UKRAINIANS UNDER SIEGE YEAR II: Five New One Acts from the War
Presented by Voices Festival Productions and the Arts Club of Washington as part of the Continuing Worldwide Readings Project to Benefit the Ukrainian People
Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 7:00 PM
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - limited seating registration required
One year after our inaugural partnership,Voices Festival Productions joins the Arts Club of Washington to present five new Ukrainian One-Acts From the War written since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This year’s Ukrainian playwrights:
Andrii Bondarenko, Iryna Harets, Olena Hapieieva,
Lena Liahushonkova and Kateryna Penkova.
Featuring a DC ensemble:
Lisa Hodsoll, Rachel Manteuffel, Fatima Quander,
Theodore Sapp and Sam Sherman.
Directors:
A. Lorraine Robinson, Vanessa Gilbert, Zoya Kachadurian and Sam Sherman
The plays have bee translated from the Ukrainian by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus and are made possible through commissioned support from the Center for International Theater Development and the advocacy of CITD Founding Director, Philip Arnoult.
UKRAINIANS UNDER SIEGE, YEAR TWO – PROGRAM:
“In the Bowels of the Earth”
by Olena Hapieieva | directed by A. Lorraine Robinson
In an underground bomb shelter, Lena shares crowded quarters with her family and plenty of strangers, hoping that "the earth that takes us in" will provide protection. Families fill the space with a cacophony of needs, interrupted by children questioning the brutality of war.
“Planting an Apple Tree”
by Iryna Harets | directed by Vanessa Gilbert
A woman recounts the events in her rural home as war creeps closer. Horrors are still at a distance in other, not-far-away cities, so she remains focused on tending to her trees, mixing together a feeling of safety and dread in the planting.
“Survivor’s Syndrome”
by Andrii Bondarenko | directed by Zoya Kachadurian
A man prepares to go on a date that never happens and confronts the fears, guilts and regrets that grow as war disrupts everything around him. Told from The End to The Beginning, the play moves from apocalypse to hope in a lyrical chronology offset by a clinical precision of all that’s been lost.
“A Topol-M Rocket Fired at a Cat Named Brooch”
By Lena Liahushonkova | directed by Vanessa Gilbert
A Russian Topol-M rocket has been fired and may reach the narrator at any moment. While waiting for the bomb to hit, she thinks through the worries of her daily life, including her concern for innocent cats. “I do not want Russian cats to suffer. But that's the limit of my sympathy.”
“TDP (Temporarily Displaced Persons)”
by Kateryna Penkova | directed by Sam Sherman
A short finale about a woman who helps place refugees in a hostel, noting their quirks and peculiarities. In each profile, politeness is pronounced and the sense of tragedy understated, but when the narrator needs help for herself, no one is left.
