Profile
I am a theatre director, dramaturg, producer, curator, and currently British Academy Researcher at Risk Fellow at RCSSD.
I am originally trained as an artist in Art Academy in Ukraine. I worked as a theatre designer in different countries, including the USA, UK, Russia, Italy, Poland, Ukraine. I continued an exploration of the transdisciplinary approach to performance making and experimental practice during the MA course in Performance: Design and Practice led by Pete Brooks at Central Saint Martins.
I completed my PhD using practice-as-research methodology at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, under the title:‘Virtually True’. Intermedial Strategies in the Staging of War Conflict. In my research on the topic of mediatised war in 2015, I explored the inter-determining relationship between art and politics in the form of war conflicts and reconsidered mainstream narratives of war representations. I took a critical approach to mediatised culture and integrated aspects of popular forms like clubbing, museums and digital gaming in order to create new affective experiences for the audience in order to question the popular imagination of war. After the PhD award my research evolved with the decision to join the Civil Military Cooperation Unit (CIMIC) in Eastern Ukraine, supporting civilians living in the post-2014 war zone. Following mobilisation, I continued working with young people on creative research activities in frontline towns. In this work, theatre became an open platform for underrepresented social groups who, while literally in the firing line, had found themselves marginalised in media representations of the war. Since the full-scale Russian invasion my research continues to focus on the evolution of the military-industrial-media-entertainment complex, which facilitates virtually unlimited war across digital and ideological spaces, and which, in turn, transforms embodied and material warfare on the ground.
Areas of Expertise
- Intermediality
- Media theory
- Media and War
- Applied theatre
- Verbatim theatre
- Devising
- Directing and producing
- Contemporary theatre
Key Publications
(forthcoming) “Ukrainian Theatre” Chapter, Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance, due to be published.
“Empire Strikes Back: The 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, Postmodern Spectatorship, and the Battle of Perception in the Public Sphere”, chapter in book Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere. 2019.
“System A/I,” n.d. Tank Magazine. Accessed July 16, 2022.
“Ukraine’s Independence: Shaping New Political Narratives through Art”, Modern Diplomacy. August 27, 2021.
“How Ukrainian culture forms national identity”, n.d. Nv.ua. Accessed July 16, 2022.
“Virtually true or real game” OBOZREVATEL NEWS. November 21, 2020.
“Contact Line Performance: children witness death too early” OBOZREVATEL NEWS. October 13, 2020.
External Practice
Produced and co-organised Ukrainian Ballet Gala - a unique presentation of Ukrainian performance art on the UK stage showcasing the world-renowned traditions and innovation of the modern Ukrainian ballet school at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, September 7, 2021.
Directed and produced performance project Contact Line, which aimed to explore the possibilities of reintegration of Eastern Ukraine. Production was made in collaboration with Ukrainian House. Premiered in Ukrainian House, Kyiv, 2021. Contact Line was part of Dissident Voices produced and presented by The Cockpit in collaboration with PEN International, 2022.
Directed and produced zoom performance A Visit to the Minotaur, a documentary performance which tells authentic stories directly from war-torn Ukraine, as part of Voila Europe Theatre, 2022.
Register of Interest
Nothing to declare.
