Jeff Clarke

Having incurred the enmity of the thugs in charge, the core members have since been forced to flee the country. Their play Being Harold Pinter, a physically expressive show which lifts text from the playwright's famous Nobel Prize speech to convey the experience of life during tyranny, was a sensation at the Under the Radar Festival earlier this year. While some political theater in America has a tendency devolve into unbearably earnest and unearned polemics, The Belarus Free Theatre crackles with visceral intensity. They continue to pay the price for their politics, which lends their work an unparalleled urgency. The company returns to NYC for April 13th for a month of performances, staging Being Harold Pinter and two other plays in repertory at La Mama, in conjunction with The Public Theater. We recently spoke with the troupe's co-founder, Natalia Koliada.

How's it going? I'm at the International Women Media Leader's Conference in Washington D.C. From all over the world there are women leaders in the media who came to Washington so I'm here on behalf of journalist who are now in jail in Belarus.

I saw Being Harold Pinter at La MaMa during Under the Radar and it was very moving; I'm wondering what happened after that. We all know that it was a challenge for you to escape Belarus and get to New York; you had a lot of publicity because of that and I'm wondering what the situation was like when you returned home? Did all this press and publicity make things worse or better? I believe that it was important in terms of Belarus and I truly believe that because of publicity in New York the American government started to implement very active actions and steps and economic sanctions. And it was vitally important because the United States government is the only government that can present economic sanctions on Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

But in terms of our situation, our personal situation, each visit to Washington, while we were in New York and performing in Chicago at the Goodman Theater, was followed by raids on our apartments and the apartments of our parents. The last visit of special agents was about ten days ago and our neighbors were given phone numbers for the KGB; if they see us, they should call them and report that we are back. Our youngest daughter, she was wanted by KGB in an apartment of remote relatives. So it's an ongoing process in terms of hunting us down but we still continue to perform. We performed in Hong Kong and went to London and we're campaigning there for Belarus with this absolutely amazing artist and playwright, Tom Stoppard. There will be a performance there on Monday at the House of Commerce in London that will be performed together with my husband and Jude Law, because there was a time in the history of British Parliament when they would allow artists inside of the building. There's a lot going on and today we are homeless.

Did you go back to Belarus since you came for Under the Radar? No. My husband and I, we didn't go back. Our actors, whether they were in London or in Moscow, some of them went to Belarus but they went illegally. We know that our actors, when they turned on their phones, the police were at their apartment. It was the apartment of one of our actors and she was called for an interrogation by the KGB as well. It's really ongoing and very complicated but in comparison to what is happening to people who stay in jail... Our situation is complicated because we are homeless but in their situation it's very horrible. Tortures are implemented in KGB jails and people started to get long sentences, like medium-level activists would get three years in jail. The Press Secretary for one of the presidential candidates, Andrei Sannikov, he got four years in jail. We still have journalists in jail. Iryna Khalip, who is the wife of Andrei Sannikov, is under house-arrest in the presence of two KGB guys 24-hours a day and another presidential candidate, Vladimir Neklyayev, he is under house arrest as well. So there's a lot going on there.

Zone of Silence (Courtesy Belarus Free Theater)

One of the plays you're doing at the Public Theater is called Discover Love and that has to do with a real life story? This is the story of one of our friends, Irina Krasovskaya. Irina is the godmother of our youngest daughter and it's actually a love story of [her and her husband]. He was a big businessman who was kidnapped and killed together with another person, Viktor Gonchar, who was the head of an alternative elections committee. It's a love story of these two people and it was an idea to show that people have their lives and they have family, they have children, and at some point politics interfere with your life. Unfortunately, Irina didn't meet the 25th anniversary with her husband because at that time he had already been kidnapped and killed. It's an absolutely beautiful story of love.

When you look at the changes that are happening in the Middle East and the governments being challenged or in some cases overthrown, do you see the potential for something like that spreading to your country? I believe, of course, there is the potential always, but the problem is that there are no joint forces on behalf of the European Union. At the same time when the U.S. implements economic sanctions, the E.U. doesn't. Until we have the joint position, nothing will be changed. I think it's important to remember that five years ago, Belarus was one of the top five countries that sold arms and weapons to countries like Iraq, Iran and Syria. Gaddafi is one of the people who bought arms from Lukashenka and today he is fighting with his own people and killing them and fighting with democratic countries by using arms and weapons he bought from Lukashenka. I think it's a connection that should be remembered by the world: the only dictator in Europe is not only dangerous for his own people but also for the world. He is best friends with Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez and Gaddafi, people who are killing their own people. So it is necessary to have the joint position of the world in the regard to European country, and Belarus is located in Europe.

