Staged Reading Of HUNGER Sheds Light On The Importance Of Art And Language Preservation at The Ukrainian Museum in New York City

The Ukrainian Museum in New York City will host a staged reading of Bohdan Boychuk's Hunger on May 4, 2023. The play dramatizes Holodomor, Stalin's genocide, via famine, imposed on Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. In this new, bilingual adaptation by director Emma Denson and Ukrainian scholar Maria Rewakowicz (who was also married to Boychuk), the play centers the impact of Holodomor on four generations of women, and warns against history repeating itself as Ukrainian art, language, and lives are once again in peril.

A staged reading of this work premiered in January 2023 at the Irish Arts Center as part of Origin Theatre Company's First Irish Festival. Now, the Ukrainian Museum will host the second staged reading, giving audiences another opportunity to experience this moving and impactful play.

The event includes a talk with actor Marina Vogtsberger, who shares her grandmother's experience as a child during the Holodomor. With this reading, the team hopes to preserve and honor Ukrainian art and culture in the face of renewed threats.

In March of this year, Emma was an artist-in-residence at her alma mater, Mississippi State University, where she directed a reading of Hunger with the current students. After each performance of the reading, Dr. Stephen Brain (a Soviet/Russian History professor) contextualized the history of Holodomor for the audience. He said of the project, "The incalculable, needless suffering, and the astonishing Bolshevik cruelty defy description. When words fail, we turn to art, and therefore we have today's performance of Hunger".

This is the second staged reading of the play in New York City, with hopes to raise funds for a fully staged production. This event is made possible by a generous grant from the Ukrainian National Women's League of America, and from the support of the following organizations: The Ukrainian Museum, Origin Theatre Company, and Mississippi State University.