Directors: Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin
Original Play: Nicolai Khalezin
Katsiaryna Snytsina, former Belarusian basketball player, never imagined that she’d become an activist calling for the end of Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship in her home country, But one day playing basketball just didn’t seem enough when there was blood on the streets of Minsk. She posted a message on Instagram, and so dangerous is she now perceived that it’s illegal to follow her social media in Belarus.
Snytsina plays herself in this 90-minute show created by the exiled company Belarus Free Theatre, who in recent days have been labelled “extremist” by the Belarusian government. Fittingly, KS6: Small Forward is played almost like a basketball match with timeouts and half-time entertainments. There’s no denying the energy of the five-strong cast, which includes a cameraman and DJ, but more details about the political situation in the former Soviet state wouldn’t go amiss.
The brief history of the sport and the motivational chants are pleasingly presented; however, these sections often feel like filler to what is, otherwise, a much shorter story about the political late-bloomer. Better are the scenes which portray the brutality of Lukashenko’s regime. Snytsina stands in a glass coffin-shaped box filled with basketballs to represent the conditions of the prison cells that some women prisoners face for speaking up against the regime.
On screens at the back of the stage, we see ordinary citizens stand up to soldiers in balaclavas or people beaten as they are thrown into the back of vans. These are sobering images and remind the audience that this kind of state-sponsored violence does, indeed, take place in Europe.
The rest of the projections show Snytsina playing her final match for the London Lions at the EuroCup in April last year. The outcome of this match forms the other narrative of the play, with the whole 90 minutes being played on a stage that resembles one end of a basketball court. Never has the floor of the Barbican’s Pit been so shiny.
Always inventive, as we have come to expect from Belarus Free Theatre, KS6: Small Forward is proof that athletes can have political views, but it also shows the consequences that follow once they question authority. And Snytsina is as good an actor as she is a basketball player. It’s a courageous story, but the politics are too often pushed to the sidelines.
Runs until 8 February 2025
The Reviews Hub Score
"extremist"
