Of death – and laughter: how to write plays in Ukraine during wartime

Oksana Grytsenko, left, and Kateryna Penkova during a lunch break in Kyiv in September. Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian

In a studio theatre tucked into a courtyard behind Kyiv’s main Khreshchatyk Street, six playwrights and six directors were hammering out a fraught question: how to write plays about war, during the war.

One unexpected outcome of their workshops was: through jokes.