Civilian protestors, many of them adolescents and students, face down military police across a public plaza.
Snipers crouch on windswept rooftops, awaiting orders.
Government officials sit in meeting rooms pondering the appropriate use of force, while tightening their grip on the nation’s channels of communication.
Political activists and radicals wait for the moment to strike the match on the Molotov cocktail; the moment when unrest becomes revolution…
…The Point Of No Return.
In the tumult of the early 21st century, violent political upheaval looms so large over the news agenda that we can sometimes overlook the multitudinous human perspectives seen, heard and felt on the ground, at eye level.
This April, just fourteen months after the last such seismic event, in Kiev, Ukraine, theatre producers and providers of culture-based social outreach and education programmes BeFrank Theatre Company will continue their drive to use performing arts to tell the individual, personal true stories of political revolution that journalists, historians and academics cannot reach.
Based on the real-life testimonies of witnesses, victims of, and participants in the last days of the Maidan uprising in February 2014, The Point of No Return transports us to a fictional yet eerily familiar world where opposing political factions seem to be experiencing the same events as distinct realities.
On this constantly-shifting landscape the thoughts, opinions and actions of the conflicted university lecturer, the frightened military policeman, the idealistic student activist, the morally nebulous politician and the fanatical revolutionary help us discover the truth of how, why and to whom these tectonic political shifts happen.
BeFrank was also selected as one of 12 EU organisations to be a part of the TANDEM Ukraine Programme, an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam) and MitOst (Berlin), supported by the German government’s Federal Foreign Office (Berlin).
Within this programme BeFrank has partnered up with Kharkiv-based ‘Theatre na Zhukah’ to develop an artistic and social programme (‘Making a Difference through Theatre’) and deliver outreach activities and skill-sharing across borders, regions and cultures in Ukraine. Alongside this programme, BeFrank will also be touring the show to partner theatres.
Tickets from £12. For more information, go to: http://newdiorama.com/whats-on/the-point-of-no-return.
Picture – Richard Davenport
afternyneblog.wordpress.com 