A “real wartime cabaret” which originated in a bunker in Kyiv is to be performed in London to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine.
Bunker Cabaret combines music, poetry and dance, and has been performed in places including Cornwall, and Leipzig and Berlin in Germany.
The next stop is Somerset House on Friday and Saturday, with the aim to highlight the resilience of Ukrainian artists one year after Russia invaded their country on February 24 2022.
“It’s a very particular event that we’re revisiting – the material is about the beginning, as well as what’s happened since and the struggles for each artist about what you say at this time,” director Peter Cant, 36, told the PA news agency.
“You can go online and find all the information about what happened in Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin, if you want to educate yourselves about the nature of the genocide that’s taking place.
“So what do we as artists have a responsibility to say? What are we going to offer to allow audiences another way in? We have the chance to share something that isn’t being shared.”
Mr Cant is one of the founders of Hooligan Art Community – an independent theatre company which began in Kyiv in 2019 – which wrote and stars in Bunker Cabaret.
Fellow founders of the company, which was separated after the invasion, include Mirra Zhuchkova, 25, Sam Kyslyi, 28, and Danylo Shramenko, 26.
Mr Kyslyi and Mr Shramenko, who were unable to leave Ukraine due to a wartime law, sparked the idea for the show through recording short films in a bunker in Kyiv – during rocket attacks – of themselves performing songs, satire and sketches.
These were sent to the rest of the team who were living in Germany as a means of allowing the group to feel as though they were still together.
“The first impulse to make the show came to us when we were separated. We had this strong wish to be united again,” Mr Kyslyi told PA.
“The material we made in the bunker acted as kind of this bridge which we created between us and we felt that somehow we are kind of coming together.”
Mr Cant added: “Once we found out that we could get permission for the male members of the company to get out of Ukraine thanks to the Ministry of Culture in Ukraine, we knew we had to take all that work they had been doing and put that on stage and build a show around it, so from the bunker came the cabaret.”
Ms Zhuchkova spoke about February 24 of last year and the “different” feelings among the company.
“I feel like everyone from our company has different experiences about what they were feeling on the day of the invasion”, she told PA.
“I had plans to go to Germany in May before the war happened and it’s interesting because when the full invasion started, I didn’t want to leave Ukraine and my city because I wanted to protect my city.
“When I had to leave Ukraine, I immediately turned to creating performances.”
I feel like if audiences come, what they're really seeing is a real wartime cabaret. We have somehow the duty to express the crisis of being an artist, that's the crisis of being in the war right now— Sam Kyslyi
The group was reunited at the end of August 2022 in the UK.
“When we were together again, it was a big thing – we are doing something in crazy, extreme circumstances, but at the same time we cannot stop doing it, we have to do it to spread the message about the war,” Mr Kyslyi said.
“I feel like if audiences come, what they’re really seeing is a real wartime cabaret. We have somehow the duty to express the crisis of being an artist, that’s the crisis of being in the war right now.”
The UK tour of 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.
Claire De Braekeleer, UK/Ukraine season director, British Council, said: “The British Council and the Ukrainian Institute are proud to jointly support Bunker Cabaret.
“This production – both the collaborative way it was made in the hardest circumstances, and the themes of shared humanity it addresses – embody the spirit of the UK/Ukraine Season.”
The UK tour has been co-produced by Hooligan Art Community and Mahogany Opera in collaboration with Andrea Ferran and imPOSSIBLE Producing.
The group are currently displaced from their base in Ukraine and looking for places which can provide the group with interesting spaces to be in creative residency in the longer term.
Tickets for Bunker Cabaret can be booked here: https://www.mahoganyopera.co.uk/
More information about Hooligan Art Community can be found here: http://www.hooliganart.org/
