Free Theater returns from three-week US tour
14:51, — Culture
Free Theater (FT), an underground company based in Minsk, has returned from a three-week US tour that proved a success.
FT head Uladzimir Shcherban told BelaPAN that the plays were popular and attracted a capacity crowd.
FT performed in New York City and took part in a workshop hosted by a Los Angeles-based drama school.
It showed Generation Jeans at the Under the Radar Festival in New York City, getting coverage in The New York Times.
Generation Jeans is a one-man show featuring FT Art Director Mikalay Khalezin. Starting with his school experiences as a trafficker in blue jeans and vinyl rock albums, Mr. Khalezin takes his audience on a political and cultural tour of Belarus under two dictatorships: the one of the Communists in the Soviet-era and the other under Alyaksandr Lukashenka that followed. Speaking in Russian, Mr. Khalezin tells how jeans became the flag of a generation of freedom fighters in the Soviet bloc.
Along the way he offers humorous insights into the dark world of black marketeering of jeans and rock under the Communists.
Mr. Shcherban said that during the festival, FT had received an offer from an American producer to go on a long tour of the United States.
In February 10, FT is to leave for Britain where it wants to show Being Harold Pinter and Generation Jeans, and conduct a one-week drama course at a drama school.
