‘Long Live the Theater’: Mariupol’s Drama Company to Perform Again

UZHHOROD, Ukraine — Wearing black, the actors moved round a sparse rehearsal room making ready a brand new play — the story of a dissident Ukrainian who died in a Russian jail camp a long time in the past. As they took a break, they gathered in a circle with their arms round one another, laughing and chattering.

Although the play is about within the Eighties, for these actors, the topic is near coronary heart, and the mere truth of rehearsal a triumph. They survived the siege of Mariupol by Russian forces earlier this yr — and the destruction of their dwelling theater.

“There’s a saying: ‘The king is lifeless. Lengthy dwell the king,’” mentioned Liudmila Kolosovych, the performing director of the theater firm. “So, the theater died. Lengthy dwell the theater.”

Mariupol’s Tutorial Regional Drama Theater was destroyed on March 16 by a Russian airstrike within the midst of the weeks-long siege of Mariupol, one of many earliest cases of Russia’s stunning brutality within the Ukraine battle. Earlier than the assault, the phrase “youngsters” had been spelled out as a warning in giant white lettering on the bottom outdoors. A whole lot of individuals had sheltered within the theater through the siege, amongst them 4 members of the theater firm.

On Thursday, an Amnesty Worldwide report referred to as the assault a “clear battle crime,” figuring out that the strike killed a minimum of a dozen individuals “and sure many extra.” The exact casualty rely has been inconceivable to find out as a result of the town stays beneath Russian management after falling to these forces in late Could.

Vira Lebedynska, 64, an actress, recalled the day the theater was hit.

“There was an explosion, partitions began crumbling after which I heard screams,” Ms. Lebedynska mentioned. “We couldn’t transfer.”

She sought security in a basement workplace with a colleague and that lady’s household, however even earlier than the strike, meals and water had been operating low. Ms. Lebedynska mentioned that just about 1,000 individuals had been gathered within the theater when the missile hit, and that she believed a whole lot died.

After the preliminary affect, her colleague’s husband walked up a crumbling staircase and returned to say: “There isn’t a theater anymore.”

Ultimately, Ms. Lebedynska and her group fled by foot to a close-by city, and joined a humanitarian convoy that introduced them to security.

In all, 13 members of the Mariupol troupe survived the weeks of bombardment of their metropolis. Some had been eliminated to Russian filtration camps; others had been displaced from their houses. Some took refuge in cellars. Some had been unable to bury family members who died alongside them.

In latest weeks, the group has reconvened within the western Ukrainian metropolis of Uzhhorod — the place they dwell collectively in a dormitory — to rehearse the brand new play. It’s primarily based on the life and works of Vasyl Stus, a Ukrainian poet, human rights activist, dissident and nationalist hero who died in a Soviet jail camp in 1985.

He lived within the Donetsk area when it was a part of the previous Soviet Union, and was persecuted for his efforts to develop Ukrainian literature and language and for his outspoken opposition to Russian rule.

He was placed on trial twice and died whereas on a starvation strike within the Soviet jail in 1985. Ukrainian independence arrived simply six years later, in 1991.

The Mariupol theater itself has wrestled with the legacy of Russian dominance within the area, which regularly got here on the expense of the Ukrainian language and tradition. Two years in the past, the theater switched to performing in Ukrainian, relatively than Russian. The actors, a lot of whom converse Russian, have now dedicated to working completely in Ukrainian and see themselves as a part of a broader cultural revival.

Opening evening of the brand new play is deliberate within the Uzhhorod theater in mid-July. Then the performers hope to take the present to a pageant in Krakow, Poland, and probably tour.

“It’s a bit scary to stage this efficiency,” mentioned Ms. Kolosovych, the 58-year-old director, who wrote the play in collaboration with others within the firm. “The world expects a premiere from the Mariupol theater firm.”

Anatoliy Shevchenko, 68, spent a long time performing with the Mariupol troupe. Throughout the siege, he hunkered down in his basement for weeks alongside his aged mom and sister — with no electrical energy, and restricted meals and water. He heard concerning the theater’s destruction over the radio.

Shortly after, his mom died of a coronary heart assault. He laid her physique out on the sidewalk, lined in a sheet, alongside six different corpses, he mentioned.

“I really feel like a monster for not with the ability to bury my mom,” he mentioned by tears.

Ultimately, Mr. Shevchenko mentioned, Russian forces, beneath the barrel of a gun, took him and his sister from their dwelling and despatched them to a filtration camp in Novoazovsk, a metropolis within the Donetsk area of Ukraine that was occupied by pro-Russian forces.

“They assume they’re saving us,” he mentioned of the Russian troops. Within the camp, he was fingerprinted, questioned and handled like a legal, he mentioned.

They had been then despatched to Russia however made their approach out by Georgia, then onto Germany, Poland and again to Ukraine.

After shedding a lot, being part of this neighborhood reminds him of who he’s, he mentioned. However the brand new play can be providing him a recent begin. He mentioned he by no means wished to return to Mariupol.

Mr. Shevchenko flipped simply between a lot of totally different characters within the efficiency. In a single scene, he delivered one among Vasyl Stus’s most well-known poems in a booming bass that stuffed the rehearsal room.

“How good that I’m not afraid of demise//And don’t ask how heavy is my cross,” he recited.

Nataliia Metliakova Marchenko, 63, who has acted with the theater firm for greater than 40 years, was born in Russia however her dad and mom moved to Mariupol when she was a toddler. She nonetheless holds a Russian passport.

She spent weeks alone in her dwelling as the town was bombarded earlier than her son’s buddies helped her get to the west.

“When the Russians got here, they got here to ‘liberate’ me,” she mentioned, utilizing the Russian phrase, with sarcasm apparent in her voice. “And so they liberated me from all the things. They liberated me from the theater, from my residence, from my dwelling, from all the things.”

Some actors from the corporate have stayed in Mariupol, she mentioned, and are concerned in an effort by Russian authorities to reopen the unique theater in September with performances in Russian. That plan has been broadly criticized in Ukraine; Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the town’s mayor, in contrast it to “a dance on the graves.”

Dmytro Murantsev, a 22-year-old actor, sought refuge along with his girlfriend and her mom within the theater’s basement for weeks earlier than the strike. He mentioned it turned so crowded that folks needed to sleep in shifts.

“We thought we’d die there,” he mentioned.

However the preventing was so intense within the surrounding space that they couldn’t go away. They marked the times on the wall. “We had been shedding our minds,” he mentioned.

The day of the assault, they heard a jet buzz overhead and felt the earth shift beneath them, he mentioned. Mud from the ground flew by the air. The partitions trembled.

“Individuals had been shouting for assist, attempting to get out, dying in entrance of us,” he mentioned. “Kids had been attempting to dig out their dad and mom.”

He noticed his girlfriend shout “I hate him,” time and again — referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — however he couldn’t hear her because the noise of destruction drowned all the things out. She too survived, he mentioned, however fled to Germany along with her mom and her cat.

Even because the weeks have handed, Mr. Murantsev nonetheless finds himself caught in that second. “I’m nonetheless processing it to be sincere,” he mentioned.