PAST EVENT: 25 August: How theatre leads the fight for human rights in Belarus

17 Aug 2011

1 Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1QH

Please join Index on Censorship’s Mike Harris in conversation with Natalia Koliada, artistic director of the Belarus Free Theatre and spokesperson for Free Belarus Now.

In the wake of this week’s dramatic events in the Middle East, Mike and Natalia will discuss Belarus’s own internal struggle against a dictator. Why, when the Arab world has taken such monumental steps, is there still so little support for the people of Belarus, just two and half hours away? What comparisons can be drawn and lessons learned as Belarus steps up its movement for freedom?

Time Out has named the Belarus Free Theatre the “bravest theatre company in the world”. This underground company have reached international fame for defying the strict censorship and persecution they face in their country and their continued success in creating powerful contemporary drama. Natalia Koliada will speak about the vital role that the arts are playing in the fight against Europe’s last dictator.

Time: 4pm
Venue: 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1QH
Free

Index on Censorship is one of the world’s leading organisations promoting freedom of expression, with editors across the globe. Index was founded as a magazine in 1972, when a group of writers, journalists and artists took to the page in defence of the basic human right of freedom of expression for writers in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.

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  1. Juras1789

    August 25, 2011 at 12:11

    I suppose you would have a different view on this play and this company if you knew about their link with scientology:
    the director of “BFT” Natalia Koliada graduated from Hubbard College of Administration in USA, she has nothing to deal with theater, it’s all about public relations, emotional manipulation and victim psychology. In Scientology they practice a lot this technique called “auditing” which aims to discover all main traumas and weaknesses of a person in order to have a sort of personalized map of manipulation. When you talk about “scars” that performers show on stage, you could also see that these “scars” are not only real (and this make the “show” amazing) but they are also instruments of control used by directors over actors: that’s how this company makes it’s cohesion: by forcing members to represent their real traumas on stage. It’s more about collective therapy than about theater, I think. And spectators are, of course, also involved in this psychological communion and circuitry of manipulation. Their give to victims on stage their compassion, and their empathy — and doing this they give more power of domination to directors.
    By the way, the other director Nikolai Khalezin is a consultant in PR, direct selling and network marketing, NGO marketing and advertisement: they a selling to the world their image of victims and freedom-fighters. But it is just an image, skilfully constructed and carefully painted. It’s not a reality. They are not victims, and they are not freedom-fighters. Just business. Let’s say vocation, calling, passion, like they often say in scientology which is, on this level, a radical version of protestant ethics. A passion of manipulation. A passion of bluff. But a lot of people believe to the image they give of themselves. And in this respect, it may be considered as a reality. And “scars” of actors are also true. The fact that these “scars” are performed in a manipulative frame of victim psychology set by directors make these “scars” even more true, because more painful for the performers. Because to represent real pain in such frame is a betrayal of this pain. It makes it artificial. It does not even cures: it rather amputates and makes a prosthesis.

    Same thing for their postulated fight for democracy in Belarus. It makes a prosthesis. It hedges our vision of the situation in Belarus. With such manipulation techniques it doesn’t lead us to democracy. No. It just gives us a narcissic compensation. And we remain just amazed like seeing a miracle, or an illusion, or a TV screen. What a beautiful history! What heroes they are! That’s it.
    So I think directors of “Belarus free theatre”TM work for the Belarusian government (as secret agents, and agents provocateurs) or maybe the Russian one. That would explain a lot of things. For example, the miraculous release of Natalia Koliana on the 20 of December 2010. She was the only person to be released. “By juridical mistake”, her husband and co-director of the company Nikolai Khalezin assured on his blog:
    http://kilgor-trautt.livejournal.com/618961.html

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