Closed rooms
About possibilities of independent theater/independent art in Belarus
In order to understand what is being destroyed by the purges of the Lukashenko regime at the moment, it is perhaps necessary to first name what has been built up over the last ten/fifteen years by courageous and very resourceful people. The entire independent cultural life is at stake at the moment. How can we continue to work in spite of this? Are there still niches? Where are moments of solidarity taking place right now? Only recently, an independent association of Belarusian theater professionals was founded. What is happening in exile?
With: Angelika Krashevskaya (Art Corporation Minsk); Alexandr Marchenko (TOK Theatre); Valentina Moroz (Social Theatre Lab); Aksana Haiko (KX Brest)
Moderation: Tania Arcimovich (editor of the independent art magazine pARTisanka)
Conversation: Russian with simultaneous German translation
Duration: 1hr. 30min.
Tania Arcimovich
Tania Arcimovich is a scholar and curator from Minsk, Belarus. She graduated from the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk and received a Master in Sociology from the European Humanities University in Vilnius. In 2014–2015, she was awarded a fellowship from the AIR program, CCA Ujazdowski Castle and Akademie Solitude. Since 2014, she has been curating and managing artistic and theatre projects in collaboration with different cultural institutions in Belarus, Poland, Germany, and Sweden. Currently, she is doing her PhD at the International Graduated Centre for the Study of Culture in Gießen.
Alexander Marchenko
Director, actor. Graduated from the Belarusian State University of Culture majoring in directing and teaching special theatre disciplines. From 2001 he was an actor of the Republican Theatre of Belarusian Drama. From 2009 he headed the Centre of Belarusian Drama. Since 2018 till 2021 he had been working at the Visual and Performing Arts Centre “ART Corporation” as the curator of the TOKtheatre project. Together with the Visual and Performing Arts Centre “ART Corporation” he staged the performances Opium, Antigone, Suchilischa, Prymityvy, Sources of Light, 13 first basketball rules formulated by James Naismith. At the present moment the associate professor of European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania).
Aksana Haiko
Aksana Haiko is a director, actress, arts manager, playwright, theater educator. She is the founder of the Kryly Khalopa Theater in Brest and the KX Space cultural center. Theater Kryly Khalopa was closed by the authorities in 2021, but the actors continue to work, some of them in exile. The play “Woman with Automat” was developed in theater residencies in Prague and HELLERAU, among others.