Ukrainian Actor Mirra Zhuchkova on the Cabaret Show Created in the Kyiv Bunkers: 'All My Projects Are About the Battlefield'

A year ago today, Russia began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Bunker Cabaret by Ukrainian theatre company Hooligan Art Community (HAC) will mark this sombre anniversary at Somerset House with shows tonight and tomorrow.

The invasion had a severe effect on the company: their work was disassembled overnight and their artists displaced. Three months later, the company came together - either remotely from Germany where some of them had fled or from the bunkers in Kyiv where some sought safety - to create a new work in these challenging circumstances.

Bunker Cabaret combines music, poetry and dance, and has already been performed in places including Cornwall, and Leipzig and Berlin in Germany. Two HAC founders - Sam Kyslyi and Danylo Shramenko - were unable to leave Ukraine due to a wartime law. Together with fellow founder Mirra Zhuchkova and other company members who had moved to Germany, they came up with the idea for a show using short films recorded in a bunker in Kyiv during rocket attacks of themselves performing songs, satire and sketches.

Directed by Peter Cant, Bunker Cabaret takes place as part of the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture, designed by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute, with additional funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The UK tour has been co-produced by Hooligan Art Community and Mahogany Opera in collaboration with Andrea Ferran and imPOSSIBLE Producing.

In May 2020, HAC film director Lyubov Slyusareva and Zhuchkova went to Kharkiv to shoot Hooligan: In The Field, a film about personal responses to the freedoms and restrictions of lockdown. The following year, Shramenko and Zhuchkova went to Dnipro to develop a new online film project Radiation, exploring the legacy of Chernobyl, inheritance and decay. In December 2021, they performed the piece in Kyiv.

Over email, Zhuchkova told us more about HAC, her work on the Hooligans In The Field and Radiation films and her current feelings on the war.

---

You've said that "I am the third child in the family, the third daughter, the youngest of the three. I feel that this is the most important thing." Why is this so important?

This is where everything starts and continues. The identity. Where and when, and who these people are, they gave me a birth. The gradation, the circles, the heritage. My story is about the girl who is the youngest in the family. A family which has three children, three women.

From my perspective it's about the power which influences me, and with the acceptance of which, I create my future. And sometimes I can just face it, and feel who I am in the moment.

What's the appeal of the Hooligan Art Community for you?

Hooligan Art Community for me is community. And art. It is my personal open resistance against a system of things, words, prejudices and my own subconscious. I like that it makes me think and feel what it means to be alive.

You've done a mix of stage and film work. Do you have a preference and why?

A year ago, I would have said that I preferred cinema more because I always dreamed of making cinema but hadn't yet. And the idea of going on the stage was mostly painful for me! Even when I chose to make it in my own way, it was painful,

But now I know there is no 'yes' or 'no' for what I am doing or not. I know that there is no cinema for me without going on the stage, with questions for myself. And also without listening to music and looking at paintings. I know that art is always about beauty and life.

What was the film Hooligans In The Field about and where did the idea for the film come from?

I consider everything, including life (existence) itself, like a work in progress. In the moment of creating Hooligans In The Field, we were at different points not only geographically, but also as artists. I can say that for me the origin of the idea of making this film came from curiosity about where of us are now. Somehow, all my projects with HAC are about the battlefield. My formation as a human was about the battlefield, and since then, I've started to understand myself.

One summer, I think it was in 2014, I wrote the script, which then became a platform for my part of (HAC). It's called "In The Field". The story, which was based on a therapeutic practice about the "hero's journey", started simply from the field and became for me something like a fight with an invisible enemy.

For me, "in the field" means: just be there, in the field of feelings. It is also about finding yourself in conditions where you have to survive. The film currently is considered as finished and realised. But we're continuing our work with Hooligan and we have some plans for this year.

Where did the inspiration for Radiation come from?

I don't remember that we wanted to do exactly this topic, but this is radiation, you know. You never know when it already inside of you. But, yeah, discovering this topic was extremely necessary. From my childhood I've heard a lot of stories about the Chernobyl catastrophe, and it touched my family too.

Do you have a personal connection to Chernobyl?

My mum was pregnant with my older sister. She was in Kyiv which is not far from Chernobyl. They are alive. They escaped then to Siberia. Siberia! It's so insane. You know of course that all the information was hidden then by the Soviet government.

Oh my God, I shudder inside realising all these lies, the untruths, which spread like a radiation until recently. To perform it after lockdown was a premonition of the full Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It's a year now since Russia invaded Ukraine. What were your thoughts in the lead up to the war and when it began?

At the time, I was completely unconscious in my actions and my thoughts and I was in a very deep depression. I had had many dreams that were exactly the same as the day of the invasion after I saw it in real life: falling planes, anxiety, alarm. Back then, it was romantic (characterised by my depression view) and mysterious; now it is very clear to understand and dark to feel.

Have your feelings about the war changed since it began?

The main difference now is that I see it every day. It exists not only in my dreams, it's here, among us, in a very precise way. Westerners need to realise at a physical and mental level, that this war is not only a Ukrainian war. War is not only there, in Ukraine. This horror is happening with all of humans right now. Online. Live broadcast. And sometimes you just have to pull yourself together and "re-member" yourself, and fight. And everyone knows what is needed the most on the battlefield.

Finally, you've been away from Ukraine for about ten months now. What do you miss most about living there?

The only thing I miss (and it seems like it is not even from my lifetime on this planet) is that I miss this land without war, famine, terror, murders and radiation. I miss all of that and what the Ukrainian people deserve: long happy life, wealth and joy. Ukrainian land is endless childhood. To the people which I've known there: open heart. Open Heart.

Bunker Cabaret is at Somerset House tonight and tomorrow.

Photo Credit: Steve Tanner

To post a comment, you must register and login.