The presentation is based on an analysis of several dozens of Ukrainian texts for theatre created after February 2022 with some trends being explored in it. It is focused mainly on documentary texts because, after the beginning of the invasion, as an immediate response, many documentary texts were created. They are very often autobiographical, focusing on these events and on the authors’ identity in the context of the war.
In the modern Ukrainian drama, among plays about the war, there are many female voices. It influences the content of the plays, because war creates gender-specific experience. Most Ukrainian are not allowed to cross the border and leave the country. As a result, a woman can write a text about life of a refugee, an immigrant, but at the same time most men cannot write such texts just because they cannot go abroad. It is just one example of gender-specific experience that is reflected in our drama.
This trend opens a discussion about who is legitimate to talk. We are already having this discussion in the Ukrainian community.
Can male experience be described by female authors?
These questions remain open.
What is more, due to the current political situation and social tensions, it is difficult for men to publicly word all dimensions of their experience in Ukraine now. As the country is at war, there is a request for resilience, heroism, bravery, and self-sacrifice. If the man does not fit the image of a hero, a knight, a brave soldier, if his predominant condition is stress, fear, depression, and exhaustion, such narrative, both in art and in public life, might provoke a very traumatic reaction.
Iryna Serebriakova is a Ukrainian scriptwriter, writer and playwright. Her dramedy Tinderland won the “Transmission.UA: drama on the move” contest co-organized by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute (2021). Her other theatre plays were performed in Timișoara, Kyiv, Narva, Almaty, Paris, Istanbul, Helsinki, New Delhi, Berlin, and Prague. Her collection of short stories for children and adults is going to be published in Sweden in Swedish translation. Her collection of short stories about the Latvian town of Pāvilosta is being translated to Latvian. Over twenty fiction and non-fiction books were published in her translations from French and English to Ukrainian and Russian.