Play "Chernobyl". Photo courtesy of the theatre "Kryly Khalopa".Before World War Two, nearly half the population of Brest in north-western Belarus was Jewish. Today, Brest’s pre-war past is almost forgotten, and the heroism of the defenders of the Brest Fortress often pushes out other stories. But the independent Kryly Khalopa theatre is trying to resurrect Brest’s Jewish history — and make a space for public conversation. The theatre, which was set up in 2001 and has become a focus for art and activism in Brest, recently released “Brest Stories Guide”, an audioplay dedicated to the Jewish history of Brest. The play, created in the form of an Android application (currently available only in Russian), offers a guided tour of Jewish Brest starting from 1937.
For oDR’s series on memory activism in the post-Soviet space, I spoke to the theatre’s manager, director and actress Oksana Haiko about the play, Belarusian anti-semitism and Brest’s heroic memory.
From the start, Kryly Khalopa stated its mission was to “present critical perspectives on the social and political situation in Belarus through performative practices”. Then, in 2013, you launched a series of documentary plays called “Histories of Belarus”. Why did you decide to engage in the past? And why do you focus on histories in the plural?
