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Insulted. Belarus. Worldwide Reading Project

The Insulted. Belarus Worldwide Readings Project, founded by John Freedman and Andrei Kureichik, is a program of dramatic readings that expresses international solidarity with the people of Belarus. Insulted. Belarus is a play by Andrei Kureichik that highlights corruption and cruelty during the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, specifically in the early days of the 2020-2021 Belarusian protests, and depicts the Belarusian people as courageous and peaceful in desperate times.

Kureichik, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker wrote Insulted. Belarus (RussianОбиженные. Беларусь(сия)) in August and September 2020 at the height of the protests. By the first week in November 2020, Insulted. Belarus had been translated into 18 languages and had been given 77 readings of various kinds in 22 countries. In 2021 Kureichik wrote a second play, Voices of the New Belarus, focusing on the often cruel and unusual punishments suffered by protesters at the hands of the Belarusian authorities. As of April 2023, the two plays had received more than 250 readings in 130 venues in 30 countries, had been translated 24 times into 21 languages, and published in nine languages.
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dapted and expanded from Wikipedia

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Our Story

The first reading of Insulted. Belarus in any language took place on 12 September 2020, in the original Russian, at the Kulish Academic Musical and Drama Theater in Kherson, Ukraine. It was directed by Serhiy Pavliuk. The same company mounted the world premiere of a full production onstage before a live audience on 1 October 2020. The first reading in the United States, directed by Igor Golyak in Russian, was mounted by Arlekin Players in Boston. The world premiere of the English text was performed in a Zoom reading by Rogue Machine Theater in Los Angeles on 18 September under the direction of Guillermo Cienfuegos. The premiere in the United Kingdom took place on 19 September, a reading directed by Bryan Brown for ARTEL and Maketank, in Exeter, England.

European theaters began joining the project in large numbers approximately one month after the play first appeared. Venues in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Sweden mounted numerous readings in October, while in November the play was picked up by theater groups in Scotland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong (in English, Cantonese and Mandarin), Nigeria, Moldova, Romania, Holland, Belgium and other locations. The most massive single project within the project was organized by Raluca Rădulescu, a Romanian radio personality and translator, who organized 16 readings in 16 days at 16 venues in Romania and Moldova in February 2021.

Readings covered a vast range in terms of size and impact. There were small events at schools or colleges such as the readings at Strange Town Theatre Company in Edinburgh, Scotland, and St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. The reading at the Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre in London, England, was essentially a private gathering organized by a group of politically active scholars and performers. However, established local or large national venues around the world made up the greater part of the project’s participants. The Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw was one of the first groups in Poland to mount a reading. Rogue Machine Theater in Los Angeles cast the Hollywood actor Joe Spano in the role of Oldster. The National Theater in The Hague and virtually every major theater in Romania produced work.

A reading at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Sweden prompted Kureichik to say, “It’s an incredible feeling when you listen to your play performed in Swedish by actors you remember from Ingmar Bergman’s films. The fact that they came together to present a drama about our situation [in Belarus] and delivered an incredibly strong, emotional, artistic, and stylish reading – practically a performance – on the stage of one of the most respected theatres in the world, the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm, was very inspiring. Yesterday was one of the main milestones of the Insulted. Belarus project.” Writing for Swedish PEN, writer and director Jacob Hirdwall described the evening as follows: “The reading of Andrey Kureychik's play Insulted. Belarus(sia) took place at Elverket on October 27 in the presence of, among others, Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde. A personal video greeting from [Belarusian opposition leader] Pavel Latushka also reached Dramaten's theater director Mattias Andersson and the foreign minister the same evening.” - excerpted from Wikipedia.

Some Important People for Insulted. Belarus

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