Theatre Has Gone Underground in Kharkiv – Literally. An Interview with Ukrainian Playwright and Theater-maker Dmytro Ternoviy. Part 2.

This is Part 2 of the interview with Dmytro Ternoviy.

For Part 1, go here.

Dmytro Ternoviy’s answers are translated from Ukrainian into English.

John Freedman: Kharkiv is one of the oldest and most important cities in Ukraine’s history. An argument can be made that Russian intellectual and spiritual life was actually formed and developed in Kharkiv. Do you think this has anything to do with the ferocity of Russia’s ongoing attacks?

Dmytro Ternoviy: Russians live in a world of their own perverted logic and cannot believe that no one wants to see them here. There are, of course, a certain number of zhduni – that is, Russian sympathizers waiting for the Russians to come – but that is true everywhere, even in Western Europe. Russians believe that they understand Ukraine very well, and that Ukrainians are the same as Russians. Kharkiv, in their worldview, is a part of that same “Russian world.” In fact, it’s all quite the opposite. There is no mystery as to why Putin is stumbling over Ukraine for a third time (the Orange Revolution, followed by the Maidan Revolution of Dignity, and finally the large-scale invasion). The residents of Kharkiv (even if they are Russian-speakers) mostly identify as Ukrainians. In general, Kharkiv is a historically free land. This region is called “slobozhanshchyna” because there were free settlements here. This area was settled by the Cossacks, and governance among Cossack regiments was built on the principles of democracy everywhere. According to historians, it can be seen how, for about two centuries, the Russian Empire gradually, step by step, tamed these people, took away their freedoms, subjugated them and put them at their service. But even at the beginning of the 20th century, the vast majority of the population here spoke Ukrainian. Total Russification took place under the Soviet government — it was a purposeful policy, driven mainly by the effects of the Holodomor and a large influx of immigrants from Russia. Still, in the 1920s and 1930s Kharkiv flourished as the center of Ukrainian literature, theatre, and art, a period known well as the Executed Renaissance, for this entire cultural phenomenon, which was not at all oriented toward Russian culture, but looked to Europe to generate completely independent artistic strivings, was utterly destroyed – physically – by the Soviets. After that, the city became a Soviet province for a long time. When Ukraine declared independence, despite the massive Russification that had taken place, Kharkiv identified itself as a Ukrainian city for some time, although it was committed to cooperation and trade with neighboring Russia. In the minds of Russians, if Russian is spoken somewhere, it is their land. I suspect they had no idea that Kharkiv would put up such desperate resistance when the war began. Russia, living inside an artificial myth that it created itself, can neither accept nor understand this. Even a year ago, someone might have been able to think that the endless air attacks were a certain revenge for “resistance and betrayal” from the Russian point of view. But now it is clear that the Russian narrative of the “liberation of its compatriots” has failed utterly, while the war has become an attempt to exterminate everything Ukrainian, to destroy the Ukrainian state as such, and to invade ever more new lands. Regarding Kharkiv, they do it simply because they can. It is so easy. This city currently containing one million people is very close to the border (30 kilometers) and is still utterly unprotected from the air: we do not have air defense systems to shoot down ballistic missiles or enemy planes. The situation began to improve only when we were finally allowed to strike enemy territories with Western weapons, and our armed forces were able to hit installations that regularly launched rockets into the city. But Russian jets still continue to fly over us and bomb us every day. We still have neither F-16 fighter jets nor Patriot missiles.

JF: How long did the first siege last at the beginning of the war? And when did the current one begin? How long has it been going on?

DT: The semi-siege of the city lasted from the beginning of the war until September 2022, when the very first lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive of this war took place. At that time the Russians quickly fled from the Kharkiv region, abandoning equipment, and ammunition. They launched the second offensive on May 10 of this year simultaneously in two directions and managed to advance approximately seven or eight kilometers in the north of the region. The situation remains tense, but at least it now looks like that advance has been blocked. Our armed forces are even beginning to push the Russians out of these areas. But the battles are very tough and the situation can change any day.

JF: You told me recently that your theatre, Teatr na Zhukah, is located at the very end of the city. Beyond it is nothing but forest and then, 23 kilometers after that, the Russian border. You also told me it has been closed since the beginning of the war, and that it has been hit by bombs. Where does that leave you and your colleagues? How do you live with something like that?

DT: Yes, we once joked that this is Eastern Europe’s easternmost theatre, for it really is the last building in this city that looks toward the border. The school building, to which the theatre is attached, was completely destroyed by a direct hit. Of course, the school is now closed, and the children study online. We recently visited our building. It survived, but it is, like the entire school, in rather bad condition. The fact is that the roof was damaged badly by flying debris, and it began to leak. As such, individual classes were flooded with rainwater. The theatre was damaged less, but, unfortunately, the plaster is now peeling off in places. These are small things when viewed in light of the general situation, but, of course, it is difficult for us to accept. We expended a great deal of effort there. It is a place that has been blessed by many years of daily work, and now it is a wasteland.

JF: I know another playwright from Kharkiv, Oleh Mikhailov, who writes Facebook posts everyday telling the day-to-day story of your city in short snippets. He turned some of those posts into a wonderful play text called 41 Days – they give a picture of the first 41 days of the war. What are you doing to maintain yourself as a writer, a theatre-maker?

DT: Work is what saves us, of course. I wrote a couple of plays, an opera libretto, some scripts for documentary films (one has already been filmed and watched by 1.5 million viewers, another is currently being shot),3 and I developed a script for a feature film. Additionally, I do various theatre projects aimed mainly at the promotion of contemporary Ukrainian drama. In particular, we have created an online library called Ukrainian Drama Translations – it is a very convenient tool for foreign theatre artists who may be interested in our drama. We also launched a theatre translation competition to attract the attention of translators to drama, and we have already conducted two such competitions. Next, there is the very popular Ukrdramahab site that was relaunched as an open platform where playwrights can independently exhibit their texts. We organized two festivals of contemporary drama in 2022 and 2023 called Drama Sprint, where all the winning texts of various drama competitions were read. Also in 2023 we organized another event based on the same principle where the winning texts were published in the Drama Panorama 2023 anthology. Almost all Ukrainian drama theatres received a copy of this anthology, and many of the published plays are already being staged in various regions.

The Incomplete Flight, a documentary directed by Mykola Korotkiy and scripted by Dmytro Ternovyi, may be watched with English subtitles:

 

JF: You told me there is little to no live theatre happening in Kharkiv right now. Only the rare performances that can take place in basements and/or bomb shelters. Tell me a little bit about how culture and theatre, in specific, are surviving. What would I see if I attended some of those performances?

DT: Yes, the fact is that theatres are prohibited from performing in their own spaces due to security restrictions. This ban has long been discussed as an unfair restriction, since cinemas and shopping centers continue to operate. Kharkiv is almost the only city in the country where such a theatre ban is in effect. But with the resumption of heavy shelling, the discussions subsided, as the issue of security again came to the fore. But the paradox is that even when the city was semi-encircled in the first year of the war, and when there were almost no people left here, culture turned out to be very important for those who remained. Even then there were one-off concerts, play performances, even jazz and theatre festivals. Now, when there are more than a million people in the city, culture is in great demand. There are performances, open lectures, and readings. Premieres are staged. Public conferences, discussions, contests, and festivals are organized. Of course, all this is not in the same quantities as before the war, but culture and the arts are alive. The traditional annual Kharkiv music fest, which features star performers, just ended recently. It was a very daring event that took place in tandem with the daily shelling. Incidentally, the organizer and main long-term patron of this festival is the Factor publishing group, the same one whose printing house was bombed by the Russians on May 23 with three S300 missiles, killing seven workers and injuring 20, some of them gravely. Fifty-thousand books were burned there, and now an exhibit of these burnt books is traveling to libraries in Europe. It was a deliberate attack on Ukrainian culture and education, for this is the most modern and largest printing house in Ukraine. It published much creative literature and almost half of the country’s school textbooks. But to get back to theatre… How do theatres deal with this? They literally go underground. In Kharkiv, it can be said that underground culture is flourishing in the literal sense of the word. All major events take place underground. The problem is that the number of underground venues adapted for theatrical performances is very limited. There are only a few in the whole city. And now several municipal theatres, the state opera, and several independent theatres are quite actively working underground. I think if you went to two or three such events now, you would see full houses and many inspired faces in the hall.

