Borderline Stages: The Trajectory of Freedom Theatre Festival in Narva
Jaak Allik*
Abstract
The aim of these brief reflections on the Freedom Theatre Festival in Narva is not so much to evaluate its repertory choices, but rather to show how, from 2021 to 2025, it has managed, despite many difficulties, to bring together artists from conflict zones and repressive regimes, offering a platform for urgent, risk-taking performances. Despite increasing travel and visa restrictions, this paper argues, the festival remains committed to art that defends freedom and truth, drawing a firm line between propaganda and artistic integrity. A fourth edition is planned for 2027.
Keywords: Freedom Theatre Festival, Narva, political theatre, conflict zones, artistic freedom, censorship, propaganda vs. art
From August 15 to 19, 2025, the third international Freedom Theatre Festival took place in the Estonian city of Narva. Narva is a border town of the European Union, separated from Russia only by the 250-meter-wide Narva River. The bridge connecting the two cities, named “Friendship,” links Narva to the Russian city of Ivangorod on the opposite bank. However, vehicle traffic on the bridge has been blocked from the Russian side for two years due to the reconstruction of the border checkpoint. In Narva, the checkpoint is located right on the central square, and since Finland has closed all its border crossings to Russia, there are now long queues from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM of EU citizens wanting to cross into Russia.
Narva is the third largest city in Estonia, with a population of 52,000 people, 95% of whom are ethnic Russians. As a result, Russian is the dominant language spoken in the city. In 2018, with state support, a theatre building was completed in Narva. It includes a 200-seat black-box theatre and two smaller halls. The building is managed by the private Tallinn-based theatre Vaba Lava (Free Stage), whose director Märt Meos decided to establish an international Freedom Theatre Festival specifically in this city.
The first festival, held in August 2021, was curated by Märt Meos with the collaboration of renowned Russian theatre figures Oleg Loevski and Elena Kovalskaya (then head of Moscow’s Meyerhold Theatre Center), who described the festival’s uniqueness as follows:
The Freedom Festival has collected dangerous performances. Their creators and performers face danger when they give these performances in their homelands. Why are we addressing these performances to people living in a free country? In order for them to value their freedom and to realize how fragile it is. As well as these performances, freedom and human rights are under threat every time and everywhere in our ever-changing world.
The first program of the festival featured nine productions, three from Russia, two from Estonia, and additional performances from Belarus, Hungary, Romania, and Poland. The highlights were Kantgrad by Moscow’s Teatr.DOC (directed by Anastasia Patlay) and Mein Kampf by Warsaw’s Powszechny Theatre (directed by Jakub Skrzywanek). Over 100 guests from 15 foreign countries attended the festival. It also quickly became a tradition to begin each festival day with a discussion on the cultural policies of participating countries and to end with a summary led by respected theatre critics from various nations.
In 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian war began, and Elena Kovalskaya’s words turned out to be prophetic, especially concerning her own country. One of the festival’s goals in Narva had been to showcase productions from Russia’s semi-underground theatre scene that were of interest to the wider European theatre community. However, the war ended Estonia’s cooperation with state-funded Russian cultural institutions. Furthermore, as Estonia ceased issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens and generally barred entry even to Russian nationals holding Schengen visas issued by other EU states, independent Russian theatre troupes and well-known critics were also unable to attend. Ironically, we ended up building a kind of modern-day “Iron Curtain” ourselves, much like the one the Soviet KGB had erected to shield its citizens from the “corrupting influence” of the West, thus also cutting off anti-Putin artists from their Western colleagues. As a result, the only gesture of solidarity with Russia’s freedom fighters during the second festival was a staged reading, held outside the official program, of playwright Svetlana Petrychuk’s work Finest – the Bright Falcon by actors from our own Russian Theatre.
