Her life story might have made an engaging show no matter which theater company had staged it: A globe-trotting professional basketball player and Olympian, Katsiaryna Snytsina awoke to the terror happening in her native land, the Eastern European country of Belarus, and joined other athletes in a letter protesting the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko – a statement that ended their careers, and landed some in prison. Katya went into exile in London, where she thrived on a new team, the London Lions, became an outspoken activist, and recently came out publicly as a lesbian. The Belarus state has labeled her an “extremist”; any Belarusian discovered following her Instagram account, we’re told, is subject to arrest.
But “KS6: Small Forward,” opening tonight at La MaMa ETC, is produced by Belarus Free Theater, which for two decades has been acclaimed for its fearless acts of political resistance — “the only theater in Europe banned by its government on political grounds” – but also for its dazzling theatrical invention.
So yes, “KS6: Small Forward” is all about Katya Snytsina: The title is composed of her initials, the number on her uniform, and her basketball position. She plays herself: personable, imposing (6’2), agile, heavily accented. But she is also at the center of an ever-busy, often electrifying, sometimes distracting theatrical swirl.
A live dj, DJ Blanka Barbara, presides over the gleaming floor of a basketball court with a constant pulsing underscoring, there is constant video, there is a time out for a little quiz about the history of basketball, time out for a two-point shooting contest among three volunteers from the audience, time out even for a little karaoke. Katya and the four other cast members hand out candy, blow bubbles at the audience, throw around huge balloons designed to look like giant basketballs, drop confetti.
Through it all, “KS6: Small Forward” is also a campaign for awareness and justice, which starts from the moment we take our seats; A laminated card placed on each one presents the name and photograph of a Belarusian political prisoner – each seat had a different one; more than 100 in total – with details of their imprisonment, and a Q-code that encouraged us to write a Letter of Support.
The daughter of two basketball players (who are represented comically with basketballs for heads), Katya tells an interviewer that it was inevitable she would become one too: “The first thing I remember is throwing balls to my dad during his training.”But Katya’s criticism of the regime begins with her recounting of her brutish treatment as a child by her coaches– the sports training just one example of the society-wide “system of humiliation and the destruction of individuality. You were explicitly told: you are worth nothing.” Lukashenko has been in office since the 39-year-old Katya was nine years old, but she tells us she was too busy with her career to pay attention to what was going on in her country; she played throughout Europe, her home in effect the single suitcase she used to travel. To illustrate, she opens the suitcase to reveal a dollhouse, reproducing her parents’ kitchen back in Minsk.
She wasn’t fully aware of the depth of the dictator’s brutality until the violent suppression of protests against his discredited claim of winning re-election yet again in 2020.
“What was I doing before the protests? I even scrolled through my Instagram. What was I posting before? My dog, basketball, dog, basketball, vacation, dog, basketball…. Why have I never dedicated a moment to public life? Why?”
The video shows news footage of the beatings, and faces of the murdered and imprisoned, while Katya holds a basketball that a thus crushes, oozing blood.
It’s an arresting image, one of several times a basketball takes on symbolic weight. She’s pummeled by them at one point; she’s even buried in them – placed in a transparent booth, with two black-masked riot police dunking basketballs on her until she disappears. This happens while she explains that her now-wife Nadya (who is a member of Belarus Free Theater) was one of the 36 women crammed into a four-person cell in 86-degree heat, subjected to thirst, hunger, naked body searches.
It’s not just basketballs that are enlisted for Belarus Free Theater’s signature use of abstract theatrical effects to drive home the emotional weight of the story they are telling. Even those seeming digressive interactions with the audience have particular meaning, some of which is immediately clear. Right after blowing the bubbles, Katya tells us she was in a “basketball bubble,” meaning unaware of what was going on in her country. Right after after distributing the candy, she tells us of a protest where her friend and fellow basketball player, Yelena Leuchanka, distributed, and was subsequently imprisoned. For years afterward, she says, Belorusians would approach her at a game and tell her how they held on to that piece of candy – “a symbol of care that each of us shared for one another.”
KS6: Small Forward
La MaMa through October 13
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $40. Students/Seniors: $35
Based on conversations with Katsiaryna Snytsina adapted for the stage and directed by Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada
Set design by Khalezin, lighting design by Peter
Small, video design by Dmytro Guk, movement direction by Janier De Frutos (also
choreography consultant), choreography by Anthony Matsena, and sound design and
original music by DJ Blanka Barbara
Cast: Katsiaryna Snytsina, DJ Blanka Barbara (on-stage DJ), Raman Shytsko (Interviewer, Angry Coach, Father, Mascot, Interrogator, Riot Police), Darya Andreyanova (Mascot, Riot Police), Mikalai Kuprych (live feed camera)
