“The Zhuky Theatre is launching a new project aimed at promoting contemporary drama in the theatres of frontline cities.
The project includes the third Drama Sprint festival in Kharkiv, which will take place on 15-17 August.
“Drama Sprint is a professional event for a professional theatre audience, presenting only the winning plays of the year’s playwriting competitions. This year, the Contemporary Drama Festival will present eight plays that won awards in 2024 in the form of performative readings. Both the directors of the readings and the professional audience of the festival are selected in open competitions, and the event is aimed at introducing professionals to contemporary drama and promoting it in the theatre.
“The repertoires of many theatres still remain detached from the current agenda, and our idea is that theatre should become more modern, open to the problems of society and the needs of communities. We see the key to this as influencing repertoire policy by fostering interest in contemporary drama, because it is playwrights who are the fastest to respond and instantly react to the challenges of the times in their works,” said Dmytro Ternovyi, project manager, playwright and co-founder of the Zhuky Theatre.
He stressed that for the first time Drama Sprint is being held outside Kyiv and will be focused on communication with representatives of theatres in the frontline regions: ‘This is a conscious gesture of decentralisation and support for those cities where culture is facing daily resistance,’ added Ternovyi.
In addition to the performative readings, the festival will feature a presentation of the new volume of the Drama Panorama 2024 anthology, which includes the winners of the 2024 playwriting competitions, discussions with authors and directors about contemporary theatre, master classes by renowned artists who have already worked with contemporary drama, and extensive professional networking.
The audience of the festival will be expanded by online broadcasts of the main events. At the end of the Drama Sprint, a series of readings of contemporary plays will be held in participating theatres from frontline cities.
“For several years now, the Zhuky Theatre has been actively working to promote contemporary drama. In particular, it has initiated two Drama Sprint festivals in Kyiv, launched an annual publication of the best plays of the year, Drama Panorama, launched the Steshenko Theatre Translation Competition, modernised the popular Ukrdramahab online library, created the Ukrainian Drama Translations website, and held a series of readings of Ukrainian drama in the United States.
The third Drama Sprint and readings of contemporary drama in frontline cities are part of a new project by the Zhuky Theatre, Drama of Change: A Theatre Network for Social Dialogue, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation. The project won the IRF competition “Culture. Unity. Resilience” competition and was selected by the Foundation’s experts as one of 17 winners among 144 applications submitted to the competition.
Source: Interfax-Ukraine
