Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Belarus Free Theatre’s guttural BURNING DOORS is political activism via savvy theater-making

• By drediman
• October 23, 2017
• No Comments

Belarus Free Theatre’s “Burning Doors” at La Mama.

In our desensitized post-everything world, the ability to experience theater, or art in general, on a truly visceral level is a rare occurrence. It’s therefore quite a surprise when something slaps you on the face with as much guttural force as Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors, which just concluded its run at La Mama. Constructed as a series of vignettes depicting brutal accounts of oppression, incarceration, and government-sanctioned violence (a few taken straight from works of literature and philosophy), particularly against eastern European artists, Burning Doors is unflinchingly aggressive theater as political activism.

Belarus Free Theatre’s devised work is an uncomfortable sit – it’s brimming with rage, pushing the very bodies of its actors, who are political refugees themselves, to the very brink of exhaustion and trauma. The piece, directed by Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada (and featuring Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina), avoids the overly-eager, somewhat cloying nature of many theatrical works with a heavily political agenda through its fearless, daredevil sensibility, as well as stylish, sophisticated theater-making. Burning Doors is a self-consciously contradictory experience – it sexualizes these artists’ struggles, with a smirk, even as it depicts their impotence. In turns grotesque and gorgeously realized, this is complex, intelligent theater that engages the mind while operating as a savage spectacle.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

BURNING DOORS
Off-Broadway, Play
Belarus Free Theatre at La Mama
1 hour, 45 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed