I was lucky to get the last ticket for a show at one of Kyiv’s best-known theatres. My seat was in the back, next to the mixing desk. The technician looked a little squashed: the row I was in seemed to have been added to meet demand. Much of Ukrainian theatre plays to full houses these days.
With temperatures of -15°C outside and constant blackouts, courtesy of Russia’s relentless bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, I hesitated before surrendering my coat. “I think you should keep your scarf,” said the woman in the cloakroom, clearly more experienced in Ukrainian wartime winters than I was.
The play tackled questions that preoccupy women the world over: the female body, gender-based violence, the struggle for equality. The all-female cast, the staging, even the audience, made up largely of young women, could easily be imagined in London, Paris or New York. Yet several things made the experience unmistakably Ukrainian.
Before the performance began, a recorded voice calmly explained what to do in the event of an air raid alert. Such alerts are frequent across the country and, in Kyiv, can sound several times a day and throughout most nights. Ukrainian theatregoers are as accustomed to these pre-show instructions as audiences elsewhere are used to being asked to switch their phones to silent.
The next reminder came through the play itself, which was titled Misiachni (“Period”). Based on verbatim testimonies, it brought together different experiences of womanhood, all bearing the mark of the war. One woman discovered she was pregnant at the same time as learning that her husband was missing in action. Another posted revealing photographs on social media to raise money for army equipment. Whether the stories touched on death, harassment and sexual violence, or birth, intimacy and pleasure, they also spoke of war. The playwright, Alina Sarnatska, is herself a veteran of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The play drew on the work of feminist authors including Rebecca Solnit, Virginie Despentes and Solomiia Pavlychko. That, too, was a reminder that this show was not in London, Paris or New York. In those cities, most theatregoers would have heard of the first two names; Pavlychko, a Ukrainian literary scholar, philosopher and feminist theorist, is unlikely to feature in a script not written by a Ukrainian. And that is a pity because, like many thinkers from the “margins” of old empires, her writing brings freshness to familiar debates.
This points to a broader problem. Although Russia’s latest wave of imperial violence against the people and culture of Ukraine is failing, my country’s cultural heritage remains largely unknown beyond its borders. That is true not only of the classics, but also of work produced despite the war, and, in many cases, because of it.
Embracing an unfamiliar culture demands curiosity, skill and funding. Yet how many western universities teach Ukrainian, offering readers the chance to encounter its literature in the original? How many publishers take on the unprofitable task of translating a text few yet recognise? And how many theatres risk programming an unknown company from a country that, for many, appears on the cultural map only because of the war?
The problem is reinforced by a self-fulfilling prophecy: what is staged, published and promoted is what is conventionally regarded as “great culture”. The result is that Russian cultural products remain firmly entrenched on western stages, in bookshops and in the collective imagination. In the fifth year of Russia’s full-scale war, and the 13th since it began its aggression against Ukraine, on any given day in London I can choose between opera, ballet and theatre based on Russian literature, or Russian music played in major concert halls. Yet if I were to ask my fellow Londoners to name a single cultural figure of Ukrainian origin, how many could do so?
Since 2022, Russia has killed at least 263 Ukrainian culture makers. Every time I cite this figure, I check the dedicated website that documents these deaths, and each time the number has increased.
“The purges and centuries of unimaginable pressure are why you don’t often hear about great Ukrainian literature, theatre and art,” wrote the Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina in spring 2022. “When you look at the map of Europe, you see Dante here and Shakespeare [there], but only a vast gap where Ukrainian culture should have been to make Europe whole and safe.” In July 2023, Amelina was killed by a Russian missile strike on a restaurant. She is one of the names on that database.
Culture is about security. For Russia—and other authoritarian states—it can serve as a weapon of war. For Ukrainians—and others standing up to neo-imperial aggression—it is a tool of resistance. And for those of us who are not yet caught up in conflict, the safety and integrity of our societies depend to a large extent on whether we allow cultural erasure to persist.
The show I saw in Kyiv ended with a well-deserved standing ovation. The actors paused the applause to remind the audience to stop by a collection box for the Armed Forces of Ukraine on their way out. That evening, the performance was not interrupted by an air raid.
