Part 1 – 2500 words / long read…
It is Saturday here and there ia powerful discussion going on around co-production between Lithuanian and Ukrainian theatremakers with translation between these two languages. I don’t speak either so I am slipping away to catch up with reflections on this small but perfectly formed inaugural Inter National Theatre Festival here in Kyiv. It is the brainchild of Kristina Kisielovaite when she was evacuated from Kyiv at the start of the 2022 invasion. The idea fermented whilst staying in the house of Oskaras Korshunovas, the acclaimed Vilnius National Theatre director, watching her own Country gaining headline news for all the wrong reasons.
This is an event celebrating the theatre being made within Ukraine by those who have stayed , moved to, or returned to Kyiv. It is an exploration of the power of theatre and theatremakers to have difficult conversations. As Kristina says “The deepest fractures emerge where mature dialogue is absent…when experience is brought into the public sphere it can be heard and processed…tensions (can) transform into a point of growth.”
On my first visit in March I saw mainstream theatre where the audience, I felt, were there to escape the trauma of the outside world for a few short hours. A musical like Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret playing to packed houses at the Molodyy Theatre, of course, rooted in invasion and inhumane regimes, but is also there to give the audience a phenomenally good time. I have missed A Play What Goes Wrong here in Kyiv – I’d love to see this local production, again to hear the joyous laughter of an audience released from reality for a moment.
This KЇ Fest visit, I am witnessing much more challenging work made in response to the war – the war which began with the invasion in 2014 – but also resonates back across hundreds of years of colonisation, repression and cultural appropriation, The voices making this work are crying out through theatre, connecting through community, and telling the stories which should never be silenced.
Show 1: My festival began with Tamara Trunova’s Confronting The Shadow which she created as director of the Left Bank Theatre with Berliner Festspiele last year. It felt like a New York ‘Happening’ with sometimes the highest level of trippiness as the company explored their personal and their collective lived lives, and hidden shadows. At times the collective voice gave way to the most powerful monologues and truths which dropped me into a place of deeper understanding. One young woman’s cry of anguish at the years she is losing by waiting for her man, loyally, after 4 years of serving to push back the invading army. Her desire for hope, for a future, for children, for a loving life against the reality of the seemingly endless grind of this conflict.
As Tamara asked in a post discussion “Is it possible after 12 years of war for Culture to be Diplomatic? My purpose is to be (make work which is) loved and not annoying.” But to bring truth through theatre. That truth was especially felt when the theatre director/actor Mykola Hradnov-Savytskyi joined the company on stage to share his journey. He lost both legs above the knee at the front and has been one of over 2000 veterans to be given the treatment needed, both physical and psychological, by the Superhumans Centre in Lviv. He and his wife, theatre producer Kateryna, are rebuilding there lives and are together phenomenal examples of the strength and courage it takes to face your shadow and find a future in the light.
The show talks of needing ‘happy ending rehearsals’ when dealing with shadow work and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” seemed a fitting end to this kaleidoscope of colour and darkness.
Understanding: The festival is both theatre shows and a chance for discussion, especially with and by the International guests present. I hope I won’t be the only UK person here next year, and that what Brian Hook in 2024/5 and my visits in 2026 will do is encourage others to make the trip and see work being created for the world. It has been great meeting highly regarded theatre/cultural leaders from the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, New York, and Austria – some of whom have been here many times and continue to work with young artists and on new projects.
As I have been reminded the Ukrainians have not found it easy connecting into the heart of the UK scene – we are not in Europe, we have a Foreign Office restriction and so no funding body can help with trips, and we have an arts sector which is in survive rather than thrive mode at the moment. Our own news outlets (with a few notable exceptions) have drifted away from covering culture, and have moved on in a news cycle where the rise of a darker mentality in England politically is gaining far more attention.
Talks: It was therefore powerful to listen to Jakub Górnicki passionately and powerfully talking about the rise of Live Journalism , about which I knew virtually nothing. When 44% of the Polish population actively avoid traditional news sources, how do voters and citizens understand the world which they are shaping, or being shaped by. So much comes from the voices of influencers and those who manipulate the messages to lead a person, community, or a country down their own carefully planned path. [This talk was whilst the counting was happening in the UK local elections which reflect exactly what Jakub is saying].
