KS6: Small Forward

The new season at La Mama starts strong with a powerful combination of sports, art and politics.

From the Olivier Award-nominated Belarus Free Theatre, one of bravest theatre companies in the world, comes KS6: Small Forward, a brand new stage production based on the extraordinary life story of Belarusian international-basketball-player-turned-activist, Katsiaryna (Katya) Snytsina.

The production itself is based on conversations with Katsiaryna Snytsina and dramaturgically adapted for the stage by Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada, and the presentation is slick, complete with a pumping DJ and slick video projections, but it is Katya’s natural charisma, passion and physicality that brings her story to life.

For some background, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which has been widely dismissed as fraudulent, Belarus has conducted massive crackdowns on dissents. Political repression, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Stalin era of the old Soviet Union, are now the order of the day in the dictatorship of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has held on to the office of president of Belarus since 1994. Stories of beatings, murders, and imprisonment are so common that it has become absolutely normal for every citizen of Belarus to personally know a victim of these jack boot tactics. The regime has also taken to holding political prisoners incommunicado for indefinite periods of time, totally withholding information on their whereabouts and well-being causing untold torture and stress for family members, friends and loved ones.

It is this cruelty and brutality that eventually brought Belarusian Basketball star, Katsiaryna Snytsina, to take to her Instagram and say something, having herself come to the point where silence was no longer an option. She simply wrote, “Stop the Violence”, and with that one action she becomes an enemy of the state, a “lesbian extremist”. Dictatorships as a rule are generally deeply homophobic and Belarus is not an exception to that rule. Katsiaryna Snytsina flees to the United Kingdom for safety and after a long career in women’s basketball, she takes up a new kind performance which fortunately for us is now on display at La Mama.

The question that often comes up with productions of this nature is, does art, and in this case, theatre, have the capacity to take on a dictatorship. Can it make a difference? To my mind the answer to this question, simply put, is Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident, playwright, poet and political prisoner who went on to hold the highest office of President in his country after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, that brought down the repressive Soviet regime that had previously jailed him. Havel’s name does come up in KS6: Small Forward, as a shining light to follow, a beacon of hope. Committed activism, full of risk, and not without a price. In Havel’s case his imprisonment took a terrible toll on his health.

It takes courage to speak out against dictatorship and create art knowing of that great risk is involved. Safety is always a concern. KS6: Small Forward, shines a bright light on the current situation in Belarus and for an audience in  New York it is informative, but there is another, dare I say, purpose here. One that is a cautionary tale, a warning for us as we barrel towards our own presidential election in November, where one candidate, namely Trump, has clearly demonstrated dictatorial tendencies and impulses. And sadly, at this time in America there seems to be is a large portion of the electorate that seems cool with dumping democracy and going with a dictator, and insanely, the dictator they are clamoring for is Donald J. Trump. God, why did I get placed in this timeline?

KS6: Small Forward is great entertainment and Katsiaryna Snytsina puts in a great performance but perhaps more importantly there is a simple message here for Americans to take to heart and that message is that dictatorships are very bad things, and if you have a choice, don’t vote for the guy that says he’ll be a dictator on day one. He probably means it.

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