Сцэна са спектакля "Хутар". Фота: сацсеткі Беларускага дзяржаўнага тэатра лялек.
This year, International Theatre Day coincided with the finale of the 19th youth forum “M.@rt.kantakt,” which for a week turned Mahilyow into a center of theatrical life. However, the festive atmosphere could not conceal evident shifts in the country’s cultural space: the forum, once known for its diversity and search for new forms, has this year definitively acquired a Russian accent.
Out of seventeen productions in the program, ten came from Russia, leaving Belarusian groups in the role of hosts who are increasingly in the minority on their own stage.
This numerical dominance was also reflected in the jury’s decisions: the main experts’ prize goes to Saint Petersburg with the production “Lada or Joy” by the Small Drama Theatre. Audience sympathies went to “The Lady with the Dog” by the Moscow Gubernsky Theatre. Even the closing of the forum took place under the banner of the Smolensk Chamber Theatre, which presented “The Queen of Spades” in a vivid, professional, but classically Russian interpretation.
However, an important development of the festival was the decision of the youth jury. Their award went to the production “Khutar” by the Belarusian State Puppet Theatre. This staging, based on the novella Vasil Bykaŭ “The Sign of Misfortune,” was brought to the stage by one of the most prominent Belarusian directors Yauhen Karniah.
At the center of the plot of “Khutar,” which the press has described, among other things, as a “psychological thriller,” is “the story of ordinary people struggling to survive and making a difficult moral choice on the edge of life and death. In this choice, all shades of the human soul are revealed, and scenes from the past emerge, when the characters also had to make decisions under difficult circumstances… And the farmstead [of Stsiapanida and Piatrak] becomes the only silent witness to unbearable trials and a symbol of the resilience of the human spirit.”
Nearly the entire troupe of the theatre is involved in the production.
The 19th youth forum “M.@rt.kantakt” took place from March 20 to 27. Its program was dominated by productions based on Russian classics: Aleksandr Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol.
It should be recalled that “M.@rt.kantakt” has been held since 2006. Until 2020, it was led by theatre director Andrei Novikau and was genuinely international. For comparison, in 2019, the forum hosted 23 theatres and independent theatre groups from ten countries.
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