Welfare is the first play from Mariya Bialkovich, directed by Yulia Shevchuk, both long-standing BFT ensemble members. Inspired by Bialkovich’s own neighbourhood ‘group chat’, the play tells of an extraordinary day in the life of an ‘angry neighbour’ who is obsessed with finding fault with those who live around her – from raucous drunken night-time revelry to endless noisy building work, cigarette smoke and barking dogs.

One day the ‘angry neighbour’ is forced to put down her phone and interact with her neighbours in ‘real life’. A quick trip to the shops yields a series of exasperating and increasingly absurd encounters: first a policeman, then a nun, an old man, a child and finally… God?

The questions she must confront in the end: who is making whose life a misery, and perhaps more importantly, why are we all so angry?

Dogs of Europe is a visceral, psychological drama set in the near future, depicting a dystopian super-state in which individual rights have given way to control.

Based on the novel by Alhierd Bacharevic, Dogs of Europe is widely considered one of the most important literary works ever published in Belarus offering a powerful warning of the corrupting influences of dictatorship.

Adapted for the stage by Belarus Free Theatre, the production reveals how authoritarianism is contagious – how it penetrates all aspects of daily life as oppression isn’t just meted out by a national figurehead but by everyone across all walks of society.