Trash Cuisine & Minsk 2011

Two Plays by Belarus Free Theatre

Natalia Kaliada, Nikolai Khalezin

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781783190171
• eBook ISBN: 9781783195169
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Trash Cuisine is winner of the Impatto Totale Award 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2013. Trash Cuisine: Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada Devised by Belarus Free Theatre
Banned from performing in their own country, Belarus Free Theatre serve up food, music, dance and Shakespeare as they share true stories from inmates, executioners, human rights lawyers and families of the executed. This provocative and urgent play pierces the imagination with moments of the darkest humour as it challenges capital punishment in our contemporary world, where 95 countries still carry out the death penalty. Minsk 2011 (A Reply to Kathy Acker): Devised and written by Belarus Free Theatre Dramaturgy by Vladimir Shcherban
If scars are sexy, Minsk must be the sexiest city in the world...Strip clubs, underground raves and gay pride parades pulse beneath the surface of a city, where sexuality is twisted by oppression. A love letter to a home that exiles those willing to fight for it, Minsk, 2011 celebrates and mourns a land that has lost its way...

MINSK, 2011: A REPLY TO KATHY ACKER

BASED ON REAL STORIES AND EVENTS

Photographs © Nicolai Khalezin

Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker had its European premiere at Edinburgh Fringe Festival on 22 August, 2011. Originally presented at the Pleasance, Edinburgh.

Director, concept and adaptation Vladimir Shcherban Originally co-produced by Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, and Fuel Theatre Company (UK).

Written and performed by authors/actors:
Pavel Haradnitski
Yana Rusakevich
Aleh Sidorchyk
Dzianis Tarasenka
Maryna Yurevich
Yuliya Shauchuk
Siarhei Kvachonak
Viktoryia Biran
Kiryl Kanstantsinau

Additional contribution in writing by Vladimir Shcherban, Nikita Volodko, Ryma Ushkevich.
Text ‘Belarus is not sexy’ written by Natalia Kaliada in collaboration with Nicolai Khalezin.
Original translation by Yuri Kaliada and Natalia Kaliada.
English adaptation by Chris Thorpe.

Production Manager Tom Cotterill, UK.
Assistant Directors Svetlana Sugako, Nadia Brodskaya
General Management of International Touring Yuri Kaliada in collaboration with Fenella Dawnay.

Developed in residence at the Dartington Space with the support of the Dartington Hall Trust. Funded by Arts Council England.

Performed in Russian and Belarusian with projected subtitles.

What are you doing?! I am a journalist! I have accreditation! What are you doing? You bastards! Fucking hell!

President of the Republic of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus is singing…

‘My fingers are like logs… I’m telling you. And the bellows are stiff. Now, I started telling you about Obodzinsky… Just a few lines… If I can’t manage it right away, I’ll try to play it again. But I will manage it. Yes? Yes?…’

I wait for you to come or maybe you will not…
A moment when I see you…
Oh, I am so happy!!!

Minsk, 2011. Scars.

Scars are a man’s decoration. By that measurement, I might not be Adonis, but I’m still goddamn beautiful. And I got all my scars in Minsk.

This one’s on my palm. I was five when I got it. Ended up in the Hospital for Communicable Diseases when I cut myself on a door handle.

Behind the knee. I stole something in the first grade, brought it to school. My dad flogged me with a belt, and the buckle cut my leg open.

Right arm. The biggest and my favourite. I climbed over the fence at Minsk Airport Number One and slashed my arm on the barbed wire.

Under the left eye. Scar of a rock-n-roll lover. I had glasses as a teenager, and long hair, so the local dickheads beat me up.

Index finger on my left hand. I was carving a statue for my darling girlfriend and I put a chisel right through it.

The scar on my forehead. Jumping around in a flat, utterly in love, didn’t notice a doorway. I saw the colour of my skull.

If the fractures had left scars as well, I’d be even more beautiful.

5th metatarsal in my left foot. Tripped going up the stairs, three weeks in plaster in hospital.

Left cheekbone. Someone pushed me as a joke – I face-planted on a concrete floor – which wasn’t actually funny.

Spent a week having maxillofacial surgery.

Right arm. We were jumping from three-metre boards on a building site as kids. The aim was to land on the sand. I landed on a brick.

Right rib, left rib, sternum and all my other ribs too. 1996. 26 April. The Chernobyl Remembrance Rally. I was grabbed by the riot police, and they took me inside the KGB building. I spent three hours splayed against a wall while they took my “statement”, and then they beat me up. When I finally fell down, one kept hold of my hands, the other kept methodically kicking me in the chest. Just as I was blacking out, one of them said: ‘I guess we’ll let you live, you freak.’ So I lived.

