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For Belarusian troupe, show must go on despite dangers
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 19/08/2012
» Thespians of the Belarus Free Theatre have been beaten, arrested and harassed by authorities. And husband-and-wife co-directors Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada, as they explained to Spectrum last week while on a visit to Bangkok, are now forced to live in exile, facing prison sentences if they return home. Within Belarus _ their large landlocked country of just under 10 million people, bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania _ the actors continue to perform in secret and at great risk to themselves and their audiences.
A mercenary's tale
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 06/05/2012
» Peter Slade was once in prison for five years on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit another murder and attempting to overthrow a foreign government _ partly a victim, he says, of a corrupt Australian judicial system. He fought in the Vietnam War, was a security contractor in 1973 Rhodesia, a debt collector at home in Melbourne and as far afield as Nigeria, and arrived in reconstruction-era Cambodia and Iraq without connections but a desire to start anew, in stints that would last some seven years each. He witnessed first-hand the Bangkok coup that killed journalists Neil Davis and Bill Latch in 1985 and was on the beach in Patong the morning the tsunami struck Phuket in 2004.