8 November 2015. Trash Cuisine by the Belarus Free Theatre.

This evening was always going to be a bit different. The location of the staging of the event is sent by text 24 hours beforehand, in the same manner than is employed in Belarus - to avoid the KGB. On this night, we were told to assemble outside a Baptist church just north of Manor Park at 18.20. When I got there there ten minutes early, a large number were already present. We stood around, luckily with no rain, until about 18.35 when a cameraman arrived accompanied by 'stewards' and people were led off in groups to the nearby venue on an industrial estate. We were given a drink token and hung around until the remaining groups arrived from outside the church.

The evening was introduced by a director of the theatre company together with a lawyer from Reprieve, who fights on behalf of condemned US prisoners and inmates of Guantanamo. Then the staging began. This took us through various horrors in the world, starting with a discussion between a Belarus and a Thai on how they conduct executions. We moved on to an account of the waterboarding and false confession of an Irish prisoner at the time of the 'troubles', and a graphic description of the killing in Rwanda of a wife and three children by the husband during the massacre of a million. There was also the account of a man on death row in America and we finished with the execution of two Belarus youngsters.

After a break for a bowl of beetroot soup, we were engaged in a consideration of a murder case from the US, in which we were led to the conclusion that such cases are frequently bizarre. In this one a nine day old baby had been killed by putting it in the freezer and the truth was supposedly that the husband had done it sleep-walking. This part of the evening was not terribly satisfying. Clearly some murders are bizarre; but others aren't. We were taken though the different facts of the case and asked to ponder our prejudices as to who had done it after each fact, before the bizarre conclusion was revealed. However, by and large, this audience were unwilling to commit to a prejudice and I did not feel a point was proved. As to the first half, it is hard, looking back, to think where that got us. It told graphically of terrible things that happen in the world, and could have expanded the list indefinitely. But we knew that anyway. Ok, by the end of the 80 or 90 minutes, I felt as though I'd been done over with a sledge hammer and we were given the action point of supporting Reprieve but this wasn't really meant to be a supporter-raising event. Or was it? So I'm left thinking that the take aways for me were the novelty of the venue and of the evening as well as the commitment of the 'actors' rather than its content.