We don’t doom scroll in theatre – 99% of us settle down and stay to the end of a performance. But with the news we feed on the first headline, or 100 words, and then so often just move on thinking we have understood all that we need. Journalists find it increasingly difficult to engage a reader in nuanced debate around complex issues – sometimes because of a news outlets race for ratings, numbers, advertisers, and sometimes because of the micro-attention we give stories.
So Live Journalism brings journalists and theatre audiences together – a form of living magazine of 8-9minute powerfully created, or simply told, stories about our world. In theatres around the world (but I don’t think in the UK), 500-2000 people gather and stay to engage with this smorgasbord of exploration. It may be sport, culture, local issues, or global considerations. And, as with theatre, the audience do not doom scroll or leave. There’s a festival of Live Journalism in Berlin each October.
One question came from the room – “I get that these events lead to Empathy but do they lead to Action from the audience”. The answer from Jakub was Yes.
The nearest I have seen in the UK, aside from the News Quiz or Newsrevue at Canal Café, where satire and comedy is at the heart, is the work of Lung Theatre and other verbatim theatre companies where a single topic is deeply engaged with by multiple audiences in the run of a show. Empathy and Action are at the heart of this work – action by the company in working with a community, and actions which the audience might take provoked by the issue covered. But these are all actor/director led engagements with an audience.
What makes Live Journalism different is that the presenters on the stage are themselves the journalists who have researched the stories. They may in some cases work with actors – but they are addressing the audience directly themselves. This gives us a chance to not only hear the narrative, but to feel a connection to the journalist who has witnessed what they are exploring. That gives us an emotional connection. We are more likely to have a visceral or practical reaction to this story, rather than just soak up information. It is for this reason Jakub calls his work Reakcja (reaction, response in Polish).
[Anyone reading this please alert me to anything I should know about happening in the UK]
Talk 2: I moved direct from this to an immensely powerful and linguistically/conceptually challenging and confronting conversation between 4 leading female theatre practitioners: Olha Diatel (Kyiv based Crimean theatre strategist and cultural leader), Tamara Trunova (Left Bank Theatre), Oksana Dmitriieva (director of the Kyiv Puppet Theatre) and Irna Chuzhynova (Ministry of Culture and academic). Questions, around which there are no easy or common answers, were around How to Protect Cultural Dignity? How to come to work and into international settings from a position of love and self respect, and not being looked at with pity or sympathy when making or presenting work from Ukraine? That feeling that since 2022 all the theatre has been about the war, and that theatremakers ‘must’ learn to be ambassadors and learn to use diplomatic language. How to / Whether to turn Experience into Knowledge? and that as female leaders & Ukrainian theatremakers they are fighting for a sensible perception and that, in itself, means one does not come from a position of strength.
I choose here to list some of the questions/challenges rather than express any answers because as a white, western, retirement aged, male Englishman listening to the discussion through two amazing interpreters, I felt rightly challenged.
As someone who has spent their life in marketing/programming/championing more popular or commercial theatre, I did try and answer one question about what people want to see and what people are making in Ukraine.
I had three areas: a) I want to see work which is packing Ukrainian theatres with cheering audiences – then I know that it is getting a reaction from a home crowd. b) I want to see the new work which new young theatremakers are wanting to create – and in my discussions with those in their 20s it has been around exactly the same things as those in the UK – queer identity, home, love, ecology, family, belonging. The reality of living and creating in invaded Ukraine will be in the souls of the creatives, but it may not be explicit in the work and c) I want to see the work that inspiring leading practitioners, like this amazing panel ,want me as a theatregoer to encounter – however dark, troubling or challenging it may be,
Show 2: Our gang of Europeans moved on to theatre after the depth of the morning discussions. Brecht.Cabarett based on Bertolt Brecht’s 1920 play Drums in the Night adapted by playwright Andriy Bondarenko and directed by Oksana Dmitrieva. The performance was created for the Golden Gate Theatre with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, as a co-production with the Kharkiv State Academic Puppet Theater.
