The New York Times: “Generation Jeans,” performance about Belarus stand-up routine

The US tour of the Belarusian Free Theatre has great success. Mikalai Khalezin’s performance “Generation Jeans” presented as part of the Under the Radar festival in New York. Belarusians are to take part in the theatre workshop in the California Art School. Leading US newspapers published review to the performances of the Free Theatre. “It is a sort of Belarus stand-up routine, what follows is basically a one-man human-rights rally,” the influential New York Times running.

The article “Generation Jeans” in the New York Times reads:

“It would be nice to think that freedom of speech and democracy suddenly burst into full flower the morning after the cold war ended. But it didn’t turn out quite so happily in some of the former Soviet republics as it did in satellite countries like Czechoslovakia, where the Rolling Stones played a live concert and were greeted by the new president.

In Belarus, as Mikalai Khalezin reminds us in “Generation Jeans,” an engrossing show by Belarus Free Theatre, just owning a copy of such decadent music could still land you in prison.

Starting with his high school experiences as a trafficker in blue jeans and vinyl rock albums, Mr. Khalezin takes his audience on a political and cultural tour of Belarus under two dictatorships: the one of the proletariat under the Soviets and the one under Alyaksandr. Lukashenka that followed.

Speaking in Belarusian with an English translation on a screen above the stage and a D.J. providing background music, Mr. Khalezin tells how jeans became the flag of a generation of freedom fighters in the Soviet bloc. Along the way he offers humorous insights into the dark world of black marketeering of jeans and rock under the Communists.

If the first half-hour is a sort of Belarus stand-up routine, what follows is basically a one-man human-rights rally. After a bust for illegal possession of jeans, Mr. Khalezin was arrested, beaten and held in claustrophobic conditions for attending an antigovernment demonstration. At one point Mr. Khalezin induces the audience to join him in shouting, “I am free,” an exercise few have probably indulged in lately, but a healthy one for anyone inclined to take it for granted.”

An interview with Mikalai Khalezin, the theatre’s producer is soon to appear on our site. He will tell about the US tour in details.