Anastasiia Kosodii
Early this year, when the Russian war against Ukraine started, I came to Berlin. I was looking for opportunities, also long-term projects, but I was mostly offered readings or discussions, one-off events. An author friend of mine (Sivan Ben Yishai) introduced me to the artistic director of the NT Mannheim, and I sent him some of my plays. He read them and was interested. He was also surprised that I had so many texts translated into German. The thing is, during the last eight years, there were a few German-Ukrainian exchange events, and because of them, I had my texts translated. But afterwards, theatres weren’t interested in them. 

Anastasiia Kosodii
The theatre offered me a flat in Mannheim. I decided to stay in Berlin because most of my friends are here. I will also direct my play, so I am slowly starting to cast actors and develop a stage design. Rehearsals will start in February, the premiere will be in April. During that time, I will of course be in Mannheim in the theatre. But for the time being, I’m mostly still writing.

Anastasiia Kosodii
When the war started in eastern Ukraine, I wrote about it a lot. But at that time, it was still possible to create a distance between yourself and the events. This year, it has become impossible. I keep asking myself how to write about the very current events that are happening right now. Because I want to address it. But how do I do that? In an ethical way towards the people involved, but also in an aesthetic way. I don’t just want to write a Facebook post or a journalistic text, I want to write a theatrical text that really reflects what’s going on. It’s impossible for me to write a ‘classical’ well-made play because I cannot or also don’t want to imagine, let’s say, a dialogue between Russian soldiers and the people who live in the occupied territories. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

What helps me when I’m writing now is to focus first on the details. In one of my latest texts, I’m writing about Russians bombing my hometown Zaporizhzhia with S-300 missiles (NATO uses the name SA-10 Grumble). On the morning of the 25th of May, one of these missiles was shot down by the defence forces and fell through the roof of the shopping mall Aurora in the city centre; one woman was killed. I watched all the existing videos of the shopping mall and the streets next to it after the missile fell. It looked very weird and also familiar – the bright warm sun of almost-summer, broken glass and pieces of metal on the road, birds singing, windows without glass in the building across the street, the feeling of the start of the holidays, police asking drivers to take a parallel road... so I described all that. And then I asked myself – what does the Russian soldier, the operator of the S-300 missile system think on mornings like that? Does he brush his teeth, is he cold, what kind of tea does he drink, what he does do after firing C-300 missiles, maybe he plans to buy some presents for his children... so I described all this speculation too. So that’s how I work now – I start from the details, zoom into them, and hope they will help me to tell the story of the bigger picture.

Maja Zade
It was planned very spontaneously. A journalist introduced Stas and Pavlo to us, we went for a coffee and started talking. They told us about some people from the Left Bank Theatre in Kyiv who are fighting in the war now. And how their decision not to take up arms was a big dilemma for them. We immediately thought: that’s a play! Three weeks later, we started rehearsals with one of our actors and two actors from the Left Bank Theatre. They interviewed their colleagues about their decision to fight in the war and what it was like. It was quite surreal because we were actually FaceTiming them while they were in the war zone. It was quite strange for us Germans in a way, because being German, you feel to some degree responsible for our history with Putin. We were also apprehensive, because it was obviously so emotional for them and they were quite traumatised, and we were sitting there thinking, is this going to work? But the collaboration worked really well. It turned out to be so special that we’re going to continue it next season.

Nina de la Chevallerie
Well, of course, the theatre landscape is very diverse. I’m part of the independent scene, so I’ll talk about that for now: For us, the funding situation is always very important and has changed quite a bit recently. During the pandemic, there was much more money, which created new opportunities for new artists, and for artists in exile too. This has paved the way for new aesthetics, new topics, new perspectives. Also for more transcultural experiments. The funding will be dramatically reduced as of next year, which worries many artists working in the independent scene. But of course, working together in transcultural arrangements isn’t just a matter of funding. It’s also a matter of how much effort we put into being curious about different aesthetics and ways of working together. It’s much easier to work with people you’ve known for a long time, people who speak the same language.

Anastasiia Kosodii
Yes, very much so. I’ve always been part of the independent scene and, in my view, most Ukrainian state theatres are stagnant institutions that have been run by the same person or members of their family for 20-30 years. They don’t want to evolve, they’re not interested in new voices, new writing. So anybody who wants to make theatre, but not join these corrupted clans, has to rely on funding, just like here in Germany. But most of the grants are connected to sociocultural politics. If you write a grant application for the play, you often also have to promise that this play will “cure society”. Funding also means going through a lot of bureaucracy. Nonetheless, there are (to my taste) two good government-funded theatres in Ukraine – the Theatre of Lesia Ukrainka in Lviv and the Theatre Vie in Zaporizhzhia. And there are a lot of good independent theatres – Theatre Neft (Kharkiv), Postplaylab (Kyiv), Theatre of Playwrights (Kyiv), Jam Factory Art Centre (Lviv; they are active in a lot of fields, theatre being only one of them). 

Maja Zade
In this particular case, the challenge was obviously the subject matter, because it was so personal to the people involved, which made it more than just theatre in a way. Otherwise, I would say that in this case the working styles were remarkably similar. The biggest difference was the acting style. You wouldn’t see this kind of emotional, figurative acting style in a German documentary play. But that difference actually created a great dialogue: the Ukrainians literally went to see every single performance that was on during their rehearsal time and then talked to the actors from our ensemble afterwards. This had the effect that almost the entire ensemble came to see our show. That doesn’t always happen, that there’s such a crossover and such a curiosity among actors talking about different acting styles and aesthetics.

We regularly have long conversations before we start rehearsals to bridge the differences in our international productions. A lot of directors we have from abroad are not used to coming into a strong ensemble of actors like the one we have here, who always work with different directors and who can be quite challenging, wanting to discuss everything, like why are we doing this? The role of the dramaturg in those productions is really important, because you’re mediating between the actors and director. Constant communication is the key.

Nina de la Chevallerie
When we started, I was very ambitious. I wanted to be a director. And then in 2012, we did a production with two Zulu guys from South Africa and I realised that it’s not possible for me as a white, German woman to direct two Black, South African men in a play about post-apartheid. After that, I started to step back. Over the years, I’ve become more of a dramaturg or producer who tries to organise money for the people we invite or who come to us, who also brings people together. I agree with Maja, communication is the key. Talking a lot and listening a lot. Which keeps showing me my privileges. We just produced a play about Damascus, and I realised: I can choose to be interested in themes like war and racism, but for the two Syrian artists who made this play, these themes are quite simply always there.

Anastasiia Kosodii
What’s ironic is that in Ukraine the least privileged position in theatre is the playwright. Now, in exile, magically playwrights are the ones who get the most offers. And of course, it makes sense on a practical level, because it’s harder to integrate directors and especially actors for language reasons. But playwrights can just write a play and you can translate it.

All in all, German theatres have showed us a lot of solidarity and we are grateful for that. The one thing that bothers me from time to time is not the conditions. It’s more the general treatment of the Ukrainian theatre-makers who are living and working abroad now. People seem to think that we’re all friends and like each other’s aesthetics. Of course, that’s not true at all. But I regularly get the impression that people here don’t differentiate enough. They don’t really look at the quality of the texts. They see that it’s Ukrainian and straight away that must mean it’s good. But we want to be taken seriously as artists!

It’s weird enough to ‘represent’ your country all the time. But I also think that all the artists who are not in Ukraine now see it as their most basic responsibility – while we’re in the comfort of our European homes and not in the blackout cities or on the frontlines – to tell our stories about this war and about Ukraine to a wider audience.

Anastasiia Kosodii
I share the anger of the people who protested against that play. As far as I know, it portrays a Russian soldier being tortured by Ukrainians. I will definitely not watch it, because it’s much too triggering for me right now. But of course, I read about it. I find it highly insulting that a German theatre thinks that it can build some sort of a dialogue between Ukrainians and Russians. Serebrennikov as the initiator of this dialogue – pure hypocrisy.

Maja Zade
We invited several of his productions to our FIND festival before the war. For me, it’s a difficult question because, of course, there are lots of Russian artists in exile as well. And we also want to help them. But I understand that Ukrainians don’t want to share a space with Russians right now.

Maja Zade
It’s still in the early stages of planning. But I think there will also be some new people involved, yes. It’s our artistic aim to bring more Ukrainians and Germans together on stage, for the reasons that I already described. But also, on a very simple level, you’re helping Ukrainian artists by giving them jobs, giving them money, you know?

Nina de la Chevallerie
I have to admit that I was never as worried about the future as much as I am now. The higher levels of funding during the pandemic has produced a very rich, diverse artistic landscape, but now competition is starting and people are starting to elbow each other out of the way instead of showing each other solidarity. I really hope we can find a way to work against this. Perhaps there should also be more co-productions between state theatres and the independent scene. We have to stick together.

Anastasiia Kosodii
I don’t want to work here for a long time. I’m still hoping to go back to Ukraine and work there again. But I still wish I can have a future here. What’s really important as a solid foundation for good transcultural collaborations are places and events where exile communities can come together. Especially in smaller cities. But even in a big, international city like Berlin, I was surprised when more than 500 people showed up for a screening at the Ukrainian film festival! To me, it proved the importance of meeting places like that. I see it as another responsibility as a well-connected artist working abroad to build opportunities like that. And I hope that German artists and institutions will support these efforts too. As well as creating long-term projects and collaborations that help Ukrainian culture to get more visibility and attention not just from refugee Ukrainians, but also from the German audience.