Burning Doors @ Contact, Manchester

Life-changing is a word used too often...

But here it is accurate.

“Burning Doors” is performance art that explores, recreates, and brutally displays the hideous cruelty being unjustly dealt out to Russian and Ukrainian artists who are declared enemies of the state.

Maria Alyokhina, Maryia Sazonava and Maryna Yurevich. 

Photo by Alex Brenner.

Belarus Free Theatre is an independent theatre company that describes itself as an “executive arm” the “Ministry of Counterculture”, and for eleven years have been produced challenging theatre, both physically and culturally. This piece tells the stories of three persecuted artists; “artsivist”of Petr Pavlensky, Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina and Ukrainian born Crimean filmmaker Oleg Sentsov. Even without a well-presented set, lighting, excellent choreography and well-interspersed literature from Russian greats, this story would be powerful. But the cast do not rely on the shock of the crimes committed against the artists to draw the audience in. The company moves as one, breathes as one and are so clearly devoted to conveying this story. This is without doubt largely down to the passion shown by co-choreographic director and ensemble member Maryia Sazonava in the choreography and physical side of the performance.

Burning Doors does not shy away from showing the audience everything about suffering. The audience is dragged down into the Russian detention system with the company, many of whom have suffered these tortures first-hand and are willingly reliving them night after night in order to prevent the same happening to other artists.

Of course, the show is well put together, and impressive in terms of its physical feats of wonder, but the truly humbling part is the question and answer portion with Maria Alyokhina.

Before the audience sits a woman whose story is appalling, and whose imprisonment has just been relived before her eyes. When asked what the greatest threat to Russian freedom of speech was, she replied “self-censorship”. When complemented on her strength of conviction and spirit, she replied that other women suffer worse and that she was “nothing special”. For a woman who suffered so much to be so humble was the most moving and memorable moment of the whole performance.

Pavel Haradnitski and Andrei Urazau.
Photo by Nicolai Khalezin.

The piece was of course biographical, but also incorporated fiction in the form of excerpts from Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov. This seemed to extend the work further into the past, lending weight to the historical mayhem which the company portrayed. Despite how oppressive the subject material should have been, the cast, by some miracle, managed to integrate flashes of lightness and wit, with two ridiculously mindless government officials. Chips were made in the fourth wall, with reference to the audience keeping up with subtitles and a long look at the front row, which produced a genuine laugh from the stalls whilst witnessing an interrogation. It is uncomfortable, enlightening and yet still entertaining, which is entirely unexpected.

At the end of the show, the audience are asked to send postcards to those prisoners still being held illegally in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea, which I urge you all to do to too.

I can't write Russian, but I damn well tried.

I've chosen to send my postcard to Stanislav Klykh, a journalist from Kiev, who has been sentenced to 22 years in prison on false charges of murder, after he shared pictures of Euromaidan on social media platforms. Please visit http://www.belarusfreetheatre.com/en/bft/imwiththebanned/ for all info.

These people have been told they have no hope. Let us all give them some.