Readings

Insulted. Belarus was written at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when the vast majority of theaters around the world were closed. As such, directors and actors who had grown accustomed to meeting, rehearsing and even performing on the Zoom video communication app were ready and able quickly to mount readings online. Zoom was the most popular medium for making readings available, but some groups also posted their work on Facebook Live, YouTube, or on their own organizational websites. The various technologies and social media employed by theaters and groups of actors allowed creative teams properly to observe social distancing, for in most cases, the actors and directors worked from home before their computer monitors. Furthermore, “The reality of COVID-19 combined with the possibilities of the available technologies not only encouraged artists to work, they began to influence the work itself, the way it was made, and the form it assumed in the end.” In time, the readings became increasingly cinematic, beginning with the award-winning Russian film by Oksana Mysina, later including complex and stylized staged readings by Gabrielle Tuminaite at the Vilnius State Small Theatre of Lithuania; Javor Gardev at the Ivan Radoev Drama and Puppet Theater, Pleven, Bulgaria; and Jerzy Jan Połoński at Teatr Miejski in Gliwice, Poland.

The first reading 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 Sergei Pavlyuk. 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.”

The project increasingly attracted scholarly, journalistic and historical interest as time went on. Conferences, seminars, webinars, in-class teaching, and public discussions were hosted or conducted by HowlRound.com; multiple public, professional discussions hosted by the Bratislava Theater Institute in Slovakia; an online debate and discussion titled Art as Political Gesture: a Czech and Slovak contribution to the Day of Solidarity with Belarus in the Czech Republic; the Shakespeare Frankfurt Webinar for the First Annual World Theatre Day Symposium (one of four segments was devoted to the Worldwide Readings Project); an Arts and Culture Policy class at UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy; a Roundtable discussion with the participation of Kureichik and Giulia Dossi, Italian translator of Insulted. Belarus, at a PhD Conference at Universita di Verona.[23] An Italian-language film, Insultati. Bielorussia, directed by Caterina Shulha, premiered at the Trieste Film Festival on January 25, 2022.

As of calculations done in April 2021, the readings had been performed by over 800 actors, and had reached over half a million spectators