Tom Stoppard and Mikalai Khalezin: “Freedom, jeans, rock ‘n’ roll”

Famous British playwright Tom Stoppard and director of the Belarus Free Theatre Mikalai Khalezin issued their liberty-oriented plays under jeans cover.

The books consists of a play by Tom Stoppard Rock ‘n’ Roll (about the Prague Spring 1968), and works by Mikalai Khalezin Generation Jeans and Discover Love (in collaboration with Natallya Kalyada). All plays are focused on a theme of freedom, both inner and external, and an attempt of establishing human relations in the conditions of the totalitarian society, “Nasha Niva” newspaper writes.

The results of the authors’ attempt to reflect the fate of the whole generation is probably a confession of an individual.

The first night of Generation Jeans one-man show took place in the Free Theatre in 2006, the performance was highly estimated by The Guardian in its theatre review. The main character of Generation Jeans tells about half-illegal selling foreign vinyl records in Minsk in the 1980s, and then turns to telling about serving administrative arrests for participation in a political rally in the today’s Belarus.

Every play is published in three languages – Belarusian, English, and Russia – so one can choose any of them.

The foreword to the book is written by former Czech president Vaclav Havel.