As reported in The Stage, “Kureichik, a member of Belarus’ Coordination Council for the transition of power, wrote the play as a rapid response to those first days of protests, arrests and violence meted out by the police.
He wrote it quickly, capturing the urgency of the situation and went into hiding immediately after finishing.”[3] Kureichik described the writing of the play in an interview with BBC radio: “On the 9th of August, when Belarus elections started revolution in Belarus, of course, as a playwright, as a citizen, I decided to react somehow.”[4] The play, according to Lucy Ash of the BBC, “is a series of intersecting monologues which capture the unfolding drama in the capital of Minsk.
But it doesn’t work anymore.”[7] Five other characters present an overview of Belarusian society: The lives of each of these individuals – with the possible exception of Kolya, for his debt to destiny is yet to be paid – is impacted tragically by Lukashenko's decision to crush the revolution with violence and torture.
The first translation, into English, was done by John Freedman, who ultimately chose to simplify the play’s title because the pun could not be rendered sufficiently in the new language.
Belarus(sia) – was published in Contemporary Theatre Review’s online Dispatches series, which provides immediate forums for important, developing themes in the theater world.
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.
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.”[22] 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 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.
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 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.
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.
Belarus project.”[25] Writing for Swedish PEN, writer and director Jacob Hirdwall described the evening as follows: “The reading of Andrey Kureychik's play Insulted.
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.”[26] The project increasingly attracted scholarly, journalistic and historical interest as time went on.
The astonishing scale of the project mobilizing international artists, which grew yet again following the start of the Russian War against Ukraine, testifies to the power and potential of arts workers to work together to resist autocracy.
The original cast of characters was: As of late 2021, readings, videos or productions of Voices of the New Belarus had been mounted in the U.S., the U.K., Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, Germany and Taiwan.
In the summer of 2023, Kureichik himself created a so-called art installation film[32] of the work that added two new characters - Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and civic activist Polina Sharendo-Panasiuk.