Photo: Kasia Stręk/The Guardian.
Actors from Mariupol theatre and new recruits of the renewed theater, now in Uzhorod, rehearse for a piece called Poets Lived Here, depicting how lives have been changed by the war.
As with all stories about war zones like Ukraine, one hopes that positive news published yesterday — or a few months ago — is still true today. Consider an article by the Guardian’s Shaun Walker written in March that was a testament to the resilient spirit of the Ukrainian people.
“When the bombs hit the Mariupol Drama theatre, Vira Lebedynska did not hear a boom or a blast. From the recording studio in the theatre’s basement, where she was sheltering along with a few other theatre employees, the sensation was more like a vacuum.
“ ‘There was a whoosh, and a feeling that the air was being sucked out of the room,’ she recalled. A few seconds earlier, her cat Gabriel had suddenly tensed, perhaps sensing the sound of a plane overhead. … The 65-year-old actor and vocal trainer was one of about 20 theatre employees among the more than 1,000 people sheltering in the theatre as the Russian army laid siege to Mariupol in March 2022.
“The strike, believed to have been carried out with two 500kg bombs dropped from a Russian aircraft, came despite widespread knowledge that it was the biggest civilian shelter in the city. …
“[Now] in Kyiv, Lebedynska will perform in Mariupol Drama, a play based on the memories of four actors who were sheltering inside the theatre, all of whom speak about their own experiences from the stage.
“The four are among a small group of actors and staff from the theatre who have resurrected the troupe in Uzhhorod, in the far west of Ukraine. Performances take place in the vast, boxy auditorium of the city’s main theatre, which has offered up its stage for the Mariupol troupe. There are also occasional tours; [The March 16] performance will be the Kyiv premiere of Mariupol Drama. Props are minimal while costumes have been sewn from scratch or bought in local secondhand shops, but the spirit and sense of duty is high.
‘The body of our theatre has been destroyed, but the heart still beats here in Uzhhorod,’ said Hennadiy Dybovskiy, the theatre’s recently appointed 63-year-old director, who is originally from Donetsk.
“In Mariupol Drama, each of the actors brings a real artifact on to the stage that reminds them of their time sheltering in the theatre. For Lebedynska, it is cloakroom tag number 392; staff of the theatre wore the tags around their necks to identify themselves to others who might need help finding their way around. For 24-year-old Dmytro Murantsev, it’s the one-piece Spider-Man pyjama suit that he wore throughout the siege, as it was his warmest item of clothing.
“Also on stage in the play are Ihor Kytrysh, 43, and his wife, Olena Bila, 42 who have both acted at the Mariupol theatre for more than two decades. They left the theatre the day before the explosion, risking a drive across the frontline to get out of the city.
“They feel grateful they made it out, with their son, but like most people from Mariupol, they feel a sharp sense of loss for everything they left behind. …
“Lebedynska said she ignored her son’s pleas to leave Mariupol in the buildup to the war because she did not think full-scale war was possible. When the hostilities started, she took a rucksack of important possessions and Gabriel the cat, and made her way to the theatre. She and a few other theatre colleagues set up camp in the recording studio in the basement. …
“ ‘There weren’t that many people at first, but then someone opened the theatre doors and people started streaming in. They had heard there would be an organized evacuation from the theatre, but there was no evacuation so in the end everyone stayed there,’ she recalled.
“People cooked food on open fires outside, and carried various sets and props from the storerooms to sleep on. On occasion, some people tried to leave and drive out of Mariupol, but they often came back some hours later, saying they had been shot at.
“Lebedynska does not remember the aftermath of the strike clearly. … She walked for two hours through the ruined city, in a dressing gown, before stopping to stay the night in an apartment on the edge of Mariupol with the windows blown out. …
“It can feel strange playing with a skeleton troupe to a mostly empty auditorium, in a theatre a thousand miles from Mariupol in the opposite corner of Ukraine. But Dybovskiy said it was an important act of defiance to keep going. ‘This is the only professional collective that is flying the flag of Donetsk region. We won’t let the Russian Orcs appropriate our Donetsk theatre traditions,’ he said. …
“[Meanwhile, a] newly Russianized troupe has already been on several tours to Russian regions, and Moscow has sent in actors and directors to work in occupied Ukrainian territory. The theatre frequently takes part in ‘patriotic’ concerts devoted to Russian national holidays and its orchestra is called on to play military marches. …
“Lebedynska said that in the months after she had fled to Ukraine-controlled territory, she still had some contact by telephone with fellow actors who had stayed. ‘I think a lot of them had simply been waiting for the “Russian world” to come.’ …
“Murantsev said he thought these views were more of a coping mechanism, for people who could not bear to leave their home town. ‘I don’t think there were many super pro-Russian people there, I think they just feel “outside politics” and want to stay quiet,’ he said.”
There will come a time after the war, a time of rebuilding. And it will have to start with healing these sorts of divisions. Meanwhile, a reduced but feisty Mariupol theater will grow in the west.
More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations encouraged.
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