‘You need to make your choice’
Show created by activists fearing Russian Empire is ‘coming back’
Burning Doors, a production by the Belarus Free Theatre playing at the Luminato Festival this week, has always been topical. But suddenly it’s taken on a new level of urgency.
Created in the belief that “the Russian empire is coming back,” in the words of BFT’s coartistic director Natalia Kaliada, the production is based on testimonies by three activist artists: the Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky, who famously nailed his scrotum to Red Square; Maria Alyokhina, one of the original members of the punk band Pussy Riot (who appears live in the production); and Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who has been imprisoned in Siberia since 2014.
In the two years that BFT has been touring the show, Sentsov’s situation has escalated: He began a hunger strike on May14 and, according to Kaliada, “is ready to die for Putin to release 70 Ukrainian political prisoners from Russian jails.”
The hunger strike has drawn worldwide attention, with writer Stephen King and others tweeting the hashtag #FreeSentsov, and western arts organizations including Luminato and the Toronto International Film Festival calling for the release of Sentsov and other political prisoners.
The outcry comes at a moment when the world’s attention is focused on Russia for other reasons.
“This is not the time for festivities and camaraderie at the World Cup,” says Kaliada in an interview.
“It’s a time to leverage political pressure.” She and her col- leagues have a “huge fear that it might be a tragic ending” for Sentsov.
Western lobbying can make a difference.
“In the Pussy Riot case, the biggest influence in the amnesty that was written for us … was from Western activists and politicians,” says Alyokhina. In 2012, she and fellow punk band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were imprisoned following Pussy Riot’s first major public action — a balaclava-wearing performance of the song “Punk Prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral.
They were released three months early from their twoyear sentence, in December 2013.
In 2011, Kaliada, her husband and co-artistic director Nicolai Khalezin, and their children sought political asylum in the UK following increasing intimidation in their native country (Belarus is frequently referred to as Europe’s last dictatorship).
Belarus Free Theatre is now housed at London’s Young Vic Theatre, though it continues as a training and producing organization in the Belarusian capital, with Kaliada and Khalezin doing all their teaching and communications via Skype.
“Our company exists underground on a daily basis in Minsk. We perform there in a small garage three or four times a week,” says Kaliada.
Isn’t that massively risky for their students and performers?
“It’s a choice — you need to make your choice,” she replies. “When we have a new intake we always say ‘Be ready. You may lose your home, your educa- tion. You could be taken to jail. Anything could happen.’ ”
The other facet of the company’s work is creating original shows for UK and international audiences such as Burning Doors, the title of which refers to a 2015 protest in which Pavlensky set fire to the doors of the FSB, the headquarters of Russia’s security services.
At that point Kaliada and Khalezin were already concerned about Sentsov’s incarceration, so they decided to make a show about contemporary Russia and creative protest.
“We didn’t want to talk about Putin and the Russian Empire,” says Kaliada. “We wanted to talk about humans who resist that system.” A letter out of the blue from Alyokhina saying she wanted to work with them further cemented the concept. The production’s eight performers re-enact intense physical challenges as they retell episodes from Alyokhina, Pavlensky and Sentsov’s lives, amongst darkly comic vignettes that satirize the Russian authorities and recitations from works by Dostoevsky and Foucault.
Part of her motivation for getting involved in the show was to toughen herself, says Alyokhina.
“We took the hardest moments in my story and I am going through them again and again. This is not only words but a physical torture,” as when her head is repeatedly dunked in a bathtub.
“If you take these moments which are the most hard and painful for you and go through them, in the end of the story you will be stronger.”
When we spoke, Alyokhina said she was concerned about how she was going to get out of Russia.
She arrived in Toronto last weekend after three complicated and expensive days of travel, according to a Luminato representative.
Alyokhina says that she and the Belarus Free Theatre want their Canadian audiences to understand that the kind of censorship that made Pussy Riot infamous six years ago is now “almost an everyday reality. People go to prison because of Facebook posts, a single protest in a square, a message on Twitter … It’s not just one or two cases — it’s a system.
“This system doesn’t give a f--k for people. It exists just for stealing money and keeping power for forever.”
And most of all, “we want to make a statement for freedom for Oleg as loud as possible.” Burning Doors plays at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre, 227 Front St. E, from June 20-24. Luminatofestival.com and 416 368 4849.