Metta likes...Belarus Free Theatre

Through our dear friend, and patron of Metta, Laura Wade we've recently been introduced to the Belarus Free Theatre, or BFT. Having been on some of their marches/protests it was really lovely to put names to faces. And having now got to know them quite well it's lovely to put personalities to the names. The work that the BFT does is astonishing on so many levels - the art they make is beautiful and powerful, the workshops they lead inspiring and totally transformative for the participants, and everything they do is some form of protest against Lukashenko's regime - the last dictatorship in Europe. On top of this they are forced - as a theatre company in exile from their own country - to work from Britain on the tiniest of shoe-string budgets. Last year they had a smash hit in Edinburgh with their Fringe First award-winning show A Reply to Kathy Acker which will run at the Young Vic for a month in June next year, and before that they're doing an adaptation in Belorussian of King Lear at the Globe for their Globe to Globe Festival.

The Essentials

Will and I have just got back from watching Aftermath in the Old Vic Tunnels - a verbatim piece about civilian fallout from the Iraq invasions. So apart from prompting immediate comparisons with Waiting - our verbatim piece about the civilian fallout from the war on terror in this country - and the comparisons are striking, it prompted a very heated discussion on the tube about the essentialness of art.