The Phenomenon of the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings

Abstract

The article describes and analyses the initiative Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings. Based on a similar smaller-scale initiative launched in Belarus in 2020, the initiative has offered financial support as well as a virtual platform for contemporary Ukrainian playwrights, many of whom are connected with the Kyiv Theatre of Playwrights, to create and share new writings inspired by Ukraine’s fight against the Russian aggression. The article opens with a narrative overview of the history and broader context and significance of the initiative, which was started by playwright Maksym Kurochkin and theatre critic John Freedman in March 2022. The article then analyses the choice and efficacy of the different forms that the initiative has assumed and the ways it has reached audiences and readers. An anthology with twenty of the most popular dramatic texts translated into English was published as A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War by Laertes Press in the United States in 2022 and re-published in 2023. As the texts are most often performed as so-called play readings or stage readings, with actors sitting or standing on stage and reading from a script, it is possible to organise performances in a variety of venues. The need for rehearsals as well as for technical support such as lighting, sets, or stage props is greatly reduced because the actors simply read the scripts instead of memorising and fully acting them out. The article concludes with two short case studies of dramatic texts that have featured prominently both in the printed collections and readings conducted in many different countries and languages: The Russian Soldier by Ihor Bilyts and Survivor’s Syndrome by Andriy Bondarenko. The case studies focus on the challenges faced by translators translating the original texts into English, including the translation of proper names and the elements of the Russian language present in the original texts (e.g., when Russian characters speak).