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You might think that, if you lived under a dictatorship, you would have more pressing things to worry about than sex. But our sexual identities are part of our social and political ones – part of the way we project ourselves, the way we look at others and the way we receive their gaze. In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, which is Europe's last dictatorship, you cannot look at somebody for more than a few seconds without inviting a beating or arrest.
The people of Belarus carry the scars delivered by life and by the secret police all over their bodies. Scars can, of course, be sexy. "In this regard," says one of the performers in this world premiere from Belarus Free Theatre, a company banned in its home country, "Minsk is a beautiful and very sexy city. Welcome to the sexiest city in the world." This is a city where all the gay clubs have been closed, where sexual exploitation and threats go hand in hand, where skinheads and police work in tandem to break up a gay-pride march.
A response to a text by the late Kathy Acker that explores society through the prism of its sexuality, Minsk 2011 has been created in just over three weeks, and is raw, angry and urgent. Its energetic messiness is part of its power: these people have something to say, and are saying it loudly and bluntly. Those who step towards the microphone are hurried away by thugs before they even do anything. Mere existence can be a crime in Minsk. Women with brooms constantly sweep the stage, disposing of evidence; knowing who you are is hard in a world where even ambulances are sometimes police paddy wagons in disguise.
In several wild scenes, the performers depict the sexual confusion of life in Belarus. In the final sequence, they sit quietly as if dipping their feet in the River Nemiga (itself a suppressed river forced into pipes underneath the city) and talk simply and directly of their futures. At the end, we applaud. In Minsk, that would be enough to get us all arrested. Since people started finding creative ways to protest against the regime, clapping has been banned. But we still can, and this show demands that we do.
Lyn Gardner
