On 24th February all performances in Ukraine were cancelled with no official instructions about evacuation or directions from the culture government. Regardless of location, almost everyone chose their own action in this war. Actors and directors became the soldiers in the Ukrainian Armed Forces or in the Territorial Defense. Ukrainian theater activists invited their partners to engage in international resistance to Russian culture and formed volunteer headquarters and set up humanitarian aid activities.
Ukrainian musicians and writers were also active. Well-known are the names of poet Sergij Zhadan who organized concerts in Kharkiv subway shelters, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk the vocalist of Okean Elzy band, visited bombed Kharkiv and Chornobyl, and the pop artist Andriy Khlyvnyuk – authored the patriotic march remix “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”. Famously the Kalush band performance in the Eurovision Song Contest ended with the plea to Help Ukraine, Mariupol!
Ukrainian theater creators started stage readings – of established works “Bad Roads” by Natalia Vorozhbyt or new texts – gathered in a collection by UkrDramaHub portal. Institutions and individual artists created special videos on the theaters channels on social networks.
Artists who moved from Ukraine dedicated and organized support of their motherland. One of the biggest theater tours was Dakh Daughters – born from Vlad Troitskyi’s experimental theatre Dakh. A massive tour from Kharkiv – Skhid Opera: Overcoming Distance has just finished in Lithuania. Tours from three Kyiv theaters to Germany, Lithuania and Czech “Ukrainian Theater Month in Europe” still continue
Officially, Ukrainian theaters returned to regular life from the 1st April but the challenges remain of the geographical dispersion of actors because of war, changing audiences and security issues. Vasylko Theater in bombed Odessa presented the performance Sasha, Take the Rubbish Out by Natalia Vorozhbyt (dir. by Maksym Golenko), but the premiere was ‘closed’ for the public. The theater in partly occupied Kherson announced a plan to hold an annual festival Melpomene of Tavria in a month, with the press-conference for support of the Ukrainian city.
Theaters in the capital changed the start time for performances because of transport schedule and curfew rules. And, sure, not every Kyiv theater continued the work – only that rare one, who could equip a shelter inside the space. The National Franko Theater was forced to move chamber performances to the other venues such as the Tchaikovsky National Musical Academy and Lesia Ukrainian National Theater (earlier titled as Theater of Russian Drama). The initiative to re-name these two institutions musical and theater community started the process of resistance to Russian culture inside Ukraine. We do hope, that soon this process will move to the conceptual plane – but in already peaceful Ukraine.
This report was written by Viktor Sobiianskyi, a Ukrainian culture manager and theatre curator. He is a graduate of the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Theater, Cinema and Television and project manager of the Polish Institute in Kyiv. His work includes The Workshops of Polish Choreographs, Directors and Playwrights, The Festival of Young Ukrainian Directors and international workshops, supported by British Council, Czech Center and Austrian Forum.
The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author.
