Between Revolution and War: The New Ukrainian Drama from the Maidan to the Full-scale Invasion

Since the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14, Ukrainian culture has undergone a renaissance in all fields. One of the most remarkable developments has been the appearance of a new generation of innovative, daring young playwrights whose work defies theatrical convention and boldly explores society’s most pressing and painful problems. The discussion will explore these questions with Ukraine’s leading contemporary dramatist and screenwriters, Natalia Vorozhybt, and Molly Flynn (Birkbeck University of London), editor of the ground-breaking new anthology of Ukrainian drama in translation Ukrainian New Drama after the Euromaidan Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2023). The event will be moderated by Uilleam Blacker (UCL SSEES).

Natalia Vorozhbyt is a leading Ukrainian playwright, screenwriter and film director. Her play The Grain Store, the first major play about the Holodomor, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009. Her play Bad Roads was produced by the Royal Court Theatre in 2016; she later adapted it for cinema, and the film was chosen as Ukraine’s official entry at the Oscars in 2022. Her other screenwriting credits include Cyborgs: Heroes Never Die (2017) and Wild Fields (2018), based on Serhiy Zhadan’s novel Voroshylovhrad. She is the co-founder of the Theatre of the Displaced in Kyiv and curator of Class Act: East-West project that ran in 2016-2018.

Dr. Molly Flynn is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of Witness Onstage: Documentary Theatre in Twenty-First-Century Russia (2020). Molly has collaborated with leading Ukrainian theatre-makers as a producer, curator and translator. Molly’s recent work focuses on socially engaged theatre practis in Ukraine since 2014. She has published in journals such as TDR (The Drama Review), New Theatre Quarterly, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Problems of Post-Communism, Open Democracy and Calvert Journal.