Australian chronicles of Mikalai Khalezin (Photo)

Free Theatre’s successful tour on Australian continent is a unique event in the history of Belarusian art.

Mikalai Khalezin, famous Belarusian playwright and head of the Free Theatre, chronicles the Australian tour in his blog. He writes about meetings with the Belarusian diaspora and world’s stars, life of Aboriginal Australians, attacks of sharks and blue jellyfish.

Australian theatre system, Mikalai Khalezin writes, unites the best experiences of different countries, but having British theatre as its base that brings Australia out of the line of theatrical outsiders. In Australia, as in no other country, movie megastars are closely related with theatre. In means, if you have a competitive project, you can offer a star actor, you will get an audience far easier than in the United States and Great Britain. A huge number of such stars, as, for example, Steve Martin, worked for Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney.

Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush is a member of the theatre board. In the lobby, he looks at visitors from a Diary of a Madman bill, he played some years ago in Moscow Theatre on Taganka.

Sydney Festival, where the Belarus Free Theatre was invited, is one of the world’s leading cultural events, superior to any European festival in the number of stars and heating the imagination size of financing.

Stars at the festival deserve a separate topic. There’re plenty of them, they are really close to the audience, one can literally touch them. It is curious, star headliners are divided into two classes here – “world’s stars” and “sphere stars”. World’s stars are Robert Lepage, Canadian genius director with his play Lipsynch; Morphoses ballet company of Christopher Wheeldon, world’s favourite of modern dance; Sydney Theatre Company with play The War of the Roses based upon Shakespeare’s works with beautiful Cate Blanchett; Grace Jones and The Hurricane Tour, returned this unique singer to listeners.

Nick Cave deserves a separate mentioning. He’s got an isle, where concerts are held according to his on program. Cave introduces young musicians playing in different styles, however, in his promoting activity he doesn’t forget about his solo gigs.

Class of “stars of spheres” consists of creative teams popular in some circles. These are Hungarian Katona Jozsef Theatre, with its new Ivanov; Nature Theater of Oklahoma (New York), we have met on different continents for the fifth time; Moscow Art Trio of Alperin, Shilkopior, and Starostin, playing jazz; Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, stars of music-infused Irish film Once, who also play successful concerts; the Belarus Free Theatre, presenting its performance Being Harold Pinter in Sydney.

Read more details about Australian tour of the Free Theatre in Mikalai Khalezin’s blog.