The 2023 festival edition focused on Central Asian theatre. In addition to productions from Estonia and Ukraine, audiences saw performances from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The artistic highlight was Oasis of Impunity by Chilean director Marco Layera, a collaboration between Teatro La Resentida (Santiago), Munich’s Kammerspiele, and Berlin’s Schaubühne. The festival was curated by Märt Meos, Allan Kaldoja and Lithuanian playwright Marius Ivaškevičius. Its “star” was Tajik director Barzu Abdurazzakov. His production Avalanche with Kazakhstan’s Zhas Sakhna Theatre was part of the program, and his other play Mankurt—banned in his home country before its premiere—was shown as a video recording of its final rehearsal. Actors from Tallinn’s Drama Theatre presented Ivaškevičius’s new play Totalitarian Novel as a staged reading; the piece is framed as a dialogue between the author and Barzu. Its world premiere took place a year later in Tallinn. The festival also hosted 40 foreign guests, from Oman to Norway.
The third Freedom Festival included productions from Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Israel, Chile, and of course, Estonia. Symbolically, it opened with a Pakistani dance performance Zero Line (written and directed by Aamir Nawaz), staged on Narva’s central square, which the people queuing to cross the border could watch. The performance reflected the situation on the Pakistan-India border.
Two productions stood out as artistic-political shockwaves. Estonian director Merle Karusoo had worked in Ukraine’s Rivne Theatre not with actors, but with real war veterans, who shared their powerful, harrowing personal stories in the play I Did Not Leave Ukraine.
Directly from the battlefield came Israeli theatre artists Hadar Galron and Roy Horowitz, calling themselves a “black comedy duo.” Their vibrant one-hour original stand-up cabaret The Final Final Solution managed to speak (and sing and dance) about the horrific October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel, interspersed with documentary footage and tears through laughter. Only true masters can pull this off. Their approach forced audiences to confront not only the horror itself but also the unjust narratives now spreading globally, where Israel is often blamed for Gaza’s suffering, rather than Hamas terrorists.
Another deeply moving work was the Kuwait–Lebanon–Syria co-production Mute (written and directed by Sulayman Al-Bassam), inspired by the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. Chilean theatre group SUR presented “Free-Roaming Mares” (by Ernesto Orellana Gomez), a play about the first LGBTQ+ protest concert in downtown Santiago in 1973, which was violently broken up by the police.
Estonian actors from Vaba Lava also performed Internal Climate (directed by Mari-Liis Lill), a festival-commissioned piece about the history of a massive secret Russian military factory (4000 workers) and the lives of its people over fifty years. This very factory’s former walls now house the current theatre and serve as the location for the festival itself.
Across all three festivals, one recurring question has emerged: to what extent can political theatre engage its audience through nuanced metaphor and symbolism, and when must it resort to direct manifestos??
Each edition showcased works representing both approaches. Yet the more horrifying and hostile to freedom the events being portrayed, the more precise and skillful the artistic language must be to convey them effectively.
Let there be a clear boundary between propaganda and art!
With this conviction, we now look forward to the fourth Freedom Festival edition in Narva, planned for August 2027, once again bringing together theatre artists willing to risk everything in their art for the fate of their people and their country.
*Jaak Allik (born 1946) is an Estonian politician, former theatre director, and theatre critic. He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1972 with a degree in history and sociology. From 1991 to 1995, he served as the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Estonia. Between 1990 and 2015, he was elected to the Estonian Parliament four times. Allik served as the Artistic Director of the Ugala Theatre in Viljandi during three periods: 1983–1988, 1991–1995, and 2001–2003. Between 1965 and 2025, he has published hundreds of reviews, essays, and scholarly articles on theatre. As a producer and director, he has staged 26 productions in Estonia and Russia, including works by D. L. Coburn, M. Garpe, N. Simon, E.-E. Schmitt, Y. Reza, A. Beaton, A. Griboyedov, M. Shatrov, and V. Sigarev, among others.
Copyright © 2025 Jaak Allik
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #32, December 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411
This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
