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Tuesday, January 14, 2025
‘If you hear the siren, go to the shelter’: the wrenching play about the bombing of a theatre in Ukraine
Theatre | The Guardian: The play opens with the usual pre-show request for audiences to switch off their mobile phones before the curtain rises, but along with this come warnings – and instructions for how the audience should evacuate the auditorium in the event of an air raid.
5 comments:
Lydia J
said...
Hearing all the horror stories about what has been going on in Ukraine and the constant terror these people have faced for so long is awful. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a situation like that. I love the idea that Oleksandr Gavrosh came up with. I think telling the stories of these people is really important. Giving context to their lives, what life was like before the invasion, the constant fear they face daily is so important to help others understand. After you hear the same thing over and over, it starts to mean less. But when you hear these people's personal stories and the all the terrible things they've individually faced, like being bombed in a bomb shelter and watching hundreds of people die, it helps you remember that they are really people with families and lives, just likes us. This play also reminds me of Come From Away. I'm sure it's not as bright and positive, but it's a similar type of storytelling. Telling the individual stories of people during a terrible historic event, to help remind people that it's more than numbers, these are real people.
I remember the day when the theatre in Mariupol was destroyed in an air raid attack. While the Russo-Ukrainian War has been going on since 2014– and the conflict has been going on for generations, decades, and centuries– the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was what drew the world’s eyes towards Ukraine. I remember people at my high school finally seeing horrors like the Mariupol theatre bombing (which was a shelter for civilians and had the word “children” written out in huge letters on both sides for satellites to see). Through the devastating reign of destruction (with about 95% of the city of Mariupol being destroyed) I think that it is so important for us to express ourselves through art. While words and articles and statistics can describe the horrors happening, art is different because it makes people feel a more real and tangible emotion. I think that it is beautiful that even in the face of all of this, Ukrainians keep creating art, this play only being one example of that. There are countless examples of this, one of the ones that has stuck with me most was the elaborate costume gown of Miss Ukraine in the Miss Universe pageant which was made by candlelight in bomb shelters. Additionally, I’m also very proud of my uncle who is a Ukrainian photojournalist, because that is art as well. Art is a place where people can Express themselves, escape, and also bring awareness to the real emotions they feel and invite other humans in to sympathize with them. I am looking forward to seeing how this production will do in England!
Reading this article made me think a lot about what the effect of dark times are on creative outlets and industries. Oftentimes, a lot of the best works whether it be art, theatre, or word is produced during a time of turmoil and strife so it is no wonder that there are some plays and other stuff being produced from this war. This also makes me think about all the artists that have become soldiers to fight for their lives and how much more different their lives would be without the war. I feel like having shows like this being produced is also such an important thing because its effect on its audiences will hopefully spur people into action and also remind them to not become numb to the horrors of the world. Overall, this was a super interesting article to read and I also really want to see this play now but I probably won’t ever see it so it was good to hear about.
Theatre is made unique from other time-based media like film, music, or television in the way that it draws the audience directly into the scene happening before their eyes. This play seems like it exemplifies what makes theatre such a powerful medium—if it were transformed into a book or even a movie its impact would be dramatically altered. Staging a play that itself takes place in a theatre forces the audience to place themselves directly in the position of the characters of the play. This play accomplishes this even just from its preshow announcement, but furthermore from the abstraction of the theatrical space—in the middle of a performance, the audience isn’t focused on the literal space they are in, but rather the space the characters inhabit, manufactured through the show’s technical elements. The audience of this show thus become inhabitants of the theatre in which the play takes place, which lends the play tremendous emotional impact. The tragedy that is captured by this play is heartbreaking, but it is simultaneously so incredible that art has been able to persist through such a horrific time.
I think one of the reasons I am absolutely in love with theatre is it can always exist. We do not need a camera, a computer and a bunch of after effects to create a story. We can tell moving stories in a war zone. The audience does not need to be watching through a screen. I also think that there is something special about stories that are extremely recent in history. A play about the Ukraine War but it's still going on? If there is a story that is worth telling you know theatre artists are going to work as hard as possible to get that story out to an audience. I can only imagine how cathartic this must be to experience if you've been affected by this conflict. The more important goal of stories like these is to provide a window into the human experience of what war does, what it causes individuals to endure. Stories like these provoke conversations that start causing a perspective usually washed down by media focused on the event and facts. Art is in the nuance and therefore stories about our world that need to be shared.
