A DICTIONARY OF EMOTIONS IN A TIME OF WAR Comes to the Finborough Theatre

The Finborough Theatre's new digital initiative #FinboroughFrontier continues with the third in an ongoing season of online readings and performances of Ukrainian Plays as a part of the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Reading Series, a collaboration with the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv to read new Ukrainian plays around the world. In addition, true to our policy of pairing vibrant new writing with unique rediscoveries, we will also be presenting readings and performances of classic Ukrainian drama and poetry in English.

Yelena goes through the words describing emotions that have continually visited her ever since the war began: fear, hunger, cleaning, betrayal, hatred, love, guilt and conversations with Russian friends vs. conversations with Ukrainian friends...

Imagine what it's like for someone whose home is being bombed, whose chance of getting a loaf of bread equals the number of weeks spent in a queue, and who might be shot in her car if she tries to leave town. Yelena tries to make sense of her 'new life' and carry on with her daily routine. And when a Russian girlfriend tries to understand - Yelena will explain, but at the back of her mind she is thinking about the deaths from thirst, due to damage to the water system, and her Ukrainian friend who can't leave the country without her cat. And she will recall the complicated relationship with her boyfriend - because as the war continues - love is the most important word to preserve in your dictionary.

Playwright Yelena Astaseva was born in 1973 in the city of Kherson, Ukraine, where she lives to this day. She studied at the Kiev Institute of Culture and worked as a librarian, bookseller and copywriter. Her plays have been repeatedly shortlisted for the Ukrainian festival Actual Play Week and she has had her work performed in the theatres of Kherson and Kyiv. She is one of the founding members of the Theater of Playwrights in Kyiv.

Translator John Freedman previously worked in Russia and now lives in Greece. He is the curator of two Worldwide Play Readings projects: Insulted. Belarus and Ukrainian Play Readings.

Director Evgenia Kovryga is an emerging director and writer, originally from Ukraine. She was always involved in creative disciplines, and graduated with MA Advanced Theatre Practice at the Royal School of Speech and Drama in 2021. A cultural dialogue and engagement with an audience are important in her work as a theatre-maker. She is also interested in physicality and cinematography and experiments with multimedia in live performance.


Available FREE TO VIEW on the Finborough Theatre YouTube channel #FinboroughFrontier.

All videos are free to view but we do ask for donations for Voices.org.ua, a Ukrainian charity providing urgently needed psychological and psychosocial support to children affected by the war in Ukraine. For more information, click here.

Available from Monday, 13 June at 6.00pm
Simultaneously available free with subtitles on Scenesaver
www.scenesaver.co.uk
Performance Length: 25 minutes.