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    The Belarus Free Theater Is Also a Support Network for Exiles

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    The leaders of the Belarus Free Theater, who fled the country more than a decade ago, are helping more recent refugees to rebuild their lives while putting on a new show.When the two founders of the renowned Belarus Free Theater claimed political asylum in Britain in 2011, they found themselves homeless, with few possessions and facing a bureaucratic labyrinth before they could work.It was only with help from British theater makers that the pair found places to stay and were able to restart their company from exile, using Skype to conduct rehearsals with actors in Minsk, Belarus’s capital.Twelve years later, the company’s founders, Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, are using that experience to help other artists fleeing political repression.Belarus — an East European country of about nine million people that borders both Russia and Ukraine — has been ruled since 1994 by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a dictator and ally to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The Belarus Free Theater’s political productions have often criticized Lukashenko’s authoritarian leadership and its troupe was long at risk of arrest. But as repression increased, the company decided it was no longer feasible for its other members to remain in Minsk. In 2021, they also fled to avoid long jail terms. Since then, Kaliada said, she and Khalezin had been helping the actors to find housing, therapy and visas.The company was also running acting classes for other Belarusian and Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, Kaliada said, that had led to full-scale shows, and was providing help to some Ukrainians singers, too, who could no longer perform full time in their homeland because of the war.“The only thing we wanted was for people to not go through our experiences,” Kaliada said.Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada run the Belarus Free Theater. After their country’s 2020 election, they moved their entire troupe out of the country. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Warsaw this summer, Kaliada and Khalezin started rehearsals for their latest project, “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera singers and video projections that will premiere at the Barbican Center, in London, on Thursday, running through Sep. 16.In interviews with eight actors, musicians and production staff at those rehearsals, four said they were struggling to adjust to life in Warsaw. The composer Olga Podgaiskaya said it was only with a therapist’s help that she’d come to accept that she wouldn’t be returning to Minsk anytime soon. In Belarus, she said, she had been a fixture on the classical music scene: “Here, I’m a nobody. I need to prove from scratch who I am.”Raman Shytsko, an actor, said he still felt like a guest in Poland — and sometimes an unwelcome one. Once in the city of Wroclaw, he said, he was sworn at in the street for speaking Russian. “A lot of people here hate Belarusians now,” he added, because of the regime’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The conductor Vitali Alekseenok and the composer Olga Podgaiskaya rehearsing with musicians from the Five-Storey Ensemble, in preparation for “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt.”Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesMany of the exiled artists said that simply working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” had given them a much-needed sense of purpose.In the rehearsals, which took place at Warsaw’s main opera house, the cast helped each other learn lines and dance moves, and larked about between scenes. Yuliya Shauchuk, an actor, said that the studio was the one place where she always felt joyful.This show’s plot, which is drawn from a popular Belarusian novel and involves a group of ghostly huntsmen who terrorize a rural community, also felt analogous to what was happening now in Belarus, Shauchuk said, where every day the police track down and arrest people who have protested the president’s rule.Several Ukrainian opera singers involved in the production said the rehearsals were benefiting them, too. Mykola Hubchuk had driven overnight from Kolomyya, Ukraine, to take part. “This project is very important for me,” he said. “I need emotion and singing in my life.”Sveta Sugako, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, said that the company had renewed its sense of purpose in exile. Its members used to mainly “shout about Belarus,” she said. Now, the company was trying to raise awareness about the war in Ukraine, too, and about the political situation in Russia. It had become, she said, “about the whole region.”The troupe’s journey to exile began in 2020 with an election. That year, Belarus looked set for change, after Lukashenko’s landslide victory was widely dismissed as fraudulent. Members of the company took part in the subsequent mass street protests, hoping Lukashenko would be forced to step aside.Instead, he violently cracked down on opposition and in October 2021, Kaliada and Khalezin pulled the remaining members out. They first headed to Ukraine, with some members wading through swamps to cross the border, before some continued to Poland, and others to Britain.Ever since, Kaliada said, the situation in Belarus had gotten worse. Last year, Putin used the country as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine, then said he would move Russian nuclear weapons across the border into Belarus.Helping the troupe members who reached London had proved easier than those in Warsaw, Kaliada said, because of the company’s established connections in London’s theater world. Cate Blanchett and Juliet Stevenson had both provided accommodation for some members in London, Kaliada said.Shauchuk, left, and Kaliada outside the Polish National Opera. The entire company is now in exile, split between Warsaw and London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Poland, the company had few relationships with similarly generous individuals, Kaliada said, but it had secured cheap rates for some actors at a hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. The Polish government also helped, letting the troupe