KS6: Small Forward review

The set, also by Khalezin, turns the stage into a basketball court, complete with a suspended hoop and squeaky, glossy flooring. A pair of screens at the rear display video throughout, designed by Dmytro Guk. We watch Snytsina interacting warmly with her teammates, intercut with footage of anti-government protests. Occasionally, dreamy, sentimentalised domestic scenes drift by, representing Snytsina’s nostalgia for the home from which she is now exiled. Far from being merely saccharine, these images suggest a concrete goal, a brighter future that the athlete intends to actualise for herself and her people.

Snytsina is an instantly likeable narrator, with an easy-going charisma that shines through in her unforced delivery. She laughs along with the audience, cracks wry jokes, then goes cold and quiet as she describes the trauma inflicted upon her fellow dissidents. She talks candidly about Soviet-era training regimes, the highs of her competitive career and her sudden realisation that all was not well in her homeland. She is joined on stage by Darya Andreyanova and Raman Shytsko, who bring humour and playfulness to their multiple roles as a range of mascots and stagehands. Elsewhere, they become balaclava-clad agents of oppression, invading Snytsina’s space or tethering her with elastic resistance bands as she tries to run free.

For all the bubbly energy on display, the piece carries a poignant and disquieting message. Before mass protests erupted in Belarus in 2020, Snytsina was largely unaware of the oppression in her home country. Silence and indifference, she tells us, are enemies of freedom. With so many despots around the world working to erode our democracies, this piece is both a necessary call to reject authoritarianism, and a timely reminder of the heavy cost of failing to do so.