3 - Performing Resistance Virtually: The Digital Home of the Free Kupalautsy

Summary

We, the actors of the Yanka Kupala Theatre, watch with pain and horror, what is happening in our country. We respect the law and human rights, but every night we live as if we are on the front lines.[…] We are against the terror and violence. We are against the bloodshed in our country.

Actors of the Yanka Kupala Theatre, August 12, 2020

We do not have the opportunity to meet you today in our house, on our stage to fully celebrate this historic day. So fate determined. This is our way. The way of truth. The way of Belarus.

The Free Kupalautsy, September 14, 2020

When the massive protests erupted in Belarus in August 2020, as we have seen, many cultural figures and theatre workers joined their fellow protestors— demanding change: fair elections, the release of political prisoners, and an end to the violent, oppressive rule of the regime. Kureichik, members of the Belarus Free Theatre, the Contemporary Art Theatre, the Belarusian Army Drama Theatre, and many others across Belarus looked for various ways to express their opposition.3 Members of the elite, state-funded Yanka Kupala National Academic Theatre in Minsk also showed solidarity with the protesters, in spite of strict policies against political activity in their employment contracts and a decades-long culture of self-censorship.4 Like so many of their counterparts, most of the company members who stood up against the regime ended up in exile. Their stature could not shield them from the regime's reckless reaction to the growing opposition and near-total shutdown of civil society, independent media, and the arts. In spite of the loss of their jobs, their stage, and eventually their homes, members of the Kupala reformed as the “Free Kupalautsy,” using the digital space as their new creative home. Over the next few years, the company members who left the theatre regrouped, reclaiming their identity as “the national theatre” and found new ways to form a community, promote Belarusian culture and language, agitate for political prisoners, remember, and mourn. Although most of their productions have been adaptations rather than documentary or verbatim plays, by depicting the act of filming, the use of parallel texts and everyday actions like letter writing, and the use of costumes and props to signal the representation of contemporary events in Belarus acted in a similar manner.