Radical underground theatre company Belarus Free Theatre, founded under Europe's last surviving dictatorship, this year marks its tenth anniversary with a concert and a two-week festival of performances and discussions.
The programme for Staging A Revolution focuses on taboos and includes some of the company's acclaimed original productions, classics such as King Lear and the world première of new work, Time of Women.
I’m with the Banned headlines the festival. It is a concert featuring a line-up of bands banned from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine together with other artists including David Gilmour, Pussy Riot, Brutto, Boombox, Diana Arbenia, Kim Cattrall, Neil Tennant and Juliet Stevenson.
Other productions include Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Price of Money, the UK première of A Reply to Kathy Acker, Generation Jeans, Discover Love, modern Belarusian epic Zone of Silence, Trash Cuisine and Being Harold Pinter.
Hoping to inspire UK audiences to see themselves as positive change-makers, each performance will be followed by a panel discussion with artists, campaigners, journalists and activists. Amongst the topics for debate are stigma, inequality, resistance and injustice.
Belarus Free Theatre is illegal in its homeland where only state-sanctioned theatre is permitted. Performances take place in secret at undisclosed locations across the city of Minsk, but nonetheless performances have been raided by the KGB and audience members arrested.
Belarus Free Theatre is an associate company at the Young Vic, its base in the UK. It is also an associate artist at Falmouth University's Academy of Music & Theatre Arts.
Performances in Staging A Revolution are in Russian and/or Belarusian with English surtitles, or in English.
Staging A Revolution runs from 2 to 14 November at the Young Vic, KoKo and in various undisclosed venues. I’m with the Banned is on 18 October.