Theatre on Zhukiv continues to work on projects aimed at promoting contemporary drama in Ukrainian theatre: on 15–17 August, Kharkiv will host the third Drama Sprint festival, which this time is aimed at theatres in frontline cities.
Drama Sprint is a professional event designed for a specialist theatre audience, during which only the winning plays from the year’s playwriting competitions are presented. This year, the contemporary drama festival will present eight plays that received awards in 2024 in the form of performative readings. Both the directors of the readings and the professional audience of the festival are selected through open competitions, and the event aims to introduce professionals to contemporary drama and promote it in the theatre.
The programme focuses on artistic communities from the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. Among the applicants are directors, theatre scholars, managers, actors and artistic directors of theatres. A notable feature of this year’s selection is the significant presence of representatives from state theatres, which indicates a growing interest in new drama among professionals.
The festival programme includes performative readings, public discussions, presentations, professional discussions, master classes and networking.
The festival programme includes performative readings, public discussions, presentations, professional discussions, master classes and networking.
During the festival, the second volume of the anthology Drama Panorama 2024 will also be presented, bringing together the winning plays from five competitions: Contemporary Play Week, July Honey, Eurodram, TAW and the Short Drama Competition. The collection includes eight texts: Balance and Military Mother by Alina Sarnatska, Paraskeva by Olga Matsyupa, Maa, It Hurts! by Yurko Vovkogon and Hryhorii Semenchuk, Bunker. I’m Not Afraid of Anything Anymore‘ by Bohdan Adamenko, ’Ghosts in the Branches‘ by Valery Puzik, ’Bird in the Attic‘ by Oleg Mikhailov, and ’New York, +38″ by Oleksandr Zhugan. Six of these eight texts were written by military personnel.
The main events of the festival will be broadcast online, and after its completion, a series of readings of contemporary plays will take place in local theatres in frontline partner cities.
The festival is part of the project ‘Dramaturgy of Change: A Theatre Network for Public Dialogue,’ which is being implemented by the Theatre on Zhukiv with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. The initiative was one of 17 winners of the ‘Culture. Unity. Resilience’ competition among 144 applications submitted.
Source: Krytyka
