Matt Smith and Nataliia Borodina
The reports, reviews, and articles in this edition of PIR discussing the Ukraine are the results of a collaboration between University of Portsmouth and Odesa[1] Polytechnic. The background to this collaboration was the War in the Ukraine, which is ongoing at the time of writing. Initially, the seed was sown by Polish puppet authority Kamil Kopania during an online networking event in 2022, when he challenged the international community to respond to the war.
One clear finding from the collaboration is that puppetry is alive, resilient, and vital to the culture of Ukrainian people. As a young nation forming its identity after the shifting power, boundaries, and politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the people of Ukraine are proud of their culture (Wilson 2015). Mark Andryczyk clearly articulates this cultural resilience when he charts Ukraine’s cultural history as having “to survive and even thrive over the years. In fact, this lack of a consistent political presence often enlivens Ukrainian culture, as its people strive to ensure the existence of a Ukrainian identity and to protect it from repeated attacks aiming to eradicate it’ (Andryczyk 2022 ix). This nationalist pride is a theme that runs through most of the accounts captured here, a pride in an independent culture breaking away from its history with its current oppressor, Russia.
The project began with Smith procuring funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and connecting with Nataliia Borodina and her colleagues in Odesa. Evidence of the infrastructure, repertoire, and new production of puppet theatre in war-torn Ukraine was discovered at this initial stage, and was then explored on the ground in Odesa. Colleagues there found that theatre across the Ukraine had to be adapted to play in shelters and survive the destruction of buildings and infrastructure. Also, training for puppeteers continued either with students and teachers in exile or under the conditions of warfare. As Thompson et al (2009) suggest, theatre in places of war has a powerful relationship with the violence of conflict, either being geographically performed close to the violent acts of the conflict or at relatively ‘safe’ distances away from it. This relationship of culture to the violence of war can certainly be seen in Ukraine. As noted by Thompson et al., the theme of place is as important as other concepts, such as trauma, in understanding performance during wartime. The reports in this edition of PIR are, to some extent, conditional because the authors are mostly still within the war zone; this immersion in trauma makes these accounts raw and passionate. Conditions of missile attacks and destruction of infrastructure have made communication vulnerable; during the collaboration, half of Odesa Polytechnic was destroyed by Russian ballistic missiles, and the staff there rebuilt and continued to teach and research.
The research teams in the UK and Odesa believe it is vital to tell the story of those people caught within the nexus of the conflict and share how vibrant and important culture can be even at times of war. We hope that you find inspiration in these accounts that showcase the ability of art to provide solace and heal trauma and pain. This war-torn culture is always framed by war and its violence against bodies, and it is also part of the way we can account for the effects of war as presented by Judith Butler (2016). Butler describes these frames of war as ‘ the ways of selectively carving up experience as essential to the conduct of war. Such frames do not merely reflect on the material conditions of war, but are essential to the perpetually crafted animus of that material reality’ (2061, 26). This material reality frames the accounts of practice and descriptions of puppetry in this edition of PIR. Although the authors whose work is featured here experience the violence of war, it is also important to note that they do not define Ukrainian culture just by its relation to the frames of war. As demonstrated in several articles that look at regional traditions like vertep, puppet theatre has long played an important role in Ukraine.
As part of the collaboration, we hosted several online seminars in English and Ukrainian using simultaneous translation by a Ukrainian colleague. In our first Zoom seminar, which took place after an attack by Russian missiles, Odesa colleague Dr. Tamara Rozova discussed how puppet theatre had survived the Second World War and bloomed into a vibrant community with a large repertoire of prize-winning shows. During the current war, the theatre in Odesa has become a vibrant community hub, creating jobs for adults as well as entertaining children. Researchers shared that puppetry in Odesa continues to be an important form of communication, amusement, and magic.
Other speakers included Dr. Yuliia Shchukina, from Kharkiv, who discussed puppet theatre as a “theatre of animation.” This term “theatre of animation” reflects developments in the aesthetics of contemporary artistic puppet practices, innovating visual theatre narratives beyond traditions of what is seen as doll based puppetry and folk art found in Ukrainian culture. Shchukina shared her view that many pre-war productions included content that prophesied the current war. Of the wide range of current productions in Kharkiv, some of these are patriotic comedies that provide stress relief for communities. Refugee Cats in particular stood out as an example a of recent successful production.
Olga Dorofieieva, from Kharkiv, reported that there were ambitious productions of Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht staged in adapted places, such as the subway. There is also great work for children developing practical workshops in which they explore playful puppetry. Dr. Myroslava Tsyhanyk from Lviv reported that students are still continuing their training, albeit in bomb shelters. Dr. Sofiia Rosa-Lavrentii from Lviv added that puppet theatre has been a useful device for young people facing the horrors and trauma of war. Puppetry creates distance, allowing war narratives to be expressed safely. It was important to hear her share that theatre heals and serves as both a shelter for communities and a space that protects. Oleksandra Titarova discussed how training programs in the Czech Republic are supporting displaced students. For Titarova, collaborations like these break down barriers and allow communication across cultures.
We also heard from Cariad Astles from the UK and UNIMA on the history of puppetry in regards to war. Her discussion of puppetry as an art form that uses symbols and hidden messages to tell important narratives about national identities was a powerful way to end the first online seminar.
In the second seminar, Olga Pinaeva discussed her therapeutic Bag of Puppets workshops for children. It was inspiring to see the joyous images of children playing with simple paper puppets. We also heard about the history of vertep from Zinovieva Tetiana. A distinct form of puppetry that relates to the Polish forms of shopka, well known in the West as animated nativity scenes, vertep has developed a continued relevance to the contextual politics of Ukraine. After these seminars, we were pleasantly surprised that puppetry was not only surviving but, in fact, flourishing under the emergency conditions of war. We were inspired by the number of important voices present and were very thankful to all the speakers for sharing their thoughts.
The articles in this issue represent the outcomes of these activities and celebrate an artform that deserves more study in global academic circles. We are grateful to Claudia Orenstein in encouraging us to develop these articles in English for a much wider audience. The papers mix discussions of the history of puppetry against its current standing in recent years. During the war, these performances and workshops stand as an important way to use culture as a stress relief space away from violence or even, in some instances and productions like Kaddish, as a way to understand violence. It is also important to note that the people involved in puppet theater in Ukraine see their work and the resilience it encourages in themselves and others as part of their ongoing struggle against the violence of war.
Note
[1] Odesa is spelled this way in Ukrainian contemporary translation to distinguish it from the archaic Russian transliteration version of the city’s name in English translation with double ‘s’.
References
Butler, J. Frames of war: When is life grievable?. London: Verso Books. 2016.
Andryczyk, M. Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965, ed. London: Penguin. 2022.
Thompson, J., Hughes, J., & Balfour, M. Performance in place of war. London: Seagull Books. 2009.
Wilson, A. The Ukrainians: unexpected nation 4th Edition. London: Yale University Press. 2015.
Flyn, M. Ukrainian New Drama After the Euromaidan Revolution, London: Methuen. 2023.
Links
Ukrainian Drama translations website – https://ukrdrama.ui.org.ua/en
