'The French Applaud For Long'

The play about Belarusian political prisoners played to full houses in Clermont and Lyon.

The famous Belarusian actor, Kupalovets Aleh Harbuz, recently returned from a week-long tour of France. In the cities of Clermont and Lyon, he and the troupe of the New Theatre performed the play "1.8 metres", which tells about the Belarusian political prisoners.

Charter97.org asked the actor if French audiences liked the play:

- We had four performances: two in Clermont and two in Lyon. When I saw the auditorium and counted the number of seats, I felt sick because there were about 1,000.

I didn't think people would come and fill the whole hall. After all, Clermont has a population of just over 140,000. When we saw a full hall on the first day, we were surprised. We had been on tour in France before, but then more than half the hall was full. This time it was full.

Before the second performance, I thought that the entire theatre population of the city had been to the first performance, but the second, third and fourth performances were full. People took to "1.8 Metres" very well. I think about 3.5 thousand French people who didn't know much about Belarus came to our performance.

I noticed that people just came, but they watched, listened and after the performances they were very grateful to us, they did not let us leave the stage with applause for a long time. I realised once again that our story needs to be told as much as possible. I think we did an important thing by going there and telling the story, reminding the world of our heroes.

By the way, there were literally very few Belarusians, because there are simply no Belarusians in that part of France. In Clermont there were a few, in Lyon 5-7 from the diaspora.

So we played for the French. Again, I was really surprised that the French came to our performance, interested in the subject. Obviously they were hooked.

- Did you meet the audience after the performances? What did they ask you?

- Not in Clermont, but in Lyon, twice. By the way, in Lyon, after seeing "1.8 metres", about 150 people stayed to talk to us. They asked about the situation in Belarus, and we told them in a semi-private conversation about what was happening here, about the thousands of political prisoners.

They asked us if we had changed the performance with the start of the war in Ukraine. We changed it a little bit, but they are still different issues. I said that what is happening now in Israel does not negate what is happening in Ukraine, and the war in Ukraine does not negate our situation. One does not exclude the other.

- Tell us about your role in the play.

- In the play I try to present the letters written by Vitold Ashurak from prison. His thoughts are very light and positive. The letters are moving and intelligent.

He tried to inspire people from behind bars and gave more than he asked for. It's such an important story that I try to tell people. It's an honour to read and speak in his words.

According to the feedback from the audience, the play is very light for such a heavy subject and leaves you wanting to do something good, wanting to become a better person.