fire, at the end of the show. You could hear a pin drop. The whole show was like that. After seeing several productions (including a revival of Pinter’s “The Homecoming”) that were well-acted and well-produced but oddly devoid of any connection to actual life, I finally felt I was watching something dangerous and relevant. It was pretty great.

The company is banned in their native Belarus—company members have been forced out of their state-run theatre jobs, and all theatres there are apparently state run. At considerable peril, they’re touring two shows (the companion to “BHP” is a one-man show called Revolution Jeans, which is not about the bumster.) Someone should bring them to Canada.”

• 26 02 2008 - 10:04