The Human Rights Performative: The Belarus Free Theater on the Global Stage A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Margarita Kompelmakher IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Michal Kobialka – Co-Adviser Dr. Rachmi Diyah Larasati – Co-Adviser May 2017 © Margarita Kompelmakher 2017 Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to many people and organizations that helped make this dissertation a reality. My first debt of thanks is to the members of the Belarus Free Theater. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generosity extended to me by this theater collective. I would like to especially thank co-directors Nicolai Khalezin, Natalia Koliada and Vladimir Scherban for the many hours of vital interview time they granted me in the summer of 2013. Thank you to Yuri Kaliada, who made my early encounters with the company very warm. A big thanks to Svetlana (Sveta) Sugako, who graciously opened the doors to the company’s theater in Minsk and made it possible for me to watch rehearsals and attend workshops. Also a thank you to all the members of the BFT who shared their stories and hospitality, in particular Viktoriya Biran, Siarhei Kvachonak, Andrei Urazau and Kiril Kanstantsinau. I would also like to thank the organizations that supported this project financially. Particularly, Klaas Van der Sanden at the Institute for Global Studies (IGS) at the University of Minnesota. IGS awarded me a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship and made it possible for me to make my first research trip to Belarus in 2011. Thank you to other UMN organizations: The Center for German and European Studies, Global Strategy’s and Programs Center and The Graduate School. These organizations provided research funds and financial support for writing. Also, a special thanks to the UMN Writing Center and Katie Levin. I am grateful to have participated in the writing retreat they hosted in the summer of 2015. Last, but not least, I very much appreciate the support extended to me over the years in the Theater & Dance Department at UMN; i including the Charles Nolte Scholarship, the GRPP Fellowship, and additional conference and summer travel funding. This project was greatly aided by interdisciplinary scholarly discussions at UMN and at national conferences. For three years this project developed alongside a talented and engaged group of scholars associated with the IGS research cluster “Race, Caste and Indigeneity”. This group provided scholarly mentorship and interdisciplinary perspectives that greatly influenced this project and will hopefully continue to feed it for years to come. Thank you to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for welcoming me into their conversations in my final year of dissertation writing and keeping me grounded. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all those who participated in the East European Theater Working Group at the American Society for Theater Research from 2013-2016. Many portions of this dissertation were written and revised alongside this group of scholars. I am grateful to all the faculty in the Theater & Dance Department’s MA/PHD program: Cindy Garcia, Sonja Ashram Kuftinec, Sonali Pawha, and Lisa Channer. Also, a note of special thanks to Professor Donna Gabaccia, who generously served on my MA committee and gave me the best piece of research advice: listen to what the immigrants say. To my dissertation committee: a huge thank you for guiding me through this process. Thank you to Professor Yana Meerzon for serving as my secret ally and mentor outside the walls of the UMN campus. Professor Meerzon officially joined the project in its final year of development but worked with me surreptitiously for years prior. Professor Alice Lovejoy: thank you for graciously agreeing to a directed study with me in 2013. I have greatly benefited from your trust and the exceptional rigor and detail of your work. A ii warm thank you to Margaret Werry, who has been both my DGS and a committee member over the past four years. I cannot thank you enough for all the ways that you have stepped into other roles to support this project and me. A very special thanks goes to my two co-advisers, Michal Kobialka and Rachmi Diyah Larasati. This project was born and developed under the guidance of these two exceptional thinkers and teachers. Thank you for your unique perspectives, somehow familiar English(s), and strong political commitments. Most of all, thank you for all your time and dedication to my intellectual journey over the years. The material product of a dissertation does not always reflect all the forms of labor that went into its production. Ingrained in the fibers of this project is my cohort of fellow graduate students and colleagues. Thank you Bryan Schmidt, Jacob Rorem, and Misha Hadar for your proofing skills. Thank you Courtney Gildersleeve and Renee Esparza for our dear