Belarus Free Theatre: ‘We must get out of our comfort zones if we want to continue as a democracy’

In August of 2020, Lukashenko declared a huge majority at the presidential election, a widely contested result that triggered waves of protests around the country. These were brutally put down. A number of BFT company members were arrested, including company manager Svetlana Sugako, who spent five days in jail in hellish conditions. 

Ahead of the election, Belarus Free Theatre urged politicians in the West to sanction Lukashenko, knowing the election would be falsified, but with no success. “And now we see the same situation with Ukraine,” says Kaliada. This failure to move from words to actions is deeply frustrating.

“Why are you waiting for Russia to start the largest-scale war since 1945?” Putin made his intentions clear, but “politics doesn’t work like that. It’s working on a reaction, not a correction. That’s a major failure in terms of democracy”.

Months of protests followed. The climate in Belarus became increasingly oppressive. Bacharevic’s book was classified as “extremist material”, essentially banning it, and last year, after making work underground for close to 17 years, the company made the difficult decision to take all their members out of the country. The situation had become too dangerous for them to stay. They were threatened with jail if they were arrested and the threat was real. Based on data compiled by human-rights organisations, there are more artists in jail than journalists or human-rights activists. This wasn’t an easy operation. There were risks – not to mention the emotional toll of uprooting families and leaving their homes – but they managed it.

‘It is easier to complain about the sickness of a system than to do something about it’

Now they are trying to help other people evacuate Ukraine, while using social-media channels to show the reality for citizens in Ukraine and Russia. This was a conflict that people should have seen coming, says Kaliada. Having lived under Lukashenko’s regime, they knew all too well what dictatorship looks like, how it operates. They’ve chronicled the impact of Russian suppression and oppression in their work for years – in 2016’s Burning Doors, about Russia’s clampdown on artistic freedom; collaborating with the Marczyks on their show about the Maidan protests, Counting Sheep, and in their recent documentary Alone, about Ukrainian rock star Andriy Khlyvnyuk’s attempts to raise awareness of the plight of Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov by staging a concert on the border of annexed Crimea.

There is a temptation to describe their work as prescient. Dogs of Europe was, after all, first conceived back in 2018, says Khalezin, when they first heard of Bacharevic’s book – they only had the title and a one-sentence concept when they decided to get the rights to stage it. Now this show about “dogs barking on the edge of Europe” created by a company of Belarussian, Ukrainian and Russian artists will receive its belated London premiere at a time when the eyes of the world are on these three countries. This wasn’t so much a prediction, she stresses, as seeing clearly what was happening and responding to it as artists.

Belarus is deeply entangled in the conflict. Lukashenko is essentially Putin’s puppet and the country has been used as a staging post by Russian forces and Belarus has increasingly become a participant in the war. Belarus Free Theatre urges people to lobby for even stronger sanctions on both Russia and Belarus – to strike at the money – and to create safe international corridors to evacuate citizens. 

Kaliada and Khalezin stress that we should be vigilant in the UK too. After all, they point out, our prime minister has shown repeatedly that no matter the public will or the lies he is caught out in telling, he has no inclination to leave. Khalezin says: “It is easier to complain about the sickness of a system than to do something about it, because to do something you need to get out of your comfort zone, you need to force yourself into unpleasant conditions. But we must, if we want to continue to exist as a democracy.”

The reality has become glaringly apparent in days. Every hour brings horrifying scenes from Ukraine. Missile strikes, people huddled in shelters or fleeing for the border. “This is a historic moment,” Kaliada says, in reference to the fact a company exiled from its home is staging a banned book about an oppressive regime at this time, but these words hit harder in hindsight. It is a historic moment for Belarus and the world – it is appallingly timely, painfully so. 

Dogs of Europe is at London’s Barbican from March 10-12; on March 11 there will be a panel featuring Alhierd Baharevic and Belarus’ opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya