ZMINA: Rebuilding - Dmytro Zahkozhenko on his new eco-drama: "I am interested in ecology only as a tool to talk about war"

One of the projects supported by the ZMINA: Rebuilding grant programme is the eco-drama The Birds at the Lesya Ukrainka Theater in Lviv. We spoke to the play's director, Dmytro Zakhozhenko, about the idea of the play and its implementation, about how to tell a foreign audience about the Russian war in Ukraine, about people under Russian occupation, and the need to give them a voice.

— Could you please tell me how the idea for this play came about?

— I have been carrying around the idea of this play for quite some time. I, like everyone else in Ukraine, have been held by this feeling, a sense of home. And a certain need to talk about home. I remember in May, about a year ago, we were at the ETC and European Forum conference in Opole. And there was a lot of talk about the environment, and this is exactly the topic that interested me a lot at the time and still does. It was the impact of war on the environment, and what war does to our country. Not only in the social context, but in the context of what happens to the land, air, and water. It was a period when there was still information that the Russians would blow up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, but at that time they had not yet blown it up. And I was reading analysis, a lot of analyses, about what would happen to the region if it was blown up.

And since this is my small homeland, I am from Kherson, I understand that this whole region is going to disappear from the face of the earth as I know it, one way or another, it will just be different. And I really wanted to talk about this and communicate about it, in particular, through theater, because I don't really have any other means. And I thought that this is a topic that should be brought up, in particular, for communication with European theaters, with European audiences. Obviously, the topic of ecology is close, something that is beyond the understanding of good and evil, something that they know, something that they feel, something that they understand.

And then somehow this dialog did not work out. The Europeans talked a lot about ecology, but, as it seemed to me, from a very weak position. I remember at a big conference dedicated to the so-called Green Theater, a big project of European theaters on how to reduce the carbon footprint of producing and distributing performances. And it made me so angry. And if you're interested in talking about the environment, then talk about the war in Ukraine. And it seemed to me that this is a very necessary angle, a necessary point with which to enter into a dialog. And I started constructing the play from this point.

I wanted to connect with the European theatrical tradition, so I took Aristophanes' “The Birds” as a basis. A play from which the play has only a title and some very, very rough plot. I also wanted to play with the form of ancient comedy. There is not much comedy there, but there is a little bit. And it was a very long process of developing and working out the texts. I worked with my wife, who was the playwright of this play, Nina. It was an active process of working with artists. We started right after the New Year, in January, and in February we started working with the actors and the choreographer. That's the story of the production.

— Why do you think it is so rare to hear about environmental problems caused by war in the West?

— Well, because these are invisible things. There is no photographic documentation and no in-depth research. They exist, but they are very specific, and specialized. There is no platform to talk about it. It is better to talk about things that the world will understand. This is a huge amount of work that needs to be done. We need to look for communication. But first of all, it is that all this remains invisible, all this remains unspoken. I don't know how reliable this information is, but one ecologist who is now in the Kherson region, some time ago, posted photos of the sea, and on the sea, on the horizon, there were fires. And he said that these are the burning towers of the militants, which our troops repelled six months ago, in August, I think. And they are, as I understood it, in the gray zone, when no one controls them, and they have been burning for six months. They are burning, and this is an unimaginable environmental disaster, it's just a disaster that no one voices anywhere because it is not visible, because it remains out of sight. And there are a lot of such disasters, a huge number of them. But it is obvious that when we talk about ecology and birds, because the play is called “The Birds”, and we have a little bit of talk about birds, we are not talking about birds, we are talking about people, we are talking about us, we are talking about our war. In this context, I am interested in ecology only as a tool, as a key to talk about the war.

They are burning, and this is an unimaginable environmental disaster, it's just a disaster that no one voices anywhere because it is not visible, because it remains out of sight.

Dmytro Zakhozhenko, 
director of the The Birds play

— Can you tell us in detail what your play is about?

— Apart from what I've already told you, I don't think I can add much more. The play is complex, it's very rich, there are a lot of images, and I wanted to make it extremely expressive. In terms of visuals, in terms of imagery, because a huge number of themes and topics are so heavy and difficult to make the viewer look at it all, and even more so to come to this play again, only somehow when we go beyond a simple narrative. The bulk of the performance is the stories of people who lived in Nova Kakhovka, people who remain under occupation today. This is a large number of choirs, a large number of very beautiful poetic texts written by Nina. It was the first time I worked with a choreographer in a performance, and I've obviously worked with people who seem to do some dancing, but it was the first time I worked directly with a choreographer and so thoroughly. That's why there is a great saturation of the physicality and plasticity. There is irony, there is sarcasm. In Aristophanes' play itself, the characters are divided into groups, there are people, there are birds, and there are gods. And I also wanted to leave some such references, so we brought this character, the god, on stage and saturated him with speeches, quotes from European and American politicians. And it turned out to be some kind of extraordinary, powerful, and scary collection. There are a lot of Trump quotes, and we turned it into a kind of hate speech.

