LONDON — After 16 years of defying the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, while becoming the world’s most prominent underground theater troupe, the Belarus Free Theater announced Monday that its 16-person ensemble would be going into exile in Poland later this month.
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The troupe says its departure reflects how difficult the environment has become inside the country for the artists, writers, athletes and others who oppose Lukashenko, dubbed Europe’s last dictator, and the dubious elections that have kept him in power.
Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya defected from Belarus during the Tokyo Games in August, relocating to Poland. The theater group also hopes to base themselves in Poland and have applied for humanitarian visas.
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The Belarus Free Theater had carried on despite being banned for years in its home country. The company contacted audiences through the Telegram messaging service and staged productions at secret locations — in homes, garages, courtyards, forests — often with a minivan waiting nearby to whisk the actors away if needed.
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The Belarusian KGB stormed its shows, arresting both performers and people in the audience. Company members were arrested, too, for participating in anti-Lukashenko protests. It was after one such round of arrests that the husband-and-wife artistic directors claimed asylum in London in 2011. And still the company kept going, working with the exiled directors by Skype.
But the directors said Monday that things had become too dangerous for the performers to stay in Belarus.
“We had to do an emergency exit,” said Natalia Kaliada, 47, who founded the troupe with her husband, Nikolai Khalezin, 57.
The performers are currently in London, rehearsing for a production that was postponed by the pandemic and is now scheduled to be staged at the Barbican theater in March.
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The play is called “Dogs of Europe” and is based on a novel by Alhierd Bacharevic about an authoritarian regime. The book is banned in Belarus. The play will be live-streamed, and, the theater company hopes, watched by the resistance back home.
The troupe also has a large international following. It has performed in more than 40 countries, having toured in both Europe and the United States.
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The directors befriended Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard, who offered an introduction to Nobel-winner Harold Pinter, who agreed they could incorporate his work into one of their early productions. That play, Stoppard told the Guardian, “knocked me out.”
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The company has also found champions in the likes of Jude Law, Hugh Grant and Mick Jagger, as well as financial support from individual donors and foundation grants.
When the ensemble performs abroad, it is not banned from charging admission, as it is in Belarus.
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Looking on during a rehearsal in London, Kaliada detailed each actor’s past run-ins with state security services.
“He was beaten up by riot police. She had a criminal case opened against her yesterday. He was arrested for wearing white and red socks,” she said, nodding in the direction of various cast members.
The colors red and white have become a symbol of the protest movement. In the rehearsal space in London, a red and white flag hangs in the window.
The Belarusian opposition has been thriving in exile. Along with Poland, major hubs include Ukraine and Lithuania, which is providing refuge to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the president’s main rival, who maintains she won the last election, in 2020.
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Tikhanovskaya has met with diaspora and world leaders, including President Biden in Washington. When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed her to Downing Street, he told her, “We are with you.” She was greeted with a standing ovation in the European Parliament.
But the numbers of opponents leaving the country are a sign of the problems inside it.
“They are eviscerating civil society,” said Tanya Lokshina, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. She said that since the contested election and the protests that followed it, the government had closed more than 300 NGOs and shuttered dozens of media groups. About 150,000 Belarusians have fled to Poland and tens of thousands are in Lithuania, she said, adding, “the numbers are staggering for a small country like Belarus.”
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Viasna, a human rights group in Belarus, says there are almost 900 political prisoners in the country, including many of their own activists.
Dasha Andreyanova, 29, a singer, actress and filmmaker with Belarus Free Theater, said the first time she was arrested after the 2020 election, she was initially made to strip down and then put in a jail cell for five days with 35 others — three of those days without food and water. She said she was released after she signed a document saying that if arrested again she could face five years in prison. “It was not human,” she said of the conditions, speaking through a translator.
Svetlana Sugako, 36, the Belarus Free Theater’s managing director, was also arrested after last year’s election. When she refused to sign a similar document about jail time if arrested again, she said a police officer wrapped her arm around her neck until she could not breathe.
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The company continued to perform inside Belarus until a few months ago. But when Sugako’s apartment was raided in August, the co-founders in London decided they needed to get everyone out of the country for fear of even harsher measures.
They left the Belarusian capital Minsk via routes they did not want to discuss publicly, because they are still being used by others trying to leave. Some of the actors made their way through four different countries.
Even before this final relocation, the group was careful whenever it left Minsk to perform abroad out of fear of being arrested or blocked at the airport. They often used ground transportation to reach neighboring countries and flew out from there.
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Asked if their departure meant that Lukashenko had won, Kaliada said, “No, no, no.”
“The whole company could stay inside Belarus and be in jail and there would be nothing for our audience,” said Kaliada. “Or, we could be outside Belarus, create online content and inspire our audience. Our job is to continue.”
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