Synitsina's journey from sport through acting to activism

Synitsina's journey from sport through acting to activism

Katya Snytsina has moved from the sporting stage to the theatre, from basketball to activism, and from Belarus to UK.

The former Olympic player’s name has been in lights again in February, when she starred at London’s Barbican theatre in a play about her life.

The title, KS6: Small Forward, is made up of her initials, the number on her team shirt and her position on court.

She has been on the move since she was two months old, when her parents – both basketballers who met at a match in Moldova – moved from her mother’s Kazakhstan homeland to her father’s home in Belarus.

She was destined to be a player. Dad was her first coach and she attended sports school in Minsk.

She made her professional debut at 15, her international debut at 17. She clinched bronze at the European Championships and played in the Beijing and Rio Olympics. She has lifted club trophies in Belarus, Poland, Turkey and France.

Her national team career skidded to a halt in 2020 when she added her signature to an open letter by a group of athletes claiming election fraud and calling for a halt to violence against protesters.

The following year she hit the headlines by announcing that she had declined to sign up for the  Belarus team as she did not want to represent the regime internationally. 

“I couldn’t stay silent,’ she recalls, “so I spoke out publicly against the regime. It was clear to me: if I returned, I’d either have to take back my words or go to prison. So, in the summer of 2021, I chose freedom and decided not to return to Belarus at the end of the season.

“In 2022 I signed with London Lions and moved to the UK. Now that I have retired from the sport I consider myself a migrant and have chosen the UK as a place to live.”

She cannot return to Belarus, where the authorities have branded her Instagram account "extremist". Subscribing to it could result in imprisonment.

Establishing herself in London proved easy.

“When you’re winning, you love where you are!” she laughs. “London exceeded my expectations – I had the most successful season ever, winning every trophy we competed for. It's never happened in my career, and nobody has ever done that in England, either. So I found the city just fabulous.

“I’ve travelled everywhere, from Beijing to New York, but the energy here is on another level. It’s a fast-paced city where everyone’s always rushing somewhere, but no one ever feels alone. People are always ready to help.”

Many Belarusians in London supported her as a player and have become friends and supporters. “I try to give back and take part in their events. They’re not just spectators – they’re my people.”

In addition, she has found a wife, Nadia Brodskaya, who also fled from Belarus to escape political persecution.

Now 39, Snytsina has retired from basketball, but another door has opened. She has played herself on stage in New York and London in KS6: Small Forward, in which she shares her life story and sheds light on human rights abuses in Belarus.

The play is produced by the Belarus Free Theatre, which is banned in Belarus and works in exile in London. The theatre's founders, Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, introduced Snytsina to Brodskaya, who is a Belarus Free Theatre executive director.

They also adapted Snytsina’s personal story to the stage (“Theatre turbocharged with the electrifying energy of a basketball match”, said the Barbican publicity. “It invites audiences into Katya’s world, tracing the stratospheric highs of twenty years on the court, and the dramatic events that set her on a new path as an activist, political dissident and ‘extremist lesbian’.”)

Snytsina explains: “From the start, the whole idea was that I would play myself. It's my way of helping our protest.

“I’m not acting,“ she insists, “I’m fighting.”

Photo credit: Barbican production photo, by Mikalai Kuprych and Darya Andreyano