ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright and stage director, publisher, and civil activist, who gained international recognition as a political playwright following the contested presidential elections and subsequent events in Belarus in August 2020. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2020 as member of Coordination Council of Belarus. After that, he was violently pushed into exile. Among his most prominent works is the play Insulted. Belarus, a response to the 2020 Belarusian presidential elections and the subsequent violent crackdown by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. This play, which has been translated into 39 languages, has seen over 200 readings and performances worldwide, including in the U.S., the EU, Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Nigeria. Widely praised in media outlets such as Plays International and Europe, Contemporary Theatre Review, the Boston Globe, Theatre Times, Dialog, Moscow Times, and American Theatre, Insulted. Belarus has become a vital piece of global protest theatre and art.

In addition to his theatre work, Andrei is a prolific screenwriter and filmmaker, with more than 40 film and television projects to his name, including the award-winning films Above the Sky (2012) and Garash (2015). His feature films Liberté, Okrestina, and documentary The Voices of the New Belarus have further solidified his reputation as a fearless storyteller committed to human rights and artistic freedom. Voiced by Professor Timothy Snyder and actors of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, this film became an Oslo Freedom Forum grand event and again raised the topic of Belarusian prisoners in the world.

An analytics agency Movie Research named Andrei Kureichik the most successful screenwriter of the 2000–2010 decade in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. According to  the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), films he wrote, directed, or produced have have grossed over $190 million at the global box office.

In the fall of 2022, Kureichik participated in the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale. Currently, he is a  Lecturer and Playwright-in-Residence at Yale University and a Neuebauer Fellow of Theatre Studies at the University of Chicago.

In the fall of 2023, City Garage Theatre of Santa Monica (CA) presented the English-language premiere of his play “Insulted. Belarus,” a play which had received enormous worldwide attention and hundreds of staged readings at theatres around the globe. The production was showered with honors, received rave reviews, and won Stage Scene LA’s award for “Best International Play.”

Kureichik is the author of five dramatic collections, including two American collections of plays that were published in the United States by Laertes Publishing in 2023 and 2025  https://www.laertesbooks.org/the-insulted-plays

In a gripping blend of biting satire and haunting prophecy, The White Plague catapults us into the near future—where the ghosts of

totalitarianism return, cloaked in new ideologies and armed with digital disinformation. In this bold reimagining of Karel Čapek’s visionary work, from acclaimed playwright Andrei Kureichik (Insulted Belarus, The (Empty Shell of War) delivers a darkly comic and chilling vision of 21st-century Europe on the brink. Putin is gone, discarded as weak. In his place rises Marshal Tretyak, a brutal autocrat resurrecting imperial dreams of a Eurasian Empire. As war looms and propaganda reigns, a mysterious pandemic sweeps the globe—targeting the elderly in a ruthless culling known as the White Plague. Only one person holds the key to a cure: Dr. Gallen, a defector from the liberal West. Kureichik’s White Plague is a razor-sharp tragicomedy that dissects modern authoritarianism, generational rifts, and the collapse of global solidarity. In a world plagued by isolationism, disinformation, and resurgent imperialism, can humanism survive? A bold, timely, and unforgettable theatrical reading.

The White Plague 2035

Written by Andrei Kureichik

Inspired by Karel Čapek

Translated by Vladimir Rovinsky and Lisa Channer

Directed by Kay Martinovich

The White Plague 2035
A Satirical Tragicomedy by Andrei Kureichik In a gripping blend of biting satire and haunting prophecy, The White Plague catapults us into the near future—where the ghosts of totalitarianism return, cloaked in new ideologies and armed with digital disinformation. In this bold reimagining of Karel Čapek’s visionary work, acclaimed playwright Andrei Kureichik (Insulted Belarus, The Empty Shell of War) delivers a darkly comic and chilling vision of 21st-century Europe on the brink. Putin is gone, discarded as weak. In his place rises Marshal Tretyak, a brutal autocrat resurrecting imperial dreams of a Eurasian Empire. As war looms and propaganda reigns, a mysterious pandemic sweeps the globe—targeting the elderly in a ruthless culling known as the White Plague. Only one person holds the key to a cure: Dr. Gallen, a defector from the liberal West. Kureichik’s White Plague is a razor-sharp tragicomedy that dissects modern authoritarianism, generational rifts, and the collapse of global solidarity. In a world plagued by isolationism, disinformation, and resurgent imperialism, can humanism survive? A bold, timely, and unforgettable theatrical reading.