JF: Let’s say the war ends this evening. Are you right back in your theatre cleaning up, repairing and getting ready to reopen, or is that too optimistic a way of describing things?

DT: A theatre is not just a place. It is, above all, people. The team will have to be assembled almost from scratch. To be honest, we are still not looking that far ahead. Our horizon for making plans is now narrowed to a few days at most.

JF: Optimism. Surely one of the most damaged, compromised, misunderstood and, maybe, pointless words in our languages today. However. Do you have optimism? About what? I’m not at all asking you to end this Q&A on a “positive” note. I myself, “fighting” this war from my place, in my utterly inadequate way, have found that I simply push optimism aside. I pay it no mind. I have no faith in it. I expect nothing from it. But what about you? As you think about your bombed-out theatre, your wounded and bleeding city, your neighbors who have perished… How do you stand up to all that, and is there any room for something like “optimism” in that?

DT: Perhaps my answer will seem inappropriate, but I will tell you a story. Not far from us  there is a house, the owners of which began making major repairs before the war, constantly improving the appearance of the house and the area around it. They have not stopped this process during the war. I recently passed by there and saw young trees planted all around, new tiles installed in front of the house, new flower gardens planted. And you know, it turns out that such things are very inspiring and supportive! Someone does their heroic combat work at the front, while someone else believes in the best, builds and improves the space around them. People with such faith are fascinating. My optimism has not died, although it is definitely tempered by the news. We have become information-dependent, and the flow of information is very uneven. We seem to be trapped on a crazy emotional swing between good and bad all the time.

And here’s another vignette about the amazing people of Kharkiv. We all donate to some fundraiser or another all the time. There are dozens every day. There are so many that you often scroll through them in your feed without reading them. This is the third year of war after all… And then just now one of Kharkiv channels announced an urgent collection to purchase three relatively inexpensive vehicles for the front. Cars are expendable commodities in war; they usually last just a few trips. So this channel announced that it needed to collect 600 thousand hryvnia (about $15,000). Then they closed the call for donations just six minutes later, because the entire amount had been collected. I never cease to be amazed.

JF: What did the long delay of American aid mean for Kharkiv? Would the situation be better if not for the drawn-out obstruction of the US Congress at the end of 2023?

DT: It would be better for the whole country, not only for Kharkiv. Because of this delay we once again went through a period where our frontline soldiers were short on ammunition, when the ratio of shots was as high as 10:1 in favor of the Russians. At the cost of the lives of many soldiers, and superhuman efforts on the front, we were able to contain the situation. But we payed a terrible, utterly tragic price. Even now, aid is not coming in very quickly. Our military says that the situation is changing extremely slowly. We are sincerely grateful to each of our partners that provide us opportunities for protection. But everyone must understand that this war is not just our war. Ukraine is a very peaceful country, we have never encroached on anyone’s territory. All we want is to live on our land by our labors and our wits. After the collapse of the USSR, we voluntarily surrendered our nuclear weapons to the great powers that guaranteed our independence and the sovereignty of our territory. This is the only precedent in history of a voluntary abandonment of a nuclear shield. Then, back in 2014, one of the “guarantors” attacked us at the moment when we were most vulnerable, taking part of our land, while the other “guarantors,” instead of immediately confronting the aggressor, began negotiating with it. Then, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Western nations at first hemmed and hawed whether to give us weapons or not. And after that, they began thinking hard about which weapons to give us, and in what portions. Now we are told where we can strike and where we cannot strike, what we can hit and what we cannot hit. At first, everyone expected our defeat, then everyone expected us to win. This at a time when we still do not have air superiority. At a time when, in the third year of war, the sky is still not closed, and as a result, cities like Kharkiv are simply being shot at like a target in a shooting range. But this war is ours alone only as long as we are able to stand. If, God forbid, Ukraine falls, this war will spread to the entire Western world. Russia will not stop. Its empire can only expand, this is the law of its existence, and war is the only thing Russia can export now. Just look at the axis of evil they are rebuilding, and the hybrid operations they are already conducting everywhere in the West. To stop Russia, we need the constant, continuous, comprehensive aid of the entire free world. Only in this way is there a chance that the war will stop here, on Europe’s easternmost border. I know, the reality of war is very hard to believe. We also did not believe until the very last that we would find ourselves engulfed in this horror.