New York's Under the Radar festival

Over the past nine years, New York's Under the Radar festival has presented diverse companies from all over the world with dozens of productions that are both provocative and moving.

This year two standouts, one from Australia and one from Belarus, offer unforgettable images conjured up by "outsider" companies that until recently lived on the fringes of their respective societies. By dint of their passion, courage and tenacity, these determined troupes have forced themselves to center stage at the Public Theater, where the entire festival is playing this year.

The intrepid Back to Back Theatre of Australia offers a company of five actors who tell a unique story called Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, in which the ancient Hindu god Ganesh journeys to Nazi Germany to reclaim the swastika, originally a sacred Indian symbol.

Reclaiming the swastika

"Long before myth in an ancient world without language, man revolved around symbols," the play begins, stating the vital importance of the mission. Ganesh seeks to restore the swastika's seminal meaning"“ namely, good"“ by wresting it from a monstrous culture that exploited the sacred symbol for its own perverse purposes.

Ganesh is played by a huge, half-naked actor wearing a lifelike elephant head. He travels through time and space (through a series of magical theatrical trompe l'oeils involving a row of plastic curtains), ending up face to face with none other than the führer himself. The image of the gargantuan, big-bellied actor with his frightening elephant head standing beside a tiny actor in a Wehrmacht uniform, a swastika armband, and a black moustache affixed to his upper lip, is both arresting and bizarre.

So-called "'disabilities'

"The Gods were careless. I just took it," the führer says of the swastika. "I created mythology."

Nevertheless, Ganesh reclaims the symbol, restoring its ancient integrity. Or so we hope. "It will always be mine," the führer warns.

The fact that four of the company's five actors are "intellectually challenged" is astonishing, given the magnitude of their accomplishment, which not only disregards any so-called disabilities but also provides a thrilling new dimension to the work. The production's meta-theatrical layering (in which a company of disabled actors argue about the making of the play), on top of a resonant story rich in universal symbolism, makes for a provocative parable on good and evil, power and perseverance "“ in the world and the theater alike.

Performing in secret

Ganesh is also the god of overcoming obstacles. And no other theater company at the festival"“ perhaps anywhere— faces the sort of obstacles confronted by Belarus Free Theatre.

This remarkable company was created in 2005 to heighten awareness of oppression and human rights violation in Belarus. By necessity, it performs in secret (in private apartments and ever-changing locations). Each member of the company has been imprisoned, threatened and abused by the Belarus authorities. All have lost their jobs and have been separated from their families. And yet they continue to perform. In the past two years they have built a network of supporting theaters around the world (including The Public in New York), with whose support they spread global awareness of life in Belarus, with the hope of provoking change.

After this intrepid company thrilled audiences two festivals ago with its memorable call for freedom of expression, Being Harold Pinter, its co-founders (Nicolai Khalezin, Natalia Kaliada and Vladimir Shcherban) were exiled and are now political refugees in Britain. Now the company has returned with Minsk 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker "“ a lament for their homeland and a country that has lost its way. (The title refers to Acker's experimental short story, New York City in 1979.)

Depraved, but it's home

Minsk 2011 is a collage of images that rival Sodom and Gomorrah in their depiction of the Belarus capital. Sex, violence, alcoholism, disease, brutality and corruption infect this black hole of a metropolis, which (these artists suggest) lacks any compensating physical beauty (mountains, lakes, rivers).

In one shocking scene, the actors grab one of the actresses (dressed as a shabby cleaning lady, swabbing the city's filthy streets), strip her down, paint her entire naked body with black ink, then wrap her in brown paper. She stands there erect like some death-like mockery of the Statue of Liberty, a monument to Minsk's depravity.

In a final scene, the actors sit on a row of nine red chairs facing downstage, their feet resting on a blood-red carpet strip. Divesting themselves of their story-telling personae, they reach out to the audience and speak individually, personally, about a city that is, despite everything, their home. These simple, tender, anguished expressions from the heart and gut "“ about a country they love no matter how much it has abused them "“ are almost too painful to hear and watch.

Watching Minsk is a humbling experience. Actors often take risks on stage, but these disenfranchised "outsiders" have sacrificed their nationality and their homeland for the cause of free expression. Similarly, the disabled actors of the Back to Back troupe forego personal vanity for the right to tell a story and the right to be heard, individually and collectively.

Ganesh, god of overcoming obstacles, appears to have found a welcome home in a place many Americans take for granted: our own country.