5 comments:
Hearing all the horror stories about what has been going on in Ukraine and the constant terror these people have faced for so long is awful. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a situation like that.
I love the idea that Oleksandr Gavrosh came up with. I think telling the stories of these people is really important. Giving context to their lives, what life was like before the invasion, the constant fear they face daily is so important to help others understand. After you hear the same thing over and over, it starts to mean less. But when you hear these people's personal stories and the all the terrible things they've individually faced, like being bombed in a bomb shelter and watching hundreds of people die, it helps you remember that they are really people with families and lives, just likes us.
This play also reminds me of Come From Away. I'm sure it's not as bright and positive, but it's a similar type of storytelling. Telling the individual stories of people during a terrible historic event, to help remind people that it's more than numbers, these are real people.
I remember the day when the theatre in Mariupol was destroyed in an air raid attack. While the Russo-Ukrainian War has been going on since 2014– and the conflict has been going on for generations, decades, and centuries– the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was what drew the world’s eyes towards Ukraine. I remember people at my high school finally seeing horrors like the Mariupol theatre bombing (which was a shelter for civilians and had the word “children” written out in huge letters on both sides for satellites to see). Through the devastating reign of destruction (with about 95% of the city of Mariupol being destroyed) I think that it is so important for us to express ourselves through art. While words and articles and statistics can describe the horrors happening, art is different because it makes people feel a more real and tangible emotion. I think that it is beautiful that even in the face of all of this, Ukrainians keep creating art, this play only being one example of that. There are countless examples of this, one of the ones that has stuck with me most was the elaborate costume gown of Miss Ukraine in the Miss Universe pageant which was made by candlelight in bomb shelters. Additionally, I’m also very proud of my uncle who is a Ukrainian photojournalist, because that is art as well. Art is a place where people can Express themselves, escape, and also bring awareness to the real emotions they feel and invite other humans in to sympathize with them. I am looking forward to seeing how this production will do in England!
Reading this article made me think a lot about what the effect of dark times are on creative outlets and industries. Oftentimes, a lot of the best works whether it be art, theatre, or word is produced during a time of turmoil and strife so it is no wonder that there are some plays and other stuff being produced from this war. This also makes me think about all the artists that have become soldiers to fight for their lives and how much more different their lives would be without the war. I feel like having shows like this being produced is also such an important thing because its effect on its audiences will hopefully spur people into action and also remind them to not become numb to the horrors of the world. Overall, this was a super interesting article to read and I also really want to see this play now but I probably won’t ever see it so it was good to hear about.
Theatre is made unique from other time-based media like film, music, or television in the way that it draws the audience directly into the scene happening before their eyes. This play seems like it exemplifies what makes theatre such a powerful medium—if it were transformed into a book or even a movie its impact would be dramatically altered. Staging a play that itself takes place in a theatre forces the audience to place themselves directly in the position of the characters of the play. This play accomplishes this even just from its preshow announcement, but furthermore from the abstraction of the theatrical space—in the middle of a performance, the audience isn’t focused on the literal space they are in, but rather the space the characters inhabit, manufactured through the show’s technical elements. The audience of this show thus become inhabitants of the theatre in which the play takes place, which lends the play tremendous emotional impact. The tragedy that is captured by this play is heartbreaking, but it is simultaneously so incredible that art has been able to persist through such a horrific time.
I think one of the reasons I am absolutely in love with theatre is it can always exist. We do not need a camera, a computer and a bunch of after effects to create a story. We can tell moving stories in a war zone. The audience does not need to be watching through a screen. I also think that there is something special about stories that are extremely recent in history. A play about the Ukraine War but it's still going on? If there is a story that is worth telling you know theatre artists are going to work as hard as possible to get that story out to an audience. I can only imagine how cathartic this must be to experience if you've been affected by this conflict. The more important goal of stories like these is to provide a window into the human experience of what war does, what it causes individuals to endure. Stories like these provoke conversations that start causing a perspective usually washed down by media focused on the event and facts. Art is in the nuance and therefore stories about our world that need to be shared.
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