Burning to Tell You: Critical Conversations with Risk-Taking Artists

The event will highlight leading artists from a range of disciplines (theater, film, music, media arts, political cartooning), including Belarus Free Theatre, a UK-based international award-winning theatre company-in-exile, founded on principles of freedom of speech and artistic expression, the Russian feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot, acclaimed best-selling author Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination), and leading voices from Syria, Iran, and the United States. Featuring a roundtable discussion, documentary footage, and a special performance by award-winning actor Rick Foucheux from Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture, the event brings together artists whose work emerged out life-threatening circumstances to have a global impact and to help to forge and sustain communities in diaspora.

Participants include:
Natalia Kaliada, Founding Co-Artistic Director of Belarus Free Theatre (Belarus)
Maria Alyokhina, member of Pussy Riot;  performer in Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors (Russia)
Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I’ve Been Silent About (Iran)
Nik Kowsar, an Iranian-Canadian cartoonist and journalist who fled Iran after he was imprisoned in 2000 in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison for a cartoon mocking a top religious authority (Iran)
Honey al Sayed, Founder of Honey&. LLC and Director of Media and Arts for Peace Initiative at the Geneva Center for Security Policy; former award-winning radio host & producer (Syria)
Nadia Brodskaya, Co-Managing Director, Belarus Free Theatre (Belarus)
Svetlana Sugako, Co-Managing Director, Belarus Free Theatre (Belarus)
Marc Behrendt, Director for Europe and Eurasia programs, Freedom House (USA)
Moderated by Derek Goldman and Cynthia Schneider, Co-Directors, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (USA)

Produced as part of Belarus Free Theatre's production of Burning Doors, produced by The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland October 26-27, 2017.

The Lab and The Clarice, building on previous fruitful collaborations, are officially launching an ongoing partnership with Burning to Tell You and the Belarus Free Theatre residency. Recognizing our deeply shared values and significant overlap in the artists with whom we engage, and our shared commitment to the creation and support of path-breaking new work, the partnership aims to enhance the impact and global leadership of the work of both organizations. The partnership aims to maximize the synergies between The Clarice’s expansive roster of performances, and The Lab’s mission to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics, expanding the reach of both organizations’ efforts and creating new collaborative opportunities for both the Georgetown and University of Maryland campuses, and for audiences throughout the DMV region.
Burning to Tell You is produced in association with Freedom House.

The Artist Partner Program at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland is committed to the creation and investigation of new work and new ways of participating in the performing arts. Through our national and international Visiting Artist Series, as well as festivals and community partnerships, we bring diverse voices and perspectives together for reflection, dialogue and engagement. Artists, scholars and creative innovators come together in performances, panel discussions, public interviews and audience roundtables designed to educate, inspire and reinforce the importance of taking action to make positive change in our society and in the world. This season, artists challenge us to address issues on race, identity, immigration, freedom of speech, privacy, government surveillance. theclarice.umd.edu/app
Belarus Free Theatre is an award-winning theatre company founded in 2005 in Minsk under Europe's last surviving dictatorship. Its existence is illegal in a country where only state-sanctioned theatre is permitted. Since 2011, BFT has been based between Minsk and London, where founding members, husband and wife team Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, together with Associate Director Vladimir Shcherban, are political refugees in the UK. BFT’s permanent ensemble are based in Minsk where they campaign, educate and perform every single day of the year, underground.