Empty Theater

The theater has never brought me so much joy and pain as in the last year. I also feel angry. A year has passed, and I still can't calm myself down. Every time I see or read someone's sound reasoning about what should have been done in August 2020, my anger becomes stronger. Because I remember the inner emptiness of the first week after the election, when you don't know if everything is okay with your family and friends, what will happen to yourself, and you don't understand at all what to do next. The void is very easily filled with fear and despair.
One of the moments of enlightenment was the appeal of the artists of the Yanka Kupala National Theater. Kupala residents decided to make a political statement at a time when it was safer to remain silent. I am sure that the artists who participated in this recording could have different views on politics. They were united by anger and despair. They were talking. And for those who can retain power only by violence, it was the most terrible thing. Therefore, the reaction was as quick and decisive as possible.

In the news, Kupala residents were called to come to the theater, where a meeting with a representative of the Ministry of Culture was to take place. I came to the theater. There were many familiar people on the lawn at the service doors, actors and theater workers from all over the city. It was unclear exactly what was happening. The Kupala artists themselves were inside, they had another meeting. They were deciding their fate, and we, their friends, were waiting for what they would decide. The atmosphere was filled with anxiety. I remember this painful feeling of lack of leadership, lack of a clear will indicating what and how to do. This is what the state propaganda reproached all of us, saying that we obediently fulfilled what the sinister “puppeteers" told us.
And at the same time, I remember the atmosphere of solidarity, friendliness. It was like a roadside picnic. Anxiety went away when I saw that there were friends nearby. It was one of the last moments when we were all together.

The conversation with the minister went badly. The theater troupe has almost completely quit. They disappeared from the news bulletins. But I knew they were still secretly working on the play. In September 2020, on the 100th anniversary of the theater, the premiere of “Tuteyshykh”, a play by Yanka Kupala, the legendary Belarusian poet and playwright, whose name the theater bears, was to take place. And so they wrote to me to come. To the premises of the former factory. There, secretly, without decorations, only for a few dozen trusted people, they had to play a performance in order to record it on video.
Anxious and gloomy residents of the city in a state of street war gathered for this performance. Yanka Kupala wrote an evil satire about the opportunists, those Belarusians who were ready to serve any strong government. The author looks with despair and pain at how these people impose other people's orders on his land and fastidiously calls them “local” (“tuteish"). Then, 100 years ago, there was a chance to create a real people's state, but nothing happened. And we were sitting in a dark hall, and we were united by the belief that this time we would succeed.
The next day, there was a police raid at the place where the performance was held. Free Kupala residents did not hold more open premieres, their performances could only be seen online.
Now all the performances of the free Kupala residents (“Wojciech”, “Fear and Despair of the Third Reich”, “Peacock” and even the children's play “Cipollino”) turn out to be topical, even if balaclavas, arrests and beatings are not used in the performances. Directors and artists are interested in the nature of violence and fear that reign in Belarusian society. For the same, an endless stream of viewers comes to them. The pandemic has made the production of video performances online a common thing. And this is very useful when it became a security issue. The film crew is not signed in the credits, only the artists who were under the gun.

The building of their theater was empty for a long time. Some artists stayed, but in order to start performances again, they had to arrange auditions, to which not a single decent artist came. Finally, the troupe, formed from several old and newly recruited artists and students, announced the first performance. I went to see it. The impression was very heavy, not even because the artists played badly. But because the audience at the first shows gathered randomly. People clapped at random. At a good performance, the audience becomes something unified, and then there was a feeling that the artists were playing in front of an empty hall.

The same empty theater halls are now all over the country. Many Belarusian actors and directors were inspired by Kupalovtsev's act to speak out publicly. Artists recorded appeals, signed open letters. They staged strikes. Those who were fired, sued, lost these courts. Many went abroad. Someone is looking for an opportunity to work, someone is fleeing from the threat of prison. 42 cultural figures have been brought to criminal responsibility.

Those who have remained in Belarus and are free also have difficult stories. My playwright friend tells me how he went to see an official. There was a rumor that his plays could not be staged. He asked about it directly. “That's not true! - the official lied directly to his eyes. - Be sure to submit applications, we will consider it.” Half an hour passed, my friend was already sitting at the director of the theater where he worked. This same official called the director and began shouting that in no case it is impossible to stage plays by this playwright, but you can't tell anyone about this ban either! 

Someone cannot leave the state theaters for objective financial, family reasons. Someone wanted to leave for themselves the possibility of public speaking from the stage. And such statements also happen when actors and viewers do not pretend that nothing is happening in the country. Then the theater becomes a joint act of disobedience. At such performances, the actors applaud the audience after the performances.

It's a wonderful new feeling when you're called to an underground performance. It's a feeling that you are worthy of trust. “We have prepared a performance based on the book by Viktor Martinovich, they wrote to me. They won't let us show it to the audience, come to a private screening for your own.” I still regret that I couldn't. The performances were played in the courtyards. My neighbors asked me to help organize a festive New Year's performance for children. I arranged with a friend that she also performed with us. Even then, many artists and musicians were taken to court at such events. I volunteered to guard the road from one side to warn if a police raid was coming. I remember those two hours in the cold, I felt like a scout at the front. It sounds romantic, it was cold and boring. But everything went smoothly and safely. 

When you go to an underground performance yourself, you try to take precautions. You take your passport with you. You arrive in advance. Once I had to drive 30 kilometers from Minsk, the performance was shown at the dacha. At first, you look from afar to see if there is anything suspicious, you come cautiously, you are often met by strangers, this is always a tense feeling. Then you see someone you know and it becomes calmer.
You feel a bitter feeling when you find out that there was a raid on the performance that you accidentally could not go to. And the audience sits for 15 days just because they wanted to spend time together.

I was invited to watch the film “Courage”, officially it will not be shown in Belarus. In the city center, with windows on the sites of recent protests. The hosts and guests recalled how they made their way home through the posts on the days of the marches. I didn't know everyone who gathered, but everyone was very happy to see each other. It was like a birthday party or a friendly party in the old days. We got through to Alexander, the director of the film. He was very touched that such a large company gathered in Minsk to watch the film. Artistic-Talk didn't work out, we started exchanging fresh news and words of support.
Then we started watching the movie. Personally, he caused a shock to me from the recognition of recent events. Everyone looked tense. I know the guys well-the actors, the main characters of the film. For many years I have watched them in the performances of the Belarusian Free Theater. They had the experience of living under pressure from the authorities, but even they experienced the familiar emptiness of despair in those August days. The wounds were still too fresh.

The performance I watched at the dacha was played by an amateur theater group. The students staged a play by their teacher. The play was about elections and about the nature of the brutality of riot police, you can't watch such a performance anywhere officially. In another performance, the actresses talked in everyday voices about the shootings of the Civil War, and at that time they drank wine and fried draniki. Was it a legitimization of violence? Or an attempt to show that we will survive any traumatic experience and one day we will be able to calmly remember? We talked about this together at the discussions.

Discussions at these apartment performances became my psychotherapy. Someone wanted to speak out, someone wanted to test their feelings, and one actress said: “As long as there are such performances, I still have freedom that no one can take away!”

In the conditions of censorship (all the publications with which I collaborated were recognized as extremist), I stopped working as a theater critic. But even without that, I had a lot to do. There are few shows of anything important and interesting in official theaters, and it is impossible to tell about underground performances. I felt myself in an empty city, I tried to fill this void on my own.