CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) — The 43-year-old Ukrainian actor took to the stage carrying a black leather-based jacket and with a moustache painted on her face.
Ruslana Ostapko was performing in a number of historically male roles in a latest manufacturing of the Chernihiv Regional Youth Theater. With so many males serving in Ukraine’s armed forces to repel Russia’s invasion, the theater has tailored to the realities of conflict, and ladies are taking the highlight.
“We were rehearsing Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ when suddenly our men were taken to the front,” stated the theater’s 52-year-old director, Roman Pokrovskyi. “We only had the female part of the troupe left. So we thought, ‘Well, if men played women in Shakespeare’s times, why not give it a try?’”
The efforts of the theater in Chernihiv, the capital of a area that borders Russia and Belarus, replicate a broader actuality in Ukraine the place ladies are getting into roles as soon as dominated by males, sustaining not simply their industries however the spirit of nationwide resistance.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, 4 of the theater’s male actors and 5 stage staff have joined the military, leaving the troupe short-handed. Solely two males nonetheless carry out on the stage, and most stage work is completed by ladies. However the troupe has reinvented itself by adapting its repertoire, reworking its area right into a hub for artwork and wartime volunteer work, and casting ladies in most roles.
A brand new tackle a storied pro-independence determine
An all-female forged is taking over “Hetman,” a play based mostly on the lifetime of Ivan Mazepa, a seventeenth century Cossack chief who defected from the Russian Empire’s military to facet with King Charles XII of Sweden.
Mazepa’s function because the pro-independence chief, and the theme of Ukraine aligning with European states to withstand Russian management, stay salient in Ukraine greater than 300 years later.
Ostapko burst into tears when requested about her buddies and colleagues combating on the entrance.
“This is pain, the pain of the entire nation, our pain,” she stated whereas making ready for a efficiency. “But our guys are doing well. We keep our fingers crossed for them. We help.”
The theater’s predominantly feminine actors and employees — together with cloakroom attendants, cashiers, cleaners, and cafeteria staff — spend a lot of their time supporting Ukrainian troopers, weaving camouflage nets within the theater earlier than opening the doorways to audiences at evening.
The crew additionally often raises funds to provide their deployed colleagues with essential package for the entrance traces. However a few of these colleagues won’t ever return to the stage.
“Our actor, Kostiantyn Slobodeniuk, went missing. Our sound operator, Dmytro Pohuliaylo, disappeared in the Pokrovsk direction at the end of 2024,” stated Oleksii Bysh, 52, one of many theater’s few remaining male actors.
Standing by {a photograph} of one in every of his former colleagues, sound engineer Vyacheslav Shevtsov, Bysh describes how he was killed in a Ukrainian counteroffensive within the Russian area of Kursk final August.
‘Destroying our culture means destroying our future’
Whereas Chernihiv stays below Ukrainian management, it has paid a heavy worth for its proximity to Russia’s borders. Initially of the invasion, Russian troops besieged the town, forcing residents to endure harsh winter situations with out electrical energy or water below fixed shelling from Russian artillery, missiles and drones.
Because the conflict enters its fourth yr, Russian strikes on Chernihiv stay frequent and tradition has not been spared.
A major variety of cultural and creative establishments within the Chernihiv area have been destroyed or severely broken, requiring repairs or complete reconstruction, stated Oksana Tunik-Fryz, 46, head of the Arts and Tradition Council on the Chernihiv Regional Administration.
“The enemy is destroying us from within by destroying our culture,” she stated. “Killing a Ukrainian is killing a person. But destroying our culture means destroying our future.”
Drone strikes unite a neighborhood
Earlier than each efficiency on the theater in Chernihiv, a recorded announcement reminds audiences that the present can be paused within the occasion of an air raid alert.
That warning was recorded by Kostiantyn Sloodeniuk, an actor who joined the military and is now lacking, theater director Ihor Tykhomyrov advised the Related Press. When the alarm sounds, which Tykhomyrov stated occurs at practically each second efficiency, everybody inside strikes into bomb shelters.
“Russian drone strikes are a problem, a serious problem, but there’s an interesting thing,” he stated. “It brings people together.”
Regardless of an unsure future, the theater’s crew is decided to proceed their artwork and their wartime volunteering. Reflecting on their resilience, Bysh quotes Soviet-era Ukrainian filmmaker, Oleksandr Dovzhenko.
“We are a small theater,” Bysh stated. “But, as Dovzhenko said, you are only small from afar. Up close, you are large.”
