Play about students between Minsk and Vilnius (Photo) :: Charter'97 :: News

The “Free Theatre” has presented a co-project with student of the European Humanities University. The play “Between Between” had been prepared for two month by EHU students headed by playwright Mikalay Khalezin (Nikolai Khalezin) and a stage director Uladzimer Shcherban. Its topic is a life of Belarusian students between Minsk and Vilnius, between modern Belarus and Europe. The presentation had a form of a “kvartirnik”, an underground concern in a private apartment in Minsk.

The number of spectators was not really big, as an apartment cannot contain all the members of the club seat many people, but all of them were filled with admiration for the play.

“Today there have been an incident: since morning policemen were in the club where we had planned to have the opening night. They knew the “Free Theatre” would be there. Our managers have visited 37 different places. And they have been turn down everywhere,” Radio Svaboda was told by the founder of the “Free Theatre” project Mikalay Khalezin.

The play is abundant in realia of life of today’s EHU students. Thus, in the beginning of the play a girl is packing her things in a bag, hiding a white-red-white flag under her T-shirt. The girl has a conversation with her mother before departure:

- Where are you going to?
- Mummy, we have discussed that already.
- What for are you going there?
- I go there to study, mum.
- What are you going to study? Are you going to lick capitalists’ asses? I prohibit you to go!

After a methodical interrogation at the Belarusian border, students get in Vilnius.

“Vilnius!”, “Laba diena!”

“The paradox is that the first night of this play in Vilnius is to take place on March 6 in Eimuntas Nekrosius Theatre. It’s hard to find a more prestigious stage in Vilnius,” Mikalay Khalezin said.

The leader of the “Free Theatre” project has underlined that it happens so that to perform abroad is easier and such performances are taking place more often than in Belarus.

Photo by svaboda.org