Living in the skin of dictatorship: an encounter with the Belarus Free Theatre

On 12 March 2022, I attended Dogs of Europe, a performance by Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) at London’s Barbican Theatre. Adapted from the novel by Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič, the play imagines a dystopian future in which Russia’s imperial expansion swallows up swathes of eastern Europe to create a ‘Russian Reich’. The timing of the work is uncanny and unsettling – it unintentionally (but astutely) coincided with the horrifying Russian invasion of Ukraine. The novel and stage adaptation depict a Europe that has become a fragmented European League of States with little unifying purpose or moral compass (‘people in Europe no longer read’, as one character announces). My encounter with Dogs of Europe considers how the BFT uses performance techniques to offer an affecting and intimate geopolitics, with the aspiration of motivating audiences towards an activist stance.