writing group in the summer 2015. Thank you Elliot Leffler, Carra Martinez, Kelly McKay, Kristen Stoeckeler and Michael Mellas for the many years of emotional support, camaraderie and excellent conversation. A heartfelt thank you to Virgil Slade for helping me build the foundation of this project and for seeing the construction through till the very end. To Anaïs Nony: thank you for shaping this project on every level, but most importantly, thank you for simply sitting next to me in the library all those months. To all others that I have not named here: know that you are in my thoughts. Lastly, I would like to write a final note of gratitude to the Kamenetsky and Zusin family in Minsk, Belarus who hosted me in their home (and at their “dacha”) while I iii conduced the majority of the research for this project. I am blessed to have gained from this experience a second family. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, who taught me the power of translation. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 Toward the Human Rights Performative: The Belarus Free Theater on the Global Stage CHAPTER ONE 37 Surviving History: Liberal Gestures of Anti-Aging at Staging A Revolution CHAPTER TWO 82 The Feminist Translator in the Era of Testimony: The Belarus Free Theater’s Repertoire in Minsk CHAPTER THREE 120 Executing the Crying Onion: The Dramaturgy of Sensation and the Problem of Universality in Trash Cuisine CONCLUSION 158 Decolonizing Human Rights Theater BIBLIOGRAPHY 178 vi INTRODUCTION Toward the Human Rights Performative: The Belarus Free Theater on the Global Stage To say that humanity is a product-effect does not mean that humanity is a myth or a mere ideological abstraction. […] humanity-effects are real and efficacious, and can be progressive and enabling. It is therefore a matter of situating such humanity-effects in terms of their conditions of possibility and actuality, and also their limits. How do these effects constrain lives? […] This should be the task of the humanities, whose contribution to the study of globalization would be the articulation of a framework that renders intelligible the inhuman ways of achieving humanity in the contemporary world. – Pheng Cheah, Inhuman Conditions, 10 Background In early 2011, the Belarus Free Theater (BFT) was catapulted to fame on the arts and culture pages of the New York Times. The premiere liberal newspaper in the United States profiled the BFT in the aftermath of the Belarusian political elections on December 19th 2010, when members of the company, along with other political activists, were arrested in the city center of Minsk for participating in a mass protest against the allegedly rigged re-election of the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. At the time of the 2010 election, the BFT was a theater company based in Minsk that had already gained an international reputation in the UK as a human rights theater collective that worked outside the system of heavily state-sponsored theater production in Belarus. The company created theater projects that addressed social issues regarded as taboo in Belarus, such as mental health and minority rights of women and the LGTBQ community, as well as 1 dissenting political voices.1 Through the seven articles that appeared in the New York Times over a five-month period between January-May 2011, US audiences were brought into the fold of a story of the BFT’s survival after the crackdown following the Belarusian elections. The focal points of this narrative were the chance release from jail of a company member, the company’s clandestine journey from Belarus to the US to perform at the Under the Radar Festival, and the “extraordinary” performance of their play Being Harold Pinter at the festival (Brantley, “Political Theater”). In conjunction with the BFT’s performance of Being Harold Pinter, a solidarity event of multiple staged readings of the same play were organized by over a half-dozen theatres in the US. These companies joined the BFT to raise awareness about the imprisonment of the political opposition in Belarus and helped to secure material resources for the company’s extended stay in the US. The basic assumption that underpinned the solidarity event was that theatre makers across national divides could rally together under a slogan of “Artistic Freedom”. In a press release for the most high profile of these events at The Public Theater in NYC, Artistic Director Oskar Eustis categorized the BFT as follows: Artistic freedom has a new and powerful symbol: the Belarus Free Theater. Their work is passionate, brilliant and immediate; their lives are outspoken and courageous: their theater is fighting for their country, and for all of us. They deserve our unstinting support and solidarity. (“Being Harold Pinter Adds Encore Benefit Performance…”) 1 The company uses the qualification of taboo in addressing their own work on Belarusian social issues.