“Generation Jeans”, a play by the founder of the theatre Nikolai Khalezin featuring Natalia Kolyada, was shown in Moscow not on a real theatrical stage as well. But still the café in Meyerhold Centre, certainly, didn’t look like the last remaining stronghold of freedom or a symbol of absurd for a theatre situation of inexistence. One could only imagine the tension and danger of a sudden check-out, but not feel it. The chairs placed in front of a small dais and turntables in the background promised the openness of communication on the distance of a stretched hand.

The story, in which one and the same person is the author, main character and actor (a playwright, journalist and during the last years also a dissident Nikolai Khalezin), didn’t sound desperate. In his monologue Khalezin with no fuss, consequently and stubbornly comes to finding the point at which a person remains her/himself. Personal freedom is the only thing that can be put opposite antifreedom. Authentically and ironically impersonating people whom his character meets on his way, Nikolai Khalezin in any situation comes back to his dream: imagining a green meadow and seeing the horizon. This horizon should not come closer or turn into a wall – that would be the end of the dream. It should call and promise and always leave a hope for the future.

The fragments of life stretching from totalitarism to totalitarism, from antifreedom to antifreedom are being played out on a small dais in front of your eyes. With the musical accompaniment by DJ Laurel (Lavr Berzhanin) a fate that comes from recognizable images of the Soviet past is being recreated. Khalezin in huge black sunglasses and with a sports bag over his shoulder is speaking about the art of an illegal trader. Without any decorations, described only in several words, there suddenly appears a Minsk hotel where you can get some pairs of jeans from Polish builders. Though, the first old lady you meet in the corridor turns out to be a KGB spy and immediately gives the speculator away to the nearest policemen who, in their turn, finally let the poor guy go, after having had some fun during an inquest. They you see a Baltic market where the traders walking around in several fur-coats on themselves consume pickles instead of sunflower seeds. Though, trade is not the main thing for a Minsk schoolboy. He sells jeans and vinyl records only for the sake of buying new jeans and new vinyl records. And eventually what he buys is not just plain things but the feeling of freedom. As a pair of jeans was something that could get you closer to that world of freedom you could only dream about, and it let you become freer than you had been a day ago. This feeling of freedom is something that our hero would need a couple decades later on, at Minsk demonstrations (with a slogan “Dictatorship is shit”) and in the Minsk prison. Moreover, it is not only him who shares this feeling, but also his contemporaries throughout the world, those of the Generation Jeans who are able to say loudly “I am free” and be responsible for their words. During the performance Khalezin was cutting a pair of jeans and then at the end gave out the jeans pieces to spectators. Because you can not only remember about Generation Jeans – you can also be a part of it. Even there, where it is formally quite far from going to prison.

The theme of freedom has become the main for the other play as well. Here (though already just as an episode) Belarusian prisons appeared again. An English writer Harold Pinter, whose plays and Nobel speech were actually a basis for the fresh play of Free Theatre “Being Harold Pinter (director – Vladimir Shcherban), gave the theatre permission to use all his materials. The author himself hasn’t seen the play yet, though he really wanted to be present at the first-night. In the play seven actors are playing out the cruel and violent scenes that sometimes seem meaningless. Many images seem a little bit doubtful. Bandages in blood under the dress of a woman who was raped in prison is a sight that not everyone would bear. Nevertheless, this does not influence the whole impression of the Free Theatre tour. Because a performance, whether it is successful or not, means that theatre exists, and that there is a horizon on its green meadow that is open for the future. And there is such a horizon for Free Theatre. In Moscow at least.