rehearse for free at the state-run opera house.The company has been trying to deepen its ties in Warsaw. Whenever it stages a show in the city, including recent productions featuring refugee teenagers, it invites local dignitaries, and adds Polish subtitles.With the company approaching the end of its second year in exile, Kaliada said its members would soon have to do more to support themselves. Around 100 people were working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” she said, and the Belarus Free Thater didn’t have the resources to support them all.Many of the actors in Warsaw said they were already making efforts to find their own work. One said he’d taken on dubbing. Another said they were teaching and another was working as a coder.Shauchuk said she knew she needed “to build a life” in Warsaw and was looking to improve her Polish. But, she said, she would not give up hope of returning home. “Even if I build up a family outside Belarus,” she said, “I want the right to go back.”The company will perform “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera and video projections, at the Barbican Center in London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times More

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      An Exiled Theater With a Warning for Europe

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      The Belarus Free Theater’s members fled repression at home. The company’s latest show imagines a nightmare future of authoritarian Russian rule.LONDON — When the players of the Belarus Free Theater began working on “Dogs of Europe” three years ago, they thought it was a play about a dystopia.Set in 2049, it imagines the continent cut in half by a wall. On one side sits a Russian superstate, where a dictator has eliminated almost all opposition, and where people cannot speak their native languages or even perform folk dances. On the other side sits a Europe that failed to realize the Russian threat, or stop it from absorbing Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States and beyond.Yet at a rehearsal in London last month, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, the play’s nightmare world didn’t feel so far-fetched.Maryna Yakubovich, an actor in the production, which opens Thursday at the Barbican theater in London, said that rehearsing the play had sometimes felt like a premonition. “It’s, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s started to happen,” she said.Nicolai Khalezin, left, and Natalia Kaliada, founders of the Belarus Free Theater.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNatalia Kaliada, one of the Belarus Free Theater’s founders, said that when she and her husband, Nicolai Khalezin, decided to stage the play, they thought it would be a “warning shot” about the dangers of undemocratic leaders left unchecked. But planned performances in London and New York in 2020 were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now that warning shot appears to be too late.As the war in Ukraine enters its third week, the Belarus Free Theater’s performance may seem accidentally timely. But it is only the company’s latest attempt in its 17-year existence to warn about rising authoritarianism in Eastern Europe.The company knows those dangers all too well. Since forming in 2005, it has faced repression in Belarus, which is ruled by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” in part for his government’s clampdown on opposition and its stifling of free expression. The troupe has long been effectively banned from performing in Belarus, but it continued to do so in secret venues in Minsk, the capital, even after Kaliada and Khalezin were forced into exile more than a decade ago. The couple settled in London — where they developed close ties to theaters including the Young Vic and the Almeida — but continued rehearsing with actors in Belarus via Skype.Those clandestine shows, in venues including a converted car garage that once belonged to the American Embassy, also won the troupe high-profile supporters in the United States. In 2015, The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, visited the company in Minsk, and praised its “spirit of defiant, exultant fraternity” adding that this was something “you rarely find among the young these days in money-driven, shockproof Manhattan.”A rehearsal of “Dogs of Europe” in London this month.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNow, even that window to perform in Minsk has closed. The theater’s entire 16-member acting troupe fled Belarus last year to avoid potential jail time for opposing Lukashenko’s regime.The Belarus Free Theater was now homeless, Kaliada said. “We are refugees.”She added that she had hoped its members would be granted asylum in Britain, so they could set up a refugee-led theater there, but the process can take years and asylum applicants are almost always banned from working. After its four-performance run at the Barbican, the company would most likely set up base in Warsaw, a city with numerous refugees from both Belarus and Ukraine, Kaliada said, but added that a final decision had not yet been made.The company’s finances are precarious, Kaliada said, though she had a clear vision for the future. As well as finding a performance space, the company would establish a school where its members could give acting classes to refugee children, she said. All of its future plays would be live-streamed back to Belarus, so the company would keep reaching people there.“It’s a pretty tough time,” Kaliada said. “We’re trying to solve many issues at once.”The company’s experiences over the past two years show how quickly fortunes can change in Eastern Europe. In August 2020, Belarus — a country of some nine million people — looked on the verge of a turning point after Lukashenko declared victory in a vote widely dismissed as fraudulent, leading to mass street protests. It was a “beautiful, powerful,” moment, Kaliada said: It felt like her country was waking from a bad dream, she said.Then a brutal police crackdown against the protesters brought those hopes to an end.Sveta Sugako, left, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, and Nadia Brodskaya, its general manager.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesSeveral of the company’s actors were arrested during the period of repression around the election. Sveta Sugako, the company’s production manager, said she spent five days in prison in a tiny cell with 35 other women. None of them were given any food or drinking water for three days, she added. After Sugako refused to sign a confession saying she had taken part in the demonstrations, a police officer grabbed her and choked her, she said.Sugako said she had not wanted to leave Belarus, even after that experience. “I was ready to sit and wait in jail,” she said, but other Belarus Free Theater members persuaded her to go, pointing out that the company had no future if all of its actors were behind bars.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      Eurovision Song Contest Disqualifies Belarus Over Political Lyrics