Scars are a man’s decoration. Girls think scars are sexy. By that measurement, Minsk is a damn sexy city.

New Year 2011 didn’t happen on January 1st in Minsk, like it does in the rest of the world, but 13 days earlier on December 19th, 2010.

At the Square. A bloody crackdown on a peaceful demonstration against the falsification of the Presidential Elections. New Year tore the shell off the city – off its routine, its asexuality and its covered skin – all the red green and white scars were revealed…

Welcome to Minsk. The sexiest city in the world!

Flowers from the President

…Fuck…

Flowers from the President of the Republic of Belarus

What the fuck are you looking at? What the fuck are you staring at? That’s a guy, standing behind me in the queue. He’s saying that. Looking me right in the eye. I don’t say anything. ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’

In Minsk, you can’t look people in the eye for more than three seconds. If you look at them for longer, it’s read as aggressive – that you’re asking for trouble. If you don’t look away, you could get insulted, punched in the face, even arrested.

‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ I look into his eyes. He stays silent now and stares back. We both stay silent and we just look at each other.

After 19th December 2010 the duration of a look in Minsk got shorter. Just a second can define you now – define you, or define a stranger for you.

‘Hey you. You are brave. Come on. Let’s go get drunk. You’ve got balls. We both have. Respect.’

In this city, that’s how respect gets earned.

Legs. Arms. Head. The whole body. Breathing. Everything floats in front of my eyes. There’s a high-pitched whine in my ears.

– Marina, what’s the matter?
– What?
– Marina. What’s going on?

– I’m… I’m a bit under the weather. That’s all.
– OK. Well I hope you feel better soon.

There were mass arrests – anyone who’d been in the square, and I was sure they were coming after me. It’d be my neighbour, I thought. He was a policeman. I’d known him all my life. He was hurrying to work, and as he walked past me, I slid down to sit on the steps. Even now in Minsk, the sight of a man in uniform, someone who should be protecting me, makes me feel in danger.

– So? And who are you? Well, sit down. Who are you?

– Igor Ivanov.

– Why are you here?

– I don’t know.

– You were pulled off the street, right?

– Yes.

– There was a march, yeah? What kind of march was it?

– Pride.

– Pride... What’s Pride?

– Do you think I should smash his fucking face in?

– What were you being proud of?

– We were celebrating LGBT pride and freedom.

– LGBT? What the fuck’s that?

– Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.

– So you’ve done that and you’re finished. Right?

– What’s finished?

– The thing. All that stuff, the march. It’s over?

– No, we’ve got big things planned.

– What?

– The major event’s actually tonight.

– Where?

– Club 6A.

– 6A. Where’s that?

– Partizan Avenue. Faggots gather there.

– So who looks after the club?

– There’s security. Two men.

– So, let’s say, if skinheads attack the club… How many of you are going to be there?

– It’s a club. About a hundred people, maybe?

– So who’ll be protecting you?

– The police.

– Oh. The police. Right… Who are you? What are you doing here?

– I live abroad.

– Do you work?

– No, I’m unemployed.

– Why did you come here?

– I’m a member of a Catholic group that’s engaged in pastoral work. Outreach, to other Catholics.

– And do you get paid for it?

– Of course not. They pay for my ticket here but not for anything else. I’m here to observe. Later I’ll go home and make a report.

– And what’s that over there?

– It’s one of our group’s T-shirts.

– I can see that. I mean what’s this, inside it?
– And that’s our flag...

– Show it to me.

– A flag? What kind of flag?

– It’s a rainbow. It’s our community’s flag.

– What does it mean?

– The different colours mean different things. One’s freedom, one’s brotherhood. Something about love... Look, why don’t you let us go? You’ve already kept us here for three hours.

– What? Let you go? Skinheads from all over the city are after you.

– Maybe we could take a taxi and get away, eh?

– Where did you say this club was?

– 6A. Partizan Avenue.

6A Partizan Avenue. In the daytime it’s a “workers’ canteen”. Number 32 the shop floor guys from the tractor factory eat lunch there, and at midnight it becomes an art club 6A.

‘Belch Place’, ‘Sick Towers’, ‘Snake’s Cave’, ‘The Shed’, ‘Narcissus’, ‘Cinderella’s Ball’... Or just ‘Buttercup’ – that’s what the regulars call that hole. Lovers of free fucking…

It’d be interesting to see what’d happen if the daytime clientele saw it at night…they wouldn’t believe who were drinking from their glasses…

1am. Taxi after taxi turns into a darkened street. A huge iron door. It opens if you’re lucky. It’s a semi-leg...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Trash Cuisine
• Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker