Vom Krieg

As part of our sisterhood with Ukraine in the fields of art and civil society, we are primarily working with authors who are committed to writing contemporary new dramas. We are adopting the themes of our ‘Distant Neighbours’ Festival (December 2021) and devoting these solidarity events to texts by dramatists from Kyiv’s Theatre of Playwrights.

Ukraine has been engaged in defensive warfare since 2014, when Russian troops invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, in breach of the European peace order. The Russian Federation forcibly occupied and annexed Crimea. This was followed by the establishment of pro-Russian armed militia in the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, who have been fighting there alongside regular Russian troops against Ukrainian armed forces and volunteer militia since 2014. On 24 February 2022, the Russian army launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian and German actors read from evocative texts, reports, war logs and diaries about life during the Russian invasion: about survival tactics, embattled cities, humanitarian corridors and the consequences of the destruction. They are testament to a world that is deteriorating with every day that passes – and to a war with far-reaching global ramifications.