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      The song’s lyrics were found to violate the competition’s rules in what critics called an endorsement of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s crackdown on antigovernment protests.The long-running unrest in Belarus has spilled over into this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, with organizers ejecting the country from the competition for songs found to have repeatedly violated rules barring political content.The country’s original song entry, “Ya Nauchu Tebya” (I’ll Teach You) by the band Galasy ZMesta, was criticized by opposition figures who assert that lyrics such as “I will teach you to toe the line” endorsed the President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s violent crackdown on antigovernment protests. Eurovision fans started an online petition asking organizers to make Belarus withdraw from the competition.This month the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the international musical spectacular, wrote to Belarus’s national broadcaster, BTRC, saying that the entry was not eligible to compete in the musical talent show in May this year in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.“The song puts the nonpolitical nature of the contest in question,” the broadcasting union’s statement said.Belarus was given an opportunity to submit a modified version of the song, or a new tune. But after evaluating the replacement, the union said in another statement on Friday evening that “the new submission was also in breach of the rules” and that Belarus would be disqualified.Belarus was gripped for weeks by large-scale protests last year after Mr. Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in what many Western governments said was a sham election in August. His security forces then brutally cracked down on mass demonstrations.Both songs that the eastern European nation entered for Eurovision this year came under criticism for what many viewed as pro-government lyrics and imagery. The band that performs the songs, Galasy ZMesta, was also found to have what could be interpreted as an anti-protest message on its website, taking aim at people who “try to destroy the country we love and live in,” and adding, “we cannot stay indifferent” toward them.Eurovision’s rules state that the event is nonpolitical and that “no lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political, commercial or similar nature shall be permitted” in the contest.Belarus started competing in Eurovision in 2004 and has fielded an entrant every year since, so it knew what it was doing in entering songs that contained political messaging, said Oliver Adams, a correspondent for Wiwibloggs, a widely read site for Eurovision news.Although the coronavirus pandemic halted Eurovision’s 2020 grand finale, more than 180 million people watched the contest in 2019. As the world’s longest-running annual televised music competition, it has amassed a highly dedicated following of excitable fans.The contest, which started 65 years ago, cemented its place last year as a cultural phenomenon with a Netflix movie gently mocking its eccentricities and obsessive fandom.Countries’ being pulled up for submitting tunes with political undertones in Eurovision is rare, but has happened before. Georgia entered the song “We Don’t Wanna Put In” for the 2009 contest that was held in Moscow, but organizers rejected it for containing obvious references to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including the wordplay in the song title. Georgia withdrew from the competition that year but denied that the song contained “political statements.”This year, Armenia also withdrew from Eurovision. Its public broadcaster attributed the decision in part to the political fallout from the conflict with Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.“This isn’t the first time that political tension has found its way into the Eurovision-sphere,” said Mx. Adams, who uses the gender-neutral courtesy title in place of Mr. or Ms.“These outer-Eurovision bubble problems do seep their way into the contest sometimes,” he added, “but ultimately they’re never going to break it apart.” More

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      Molchat Doma Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It's Serious.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThis Band Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It’s Serious.Molchat Doma, a synth-pop trio, has become an unlikely social media star. Back home, its music was the soundtrack to a traumatic year.Members of the band Molchat Doma in Minsk, Belarus, on Dec. 5. From left: Pavel Kozlov, Egor Shkutko and Roman Komogortsev.Credit…Yahuen Yerchak for The New York TimesJulia Vauchok, Alex Marshall and Dec. 23, 2020Updated 10:20 a.m. ETMINSK, Belarus — On a recent Saturday night, Hide, a trendy nightclub in Belarus’s capital, was packed. More than 600 clubgoers were jostling for a view of the stage in the tiny venue, hidden in an inner-city courtyard.Social distancing was impossible, but none of the crowd seemed worried about the coronavirus. Instead, they just looked happy to have gotten in to see Molchat Doma, a moody local synth-pop trio that this year became a lightning rod for younger people in Belarus, and an unlikely internet phenomenon abroad.Since August, when President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who has been called Europe’s last dictator, claimed an implausible election victory, mass street protests and a brutal police crackdown have put a spotlight on the former Soviet