A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War

These plays reflect the shock of a peaceful people who were invaded and relentlessly attacked, destroying all the cornerstones of daily life they had known. We read these plays as sympathetic bystanders, but also let us read them as kindly-meant warnings. One year ago, a vortex of irrationality overwhelmed a sovereign people who were nearly as confident of their peacetime security as those of us living in western Europe, America, and the free world still are.

– Dana Rufolo, * Plays International & Europe *

Compulsory reading for anyone trying to work through what has happened, and what will happen, in Ukraine.

– Blair A. Ruble * Focus Ukraine a blog of the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center *

Maksym Kurochkin is a playwright. For almost three years, he and 19 other Ukrainian playwrights had been planning to build a new theater in the heart of Old Kyiv. The group found a magnificent old structure that they were busy renovating in order to open the Theater of Playwrights on 12 March. On 24 February, Maksym and his colleagues awoke to the horrific sound of bombs. 12 March came and went.

– Viktor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine 2005- 2010 * The Guardian *

There is no way we can ignore these moving, theatrical elegies.

– Ari Roth * Theater Arts *

Maksym Kurochkin, a playwright and screenwriter, is one of the most respected writers in Ukraine. Born in Kyiv, he studied history and archeology at Shevchenko National University. In the late 1990s, he graduated from the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow and split his time between Kyiv and Moscow for the next 18 years. His early iconic productions include Kitchen (Moscow, 2000), Stalova Volya (Kyiv, 2001), Repress and Excite (Moscow, 2008), The Schooling of Bento Bonchev (Moscow, 2010; Austin, Texas, 2012), Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall (Austin, Texas, 2014), Vodka, Fucking, and Television (Moscow, 2006; Austin, Texas, 2012; Kyiv, 2017), Titus the Immaculate (Moscow, 2016), and Be Silent, Oedipus (Moscow, 2016). He returned to live and work permanently in his native city of Kyiv in 2017. Some of his major works during this period were Russiaphobia, Kherson, Asexuals, Laurels, and Tolik the Milkman. His plays have been performed around the world.

Natalka Vorozhbyt is a Ukrainian playwright and a leader in the resurgence of Ukrainian national drama in the 21st century. Vorozhbyt took part in the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2013-2014, and the theme of the ensuing war with Russia has colored her work ever since. She wrote the screenplay for Cyborgs, a 2017 film about the bloody defense of an airport in Donetsk against Russian separatists. Bad Roads (2017) was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and, as a film directed by the author, was Ukraine’s official Oscar selection in 2022. Although she wrote in Russian early in her career, Vorozhbyt now writes in Ukrainian.

John Freedman is an American writer and translator who, after working for 30 years in Russia, now resides in Greece. He lived in Moscow from 1988 to 2018, where he was the theater critic of The Moscow Times (1992–2015). His play Dancing, Not Dead (2011) was winner of the Internationalists Global Play Contest (2011) and his short play, Five Funny Tales from the Heart of Buenos Aires (2013), has been performed in New York City, Chattanooga, and Edinburgh. He has translated over 100 plays, of which productions have been mounted in five continents. He is the author or compiler of numerous books, including Silence’s Roar: The Life and Drama of Nikolai Erdman (1992) and Provoking Theater: Kama Ginkas Directs (2003). He is the curator of two Worldwide Play Readings projects: Insulted. Belarus (2020 to present) and Ukrainian Play Readings (2022 to present).