Commissioned by the academic journal Cultural Geographies in Practice, Sputnik’s artistic director wrote a performance review about Belarus Free Theatre’s Dogs of Europe (2022) at the Barbican.
‘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).’
Photo by Linda Nylind. Pictured – Valery Mazynsky as Old Lampe.
