Dogs of Europe

From one of the world’s bravest theatre companies comes a visceral, psychological drama set in the near future, depicting a dystopian super-state in which individual rights have given way to control.

In 2049 a murder investigation sets a man on a quest, his search bringing him to former Belarus and Russia, now a single European territory ruled by an all-seeing secret service. But his journey becomes less about the origins of this reactionary regime, more a revelation about his own role in its creation. Based on the novel published in 2017, by contemporary Belarusian author Alhierd Bacharevic, Dogs of Europe is both an epic fantasy and a political thriller about the dangers of looking away when authoritarianism takes root.

Exiled from their native country, the co-founders of Belarus Free Theatre are political refugees who make underground work that plays to courageous audiences in secret locations across Minsk. Everyone involved is under risk of intimidation, persecution and even arrest. Rehearsing from an adopted base in London and in Belarus via Skype, the company is known for its physical theatrical style and for its human rights campaigns. Having lived in democracies and a dictatorship, its staging of Dogs of Europe is especially prescient.

Dogs of Europe is performed in Belarusian with English surtitles.