Tatiana Voltskaya's Poems Will Premiere On The Finborough Theatre Youtube Channel Next Week

The Finborough Theatre's digital initiative #FinboroughFrontier continues with another 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 to the Worldwide Readings series, and true to our policy of pairing vibrant new writing with unique rediscoveries, this production will be the first of our readings and performances of classic Ukrainian drama and poetry in English.

Tatiana Voltskaya's poems will premiere on the Finborough Theatre YouTube channel on Monday, 29 August 2022 at 6.00pm here, and will be simultaneously available with subtitles on Scenesaver here.

"Russia will be abolished. Together with Pushkin and Tolstoy.
When the smoke over Ukraine
Dissipates,
Only the ruins
Of our realm will show."

So writes Tatiana Voltskaya - one of Russia's leading poets, winner of the Pushkin Prize and many other awards. Since February 2022, she has in exile in Georgia where she has been writing an extraordinary series of poems about Russia's war on Ukraine.

These war poems don't just protest against Putin's war - they are a lacerating condemnation of her entire country. A howl of rage and pain about what the Russian people have enabled.

Last October, whilst still in Russia, Voltskaya was officially declared a Foreign Agent for her outspoken views - the only poet ever so named. Most Russian literary voices have been silenced, but not Voltskaya's. These powerful and courageous poems are not just the work of a great poet, but a hugely important Russian voice against the war.

"Trampling spring, squashing love,
Planting just the dead,
The monster Viy stalks Ukraine
With his giant letter Z."

Tatiana Voltskaya is one of Russia's best known poets, author of more than fifteen major collections, including Cicada and Stay with me. Her poems have also been published in many literary magazines such as Zvezda and Novy Mir and she has won many poetry awards including the Pushkin Prize, the Interpoetry magazine award, the Voloshin competition and the All-Russian poetry competition 'The Lost Tram'. As a critic and publicist, she was co-editor of the St. Petersburg literary magazine Postscriptum.
She is also a journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, writing on social issues with such a commitment to the truth that she has long been a target for the Russian authorities. In summer 2021, the Russian authorities tried unsuccessfully to jail her for the distribution of "false information about the coronavirus" over an article she wrote about a lack of ventilators for COVID-19 patients in St Petersburg hospitals. But in October 2021, Voltskaya along with four other journalists - and the only poet ever - was designated a 'foreign agent'. This means she must submit for daily audit by the Ministry of Justice and account for her movements every minute and declare on every media and social media post that she is a 'foreign agent'. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she left for Georgia after it became clear to her that she could no longer remain in her beloved St Petersburg. Her two adult sons are both activists and insisted on staying behind.

Translator John Farndon whose version of Neda Nezhdana's Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, part of Two Ukrainian Plays at the Finborough Theatre.
John is a writer, poet, playwright and songwriter living in London, and a translator of literature from Eurasia, including many plays for the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings series. He has written over a thousand books on science, nature and other topics, translated into most languages, and include many international best-sellers. He has been shortlisted five times for the Young People's Science Book Prize. His plays include Anya (Donmar Warehouse), High Risk Zone (Almeida Theatre), The Naked Guest (Pleasance Edinburgh), Lope De Vega's verse play Dog in a Manger (Cockpit Theatre) and an adaptation of Mozart's Il Seraglio (Plymouth Theatre Royal, Salisbury Playhouse and Riverside Studios, London). His translations of the poetry of Lidia Grigorieva were nominated for five major awards, including the Griffin. He was joint winner of the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize for translating the poetry in Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov's The Devil's Dance, and finalist for the 2020 US PEN Translation Award for his translation of Kazakh writer Rollan Seysenbaev's The Dead Wander in the Desert. He has also translated the lyrics of Vladimir Vysotsky. A large bilingual collection of his own poetry is currently being published in Uzbek and English. He ran the Arc venue at the Edinburgh Fringe and also the Cauldron­­­ series of poetry and music events. He was a Royal Literary Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and City and Guilds in London and was chairman of the Eurasian Creative Guild 2019-2021. He is also a judge for New Plays, Most Promising New Playwrights, Production and Performance Pieces for the OffWestEnd Theatre Awards. Recently, his translations of Ukrainian plays have been presented in readings all over the world, including world premieres of two of his translations Polina Pologonceva's Save the Light and Andriy Bondarenko's Fox Dark as Light Night opened recently at Barons Court Theatre in London, and Neda Nezhdana's He Who Opens the Door will open at A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Òran Mór, Glasgow, in August.

Performed by Kristin Milward who is currently appearing in Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, part of Two Ukrainian Plays at the Finborough Theatre.
Previous productions at the Finborough Theatre include the OffWestEnd Award nominated A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynaecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, Love Child, I Wish To Die Singing, Natural Inclinations, The Early Hours of A Reviled Man, The Woman of Troy, Portraits and Child of the Forest.
Theatre includes The Massacre at Paris (Rose Playhouse), Huis Clos (King's Head Theatre), The Illustrious Corpse (Soho Theatre), Woman of Troy (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), The Snow Palace (Tricycle Theatre), Wounds to the Face and Uncle Vanya (The Wrestling School), The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Latchmere Theatre), La Chunga (Old Red Lion Theatre), Les Liaisons Dangerous (Royal Shakespeare Company), Burleigh Grimes (Bridewell Theatre), The Chance (Belfast Festival), The Merchant of Venice (Phoenix Theatre, Leicester), A View From a Bridge (Library Theatre, Manchester), When We Dead Awaken and Nijinsky (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield), The Triumph of Death (Birmingham REP), Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet (Contact Theatre, Manchester), Devour the Snow (Bush Theatre) and Plunder (National Theatre).
Film includes Freestyle, A Little Chaos, Poppyland, City of the Dead and The Fool.
Television includes Arabs in London, New Tricks, To the Lighthouse and EastEnders.

Available FREE TO VIEW from Monday, 29 August 2022 at 6.00pm
Simultaneously available free with subtitles on Scenesaver here.
Performance Length: 25 minutes.
Available on the Finborough Theatre YouTube channel #FinboroughFrontier here.

All videos are free to view but we do ask for donations for The Voices of Children Foundation, a Ukrainian charity providing urgently needed psychological and psychosocial support to children affected by the war in Ukraine. Click here to read more.