Russia’s war against Ukraine has never been only about territory and artillery, about politicians and putative peace deals. Of course, that is the easiest and most acceptable register in which to consider unthinkable violence: as a geopolitical problem happening at a far distance. But Russia’s aggression is an event of shocking magnitude in every individual life in Ukraine, and in lives elsewhere, too. The war is not only happening on the frontline but in homes and hearts. Deaths are mourned. Lives that were once straightforward have been propelled into directions that were never sought or wanted. Ambitions have been abandoned and plans have been cast aside. The war has crept like a mist into every chink of domestic life, into the tender, tremulous matters of love and sex, into the school day where cheerful young Ukrainian kids, alongside maths and English, get lessons on never, ever touching something that might be a mine.
“What we don’t see in the news headlines is conversations around the kitchen table – families discussing, for example, how much fuel they would need if they suddenly had to flee to Warsaw,” said Uilleam Blacker, associate professor of Ukrainian and East European culture at University College London, at an event last week. To come close to the feeling and texture of war as it is lived behind the lines – and behind front doors – it is necessary to turn to the work of Ukrainian artists, writers, playwrights and filmmakers. Blacker was in conversation with Natalya Vorozhbit, one of Ukraine’s most significant playwrights, and Molly Flynn, the editor of a new anthology of Ukrainian plays in English translation, which were all written in the wake of the Maidan protests a decade ago. Since then, Ukraine has seen an efflorescence of documentary theatre, often rapid and reactive, and centred on ordinary lives – work that has formed a kind of artistic parallel to Ukraine’s vigorous civil society.
