Review: Trustees (Belarus Free Theatre, MIAF)

Trustees opens with five people in work-place-appropriate suits and a TV debate about whether arts funding does more harm than good. Even if some of the arguments aren’t obvious, it feels undergraduate-naff as the audience sit around all sides of the room looking at each other. But this is theatre made by the directors of Belarus Free Theatre, so there’s no way it’s going to be a soft debate about the value of art. And the co-writer is Melbourne indie provocateur Daniel Schlusser, so there’s no way it’s really about middle-class people in suits.

Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin co-founded Belarus Free Theatre, with Vladimir Shcherban, in 2005. They made independent theatre that was subversive on a scale that's almost impossible to fathom for those of us living under the protection of democracy. As creators, they didn’t merely face the threat of having funding cut (there was never any funding to begin with) but the threat of being arrested. Khalezin had already been arrested four times for resistance to the country's dictatorship ­– Alexander Lukashenko has been President of Belarus since 1994 – and had been designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 2002. By 2011, all three had been exiled and now live in the UK as political refugees. None of which has stopped them making theatre; they still risk poking the beast in Belarus but they have become very popular at the big-A arts festivals.

The company has performed original work in Melbourne before, but Trustees was developed with Melbourne artists for Malthouse Theatre. It’s our story and our beasts, homegrown. 

But what does this really mean? For all our current political despairs and atrocities, artists and audiences in Australia don’t risk their freedom when they criticise our society. Theatre makers risk relative poverty, the ego-punch of a bad review or some snarky Facebook comments. Audiences risk an hour or so of boredom, having to buy bad wine and the embarrassment of audience participation.

As the early audience participation is using a smartphone, everyone joins in. Then the stage debate dives deeper into the meta as the government has stopped all arts funding and the debaters are all trustees for the Lone Pine Theatre Company. They could close the company and save money or embrace neoliberalism by proposing an underground – as in dig into the ground – immersive 24-hour theme-park of a show with every “underground” small-l liberal cliché about art. Yeah, I’d be at the opening night of this Dreamtime experience.

But there’s still little risk. This is the kind of discussion we have as we argue if our locally-made beers taste like a frolic in a spring meadow or a spring-rain dance in a citrus grove. 

So, it’s time to frack deep into the darkness that keeps us from talking about the secrets and shame of our free and happy community. It’s time to get personal. Each performer strips away as much of the socially-appropriate suit that they can – literally and figuratively. A naked middle-aged white man (Schlusser) begs to be colonised, a 50-year-old woman (Tammy Anderson) confronts the audience with everything that’s expected of Indigenous women on our stages. A post-menopausal woman (Natasha Herbert) admits that she doesn’t care as much as she thinks she should. A man (Hazem Shammas) screams that he can’t say the name of the country he was born in because the donors might get upset; he was born in Palestine. A young woman (Niharika Senapati) makes us feel so much more comfortable, until her safety is destroyed.

The tones shift and plummet as layers of silence are heard and the comfort of silence becomes uncomfortable. When the risk is personal, it becomes real. When the silence is ours, we might want to start whispering, and screaming, until we’re really heard.

The Melbourne International Arts Festival and Malthouse Theatre presents Trustees until 21 Oct.