When you say "joint position" what does that mean? It should be the same message from the United States government and the European Union. When the U.S. government implements an economic sanction it would be good if the E.U. would do the same, but they don't. They worry about heating their apartments in Europe and how to drive their cars but they don't worry about a people who have lived under a dictatorship for the last sixteen years.

Are economic sanctions the answer? As we saw in Iraq and Burma, sometimes it ends up strengthening the regime and hurting the people. I think, again, people have been hurting already for the last sixteen years. So when we talk about people, we need to remember that they were kidnapped and killed there and now torture is implemented in KGB jails. So what else should be done to change the situation in the country? I believe that it is vitally important to have tough economic sanctions against Lukashenka.

Do you propose anything beyond that? Any other measures? Yes, absolutely. This is what we're doing now in London. It was initiated by Andrei Sannikov's sister, Iryna Bogdanova, a UK-based citizen, who started a court case. It's called "Private Persecution." As an individual, you could open a court case against the leader of the country, based on the UK law, which is one of the few countries who could organize such a court case. This is a unique opportunity and if it happens it would be bold and it would destroy him. He would be called to the International Court and would lose sovereign immunity. It would be the 5th time in his term.

Another thing we are protesting against is any British or American business with any links to Belarusian government operating business inside of the country. The Security Council of the U.N. could have a special session on Belarus but they still haven't had it. There are many steps, but economic sanctions, freezing assets, and opening the court case...this is what we need, for sure.

As far as the production at the Public Theater goes, you're doing Zone of Silence, which has three different chapters; the last chapter is called "Numbers," which is based on statistics. Could you talk about that? It's a trilogy and the idea is that Belarus is a zone of silence; nobody talks about this country and the people inside the country are afraid to talk as well. We started from legends of childhood when actors talk about their own childhood stories, or the stories of their children. The idea was to find an answer to why we live the way we do, because of our Soviet past and Soviet childhoods.

The second chapter is called "Diverse." We sent actors to the city to find people who differ from the general public. For example, there is a person who was born to a Belarusian woman by an African man, and she left him at an orphanage. He grew up—and it's not possible to imagine an African man living in Belarus—and he's gay. He was beaten up every day because it's a very homophobic society and it doesn't accept people who are different from the general public. It was an idea to explode those topics and issues that are closed by the society and you can't talk about them openly.

And moving to a general situation, Belarus in numbers. It took a lot of time to produce this particular piece because it's very complicated to find numbers, statistics, about what's going on in Belarus. The government doesn't want to issue these statistics. The director's idea was to ask actors to fill, by their bodies, what is happening in Belarus in terms of statistics. It's a very amazing piece. Michael Billington, the theater critic at the Guardian, says it's a "masterpiece of theater irony." It talks about very difficult issues but with a lot of creativity and irony.

Aleksandr Paskannoi

And why Harold Pinter? Why? It's a pretty long story but it started with a visit from Tom Stoppard to Minsk in 2005. He went to visit us and meet us and talked to playwrights and actors and other public and political activists who today are in jail. When he saw and met people and relatives of those who were kidnapped and killed he said that it seemed to him that the way we produce theater and the circumstances of our lives told him that we needed to pay attention to Harold Pinter plays. It took us about a year because the plays were not translated into the Russian or Belarusian language but luckily for us, Harold Pinter received the Nobel Prize and his plays were translated. There were a few plays like Ashes to Ashes and New World Order that were not translated and we did our own translation when we got his permission. It was a brilliant idea of [creator and director] Vladimir Shcherban to build all of it on Pinter's Nobel Prize speech about how he created plays, how he found his characters and about involvement in politics, the position of artists in politics and human dignity. It was an absolutely amazing speech that was used as background for his plays.

Then we got letters of political prisoners of Belarus; they were interviewed and incorporated into this piece in order to show the transformation from the domestic violence that existed in Pinter's plays to State violence. In the end, it's a transformation of the nature of violence from his plays to the reality that takes place in Belarus today.