country.But even before that, Molchat Doma was bringing Belarus some international attention. In February, one of the band’s tracks, “Sudno” (“Vessel”), started appearing in clips on TikTok, the social media app. A TikTok spokesman said that he believed the first use was by a man promoting his tattooing business; that video got a few hundred likes. But the gloomy yet danceable song’s popularity grew, and, within a few months, it had been used in more than 150,000 clips.In one, the music plays while a woman dyes her armpit hair blue; in another, someone tries on dozens of outfits. One short video, in which a dog wearing sunglasses runs around to the frenzied tune, has been liked more than 1.4 million times.Most of the app’s users seem unconcerned — or unaware — that the song’s lyrics, in Russian, are about a poet contemplating suicide: “Living is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s comfortable to die” goes one line.Word of Molchat Doma soon spread beyond TikTok, and now more than two million people stream the band’s music each month on Spotify, many of those in the United States. In November, the band released its latest album, “Monument.”At Hide, few were talking about Molchat Doma’s social media success. Instead, fans spoke about how important the band had been to young Belarusians through this turbulent year. Some chanted slogans associated with the protests while they waited for the band to come onstage, such as “Long live Belarus!” and “We believe! We can! We will win!”“If Belarus were music, it would sound like Molchat Doma,” said Polina Besedina, 20, waiting to get a drink at the bar. Another clubgoer, Aleksandra Shepelevich, 20, said, “These guys feel what we live in right now.”Other fans agreed that Molchat Doma’s music had captured the atmosphere in Belarus. It may sound depressing, but it was also upbeat, said Yegor Skuratovich, 32, adding that it reflected young people’s “hope that everything will turn great.”In a Skype interview, the band’s members — the singer Egor Shkutko, 25, and the instrumentalists Roman Komogortsev, 26, and Pavel Kozlov, 27 — said they did not make a conscious effort to address Belarus’s political situation in their music, but, naturally, the circumstances in which they live were reflected.Molchat Doma performing in Warsaw in October 2019. “These guys feel what we live in right now,” one fan in Belarus said.Credit…Michal Najdzik“Monument,” the new album, was finished before the disputed presidential election in August, and the band said that its songs were about failed relationships, rather than current affairs. In fact, they preferred not to talk about the protests at all.“Any hasty word that was said too loud can result in a loss of freedom,” Kozlov said of daily life in Belarus. “In a good situation, that would mean 15, 30 days of arrest; in a worst case, two to three years behind bars,” he added. “So, as a band, we don’t talk about politics and our music doesn’t touch upon it.”“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t concern us,” said Komogortsev. “It does.”The band’s success on TikTok has taken them by surprise, they said: They only found out that “Sudno” had become a hit on the app when friends started sending them clips. It was odd to see people “doing silly things to such existential lyrics,” Kozlov said, but the band quickly saw the upside, given that the pandemic had stopped them playing shows.“I was worried that we could wither away,” Shkutko said, “but this thing kept us afloat.”Kozlov said that he thought an idealized view of the post-Soviet world had contributed to the band’s international appeal. Its album covers and music videos feature some striking examples of communist architecture, including heroic monuments and huge concrete housing blocks.“We make it look romantic,” Kozlov said, adding that the reality was quite different. “Just send an American to live in our apartment,” he said. “They would be shocked.”Not everyone using the band’s music on TikTok seemed interested in Brutalist aesthetics. Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, got more than 1.2 million likes for the clip in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to “Sudno.” She said she had used the song because she had heard it in other clips on the app, and “just thought it was cool,” she said in a telephone interview. She hasn’t listened to the band since, she added.Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, posted a clip on TikTok in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to the soundtrack of a Molchat Doma song. The video was liked more than 1.2 million times.Credit…via TikTokBut others have been converted into fans. Liana Gareeva, 29, a Russian customer service representative who lives in the Netherlands, said in a telephone interview that she had listened to everything Molchat Doma had released since coming across them on TikTok.“It is really nice poetry,” she said, “and a really nice old vibe, like vintage music.”In August, she decided to use the band’s popularity on the app to raise awareness of the situation in Belarus. She posted a clip of protesters being beaten, with “Sudno” playing as a soundtrack, overlaid with the message “Belarus we are with u!” It got about 4,000 likes.“Young people don’t read the news, so they look at TikTok,” Gareeva said. “I know a lot of people think this app is stupid, but I’ve learned so much from it.”Back at Hide, the crowd clapped and whistled for Molchat Doma to come onstage. When the musicians finally arrived, dressed all in black, everyone surged forward for a better view.For nearly two hours, the band played and the audience danced to songs that might be about heartbreak, or maybe protest.“I don’t give a damn about what will happen to me later,” Shkutko sang toward the end of the show, his voice booming over a bouncy, ’80s-inspired beat. “I dance like a God, because tomorrow will not be the same,” he sang.A few days after the show, Molchat Doma posted a clip from the show on TikTok. The video showed Shkutko bathed in blue light, writhing to the beat, his eyes closed as he sang. The song was “Sudno” and the clip soon amassed 5,600 likes. It was a respectable number — but a lot less than the blue armpit hair got.Julia Vauchok reported from Minsk, Belarus; Alex Marshall from London; and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More