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ToolsStuart Fisher, Amanda, Lech, Kasia and Danylyuk, Olha (2026) Editorial. Theatre's Response to the Russian War on Ukraine: Performances of Witnessing, Documentary and Intervention. Contemporary Theatre Review, 36 (1). pp. 1-14. ISSN 1048-6801
Abstract
This article builds on an ongoing dialogue between the co-authors initiated in May 2022 when Valeriy Simonchuk a Kyiv-based theatre maker, contacted Amanda Stuart Fisher to open up a dialogue about testimonial performance and the challenges of making theatre at a time of war. During the next two years, the conversation developed, to examine how theatre can bear witness to war and the problematics and possibilities of using personal testimonies to respond to the violence and suffering of civilians in Ukraine. In this article, we examine Antigone: Post-Mortem, which was devised and directed by Valeriy Simonchuk, performed by Alina Zevakova and responds to the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha, where on Yablunska Street alone at least 36 people were killed by russian soldiers as part of a “cleansing operation”, involving systematic executions, torture and instances of the rape of women and girls. Drawing on interviews with members of the local community and through an exploration of Antigone by Sophocles, the performance responds to this event, using the image of unburied bodies and the act of witnessing itself as a means of raising questions about the suffering endured as a result of war and theatre’s capacity to respond to this. Through our examination of the play’s creative process and its reception by audiences in Ukraine and beyond, we examine how a canonical text can generate a productive framework for a theatre of witnessing to emerge.
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