There are some visions of apocalypse and nuclear war. But in the end, we still give a ray of hope.

Dmytro Zakhozhenko, 
director of the The Birds play

The play is a complex statement and a complex attempt to reflect on the reality we are in now. Obviously, we are talking about home, about the loss of this home, about the fact that we are losing some things irrevocably, about shared responsibility, because there are appeals there that I think are important and relevant for Europe. No matter how distant the war in Ukraine may seem to European politicians, there is no room for not taking responsibility. It is about a certain vulnerability and fragility of the world. There are some visions of apocalypse and nuclear war. But in the end, we still give a ray of hope.

— And how did the Ukrainian public react?

— The public reacted surprisingly well. I was a little bit afraid of the complexity of this statement, how well it would be heard, how well it would be accepted by our audience. And according to the feedback we received, it's amazing. I'm amazed at how well this play fits our audience. I am very pleased.

— Did you plan to show this play to foreign audiences?

— I created it with this in mind, thinking about the narratives we are laying down, how much they will be read in Ukraine, and how much they will be read in Europe. So, obviously, we are actively thinking about this now, working on it, and I also thought about it logistically, so that it would be possible to take it to Europe and assemble these sets, and somehow transport them. So yes, it is one of my dreams to show this play in Europe. It seems to me that it turned out to be a rather powerful statement and I would like it to be heard.

— Are you working on an English translation?

— Yes, we were thinking of translating it into English. There is a block of the performance that is based on the text, but it is not the main part. So I would say that there is a lot of plasticity, a lot of corporeal, a lot of performative.

— How much longer will the show run? How many more times can the public see it?

— This is Ukraine and the system of Ukrainian repertory theater, so I hope for many years, but we'll see. Because the play is complicated and it is quite difficult to maintain it. It's very difficult for the actors and for all the workshops, for the editors, it's very difficult to produce it. But I hope that it will remain in the repertoire for at least a few years.

For me, and in general, we took this image of birds as an image of innocence, it was from one of our ecologists that I read, an article about a voice without a voice and nature. And this image is about giving the opportunity to speak to those who are not allowed to speak.

Dmytro Zakhozhenko, 
director of the The Birds play

— If you don't know what is happening in the play at all, birds are often perceived as a symbol of freedom. What does this image mean to you?

— For me, and in general, we took this image of birds as an image of innocence, it was from one of our ecologists that I read, an article about a voice without a voice and nature. And this image is about giving the opportunity to speak to those who are not allowed to speak. That's why we play texts by people from the occupation because there is information that reaches us. But from a huge number of cities, we have basically no information about what is happening: in Melitopol, what is happening in Nova Kakhovka, what is happening in dozens and dozens of Ukrainian cities. How people survive there, what they think, how they feel about what is happening to them, how they experience this reality. And that is the image of birds singing beautifully, beautiful in themselves, who have no voice in reality.

— You say that it uses texts by people from the occupation. How did you work on these texts?

— Well, I don't know if it’s right to discuss this, because there is still a certain danger for these people. But I collected texts in the format of interviews and conversations. I just honestly don't know how safe it is to talk about it…

— Sure. I understand.

— Well, for example, there is a part in the play. It ends with an interview scene. We built this place, there is a chair, there are recorders, there are notebooks, there is an ashtray, there are cigarettes. We come in, light a cigarette and everyone leaves the stage. And the stage is empty. Then the voice of a person who is now under occupation is recorded. And for me it's just so heartbreaking. And this impossibility of her being here, the impossibility of her being present at this performance, at the premiere. It seems to me that a large number of European viewers are used to sympathising only with civilians. And now we are seeing fewer and fewer photographic reports, where there is no longer a picture of the civilian population. There is only the front line and only the deaths of soldiers, which, in a strange way, Europe perceives with absolute calm. But at the same time, a huge number of civilians who remain under occupation, who nobody talks about, about whom only Russia can formulate a picture, are filmed there for some of their propaganda material, and Europe is saturated with it. It also seems to me that this is one of the most important strategies for dialogue with Europe.

Author: Anna Siedykh

ZMINA: Rebuilding is a project co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme under a dedicated call for proposals to support Ukrainian displaced people and the Ukrainian Cultural and Creative Sectors. The project is a cooperation between IZOLYATSIA (UA), Trans Europe Halles (SE) and Malý Berlín (SK).