The piece focusses on a young man/lover going off to war, and those left behind. There is a call in strident punk berlin cabaret style to forget him, he is dead, he is buried. I cannot start to imagine what this feels like for those who have brothers and lovers at the front. The energy of the audience moved inwards as we were distanced from the storytelling and connected to our thoughts.
As we moved into the darker 2nd half, with the return of the wanted/unwanted son there were moments when the drama and the physicality of the company was so strong that I found I stopped using the surtitles. Truthful connection between two young lovers torn apart by war held us captive, until once again the theatrical chaos of the cabaret took over and the larger than life grotesques held our attention and took us through to a mind splitting percussive crescendo. After the inevitable alienating decoupling from the audience through the final actor-leaves-the-stage, the audience were on their feet relishing the power of a piece both 100 years old and far too current.
Show 3: In March, when I first visited, I had the pleasure of meeting most of the cast of NASHI Theatre’s Trojan Women along with their inspiring director Romana Izabella Soutus. Originally staged by La MaMa in New York in 1974, ‘The Trojan Women’, directed by Andrei Serban and composed by Elizabeth Swados, gives voice to those who endure war. With permission and support it has been adapted by Ukrainian theatre club ‘NASHi’ together with La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and The Trojan Women Project. The performance is part of a global initiative that has adapted the original performance in countries affected by war and conflict. Usually recreated in a war-torn country after the conflict, this Ukrainian version shifts the focus from tragedy looking back, to resilience, memory, and hope looking forward.
We were ushered into the most enormous warehouse How Club or K41 which is described as a club where rave meets resistance. I was reminded of the Glasgow Tramway where later Peter Brook would share his epic ritual theatre with Mahabharata.
It is epic ceremonial ritual theatre, and it looked stunning in this amazing found space. The piece can be understood by all people, although the words will be understood by no-one since it is a work using ancient languages and sounds from the Greek, Myan and Indigenous global cultures. I guess we were a standing, shifting audience of 400-600 people. It was wonderful to observe and be part of it. Our own stillness and the sense of the chanting and rhythm reaching into our very core. Quiet, swaying, rapt witnesses to the tragedy of Euripedes’ extraordinary play.
Romana worked via zoom with original cast member Onni Johnson and director Margaret Cho to develop a version for this Kyiv based company who would, by dint of the invasion, be predominantly young and female. They explored ways to reflect some of the core original themes of male domination and abuse, whilst still holding hope at its core. The show is learned by oral tradition – there was no written score or detailed script. The cast learned, over zoom, phonetically, the highly complex multiple harmonies and sounds. And then they took on the challenge of holding those sounds in their very beings as they moved in and out, though and around the audience.
I cannot be more grateful for the opportunity to see a version of this work. I can’t believe it has been across the world for 50 years in so many different forms and I have never witnessed it. It was part of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1975 – just before I started visiting.
It is wonderful that Margaret and Onni were present to bring the spirit of The Trojan Women Project to Kyiv, and to witness where these young people have taken the idea, so far.
Ellen Stewart’s original vision was to allow space to let voices be heard, and throughout the generations and war torn countries, to ask how can each of us be a good world citizen, holding those close to us and those we cannot know or see across the world. There is something in the ancient languages that seems to hold a power to communicate with us now and reach to the core of our humanity. But to make that happen the company of voices/actors have to be rooted in their own truth and channelling these sounds and the ritual in a way which is fresh, original, and deeply wise and mature. This happened.
This was a one off premier performance, but I hope it is not the last time I will see this fine company in this production. I hope they will continue to develop the piece as the invasion is pushed back. It will then be extraordinary to see how the original Euripedes and LaMaMa drama is reconsidered when a greater array of artists is available. This was a play from 413BC about a war from which the men return. Soon, the gods willing, men and women will return from defending this Country and this piece of theatre will be looked at through a different lens, and may be re-written and staged from a different place.
My next blog will explore more of what I have learned, and more shows that I have seen. Thank you to those who have read this. I hope you will come to visit this amazing Country and see some extraordinary theatre in the future. Slava Ukraini.