‘An active social act’: the Ukrainian playwright paying tribute to her mother on stage

‘My mother was born on the very day when the Germans were bombing so, when I told her to go to the bomb shelter, the first thing she said was: ‘I’m not going there. I was born there’’ … Olga and Sasha. Photograph: Sasha Denisova

For a year Sasha Denisova didn’t tell her mother, Olga, who lives in Ukraine, that she had written a play about her. When director Yury Urnov made plans to stage it in the US, Denisova vowed to herself every month: “I need to tell my mama. I need to tell my mama. I need to tell my mama.”

Finally, once Denisova arrived in Washington DC, 82-year-old Olga posed the question: what was she doing there? “I told her, ‘Mama, dear, please don’t worry. I wrote a play about you and myself. I tried to do a good job with this. This play is both factual but also fantastic. In this play you, Mama, kill Putin with a jar of pickles. If you want, I will send the play for you to read.’”