Guest apearances from Jude Law, Ian McKellen and Sam West in this double bill of plays — 'Discover Love' and 'Numbers' — from the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre, staged as a one off aweness-raising campaign to highlight the current terrible state of free expression in the company's home country.

In some countries, theatre-makers face arrest, violence or even deth. Caroline McGinn meets Belarus Free Theatre.

You email your name and mobile number. A few days later, you get a text telling you where to go. In London (where Punchdrunk artists recently made a secret live performance to advertise a new Stella Artois lager), underground theatre is a thrill for those in the cultural know. In Belarus (a dictatorship that ranks lower than Iran for freedom of speech), underground performances are an illegal necessity. Every time people gather to see them, they risk arrest or more insidious forms of retribution.

Natalia Koliada, an elfin woman whose voice carries the calm of conviction, is one of the founding forces behind Belarus Free Theatre. 'We have the bravest audience in the world,' she says. 'When we perform in Minsk for one month, 12,000 to 15,000 people see our performances. In our conditions, that's amazing.' Playwright Laura Wade went to one of those performances in 2009. She recalls the 'crackle in the atmosphere — the sense that what was happening was very important. I talked to a woman who had travelled for hours to come, because nobody else was saying these things or doing this.'

Thanks to their genuine excellence, and to the long-standing support of writers such as the late Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, Belarus Free Theatre has gained a high profile outside Belarus. In a forthcoming fundraiser at the Young Vic, Ian McKellen, Jude Law, Sienna Miller and Samuel West will take to the stage alongside them. West, who protested with Stoppard outside the Belarusian embassy in London this July, feels that celebrity endorsement can help to 'prevent political killings' in that 'the more fuss you make, the harder it is for them to disappear'. That threat is all too real:

Mike Harris of Index on Censorship attests to the 'vile rape threats and murder threats' that Natalia and her colleagues regularly receive. Elections (generally neither free nor fair) are approaching in December. 'Troublemakers have been beaten up, subjected to mock-executions, dismissed from their jobs,' says Harris. 'The bigger they get, the safer they are. And Britain is the only country where the artistic community has rallied round. Sarkozy gave them an award, but they can't even get a visa to go to France. It's a joke.'

Koliada, a mother as well as an artist, has considered leaving Belarus for a more hospitable country. Over the years, she has had close friends 'disappear' or die in suspicious circumstances, she's been arrested and seen her father beaten up and dismissed from his teaching post because his 'children are a disgrace'. But the last time the group were arrested in 2009, 'It was in the newspapers the next morning because of Tom Stoppard's support.' They were released, and, in an Orwellian twist, when they went back to try to get their props from the police who had arrested them, were told, '“We don't know you and nobody was detained yesterday.”'

Not every anecdote has a happy ending: 'When you live in a dictatorship you live there and you try to change it,' says Koliada. 'It would be crazy to say we are not afraid. Our very close friend was killed just two months ago.' Journalist Oleg Bebenin was found in September hanged with his five-year-old son's hammock, his feet touching the ground. The police claimed it was suicide. But Mike Harris, who knew Bebenin through his human rights group Charter 97, says that, 'Everyone thought it was murder - there were so many inconsistencies in the story.'

Bebenin's death can be interpreted as a brutal warning from the authorities. And the loss of their friend makes 'Discover Love', the play co-written by Koliada and her husband, Nikolai Khalezin, which will be performed at the Young Vic, even more pertinent and poignant. '“Discover Love”,' says Koliada, 'is the story of our friends Irina and Anatoly Krasovsky.' Krasovsky was a businessman who 'supported democratic forces openly'.

He was kidnapped and killed during a crackdown in September 1999, ten years before Bebenin's death. 'Irina is the godmother of our young daughter,' explains Koliada. 'We are close. It took us nine years to talk to her about their life and conclude this should be a love story, not a story about murders. We wanted to show that people who were kidnapped and killed were not just facts or numbers. They were people who had very wonderful children, parents, dreams and hopes. And they wanted to change their country of Belarus for the better.'

Caroline McGinn
http://www.timeout.com/