By AFP | 2024-04-12

KYIV -- The day after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, theatre director Anatoliy Levchenko was due to stage an opening night in Mariupol.

But the port city has been under Russian occupation since it was flattened in a brutal siege in 2022 -- with Levchenko's former theatre bombed despite civilians taking refuge there.

He was then captured by Moscow's forces and imprisoned in Donetsk for 10 months, before being released without charges and fleeing the separatist stronghold with his wife and son.

Almost two years later, he has revived his Mariupol company by staging a symbolic opening night of a dark comedy called "Light at the End of the Tunnel" in Kyiv.

"This is a show for our family, so to speak, for our own people," Levchenko said in Kyiv's Les Kurbas Center, where Mariupol refugees made up much of the audience. The organizers had to squeeze in more seats to accommodate the audience on opening night.

His Mariupol Drama Theatre was bombed despite the word "children" written in large letters on the ground, with hundreds believed to be hiding there. Its colonnaded building has become a symbol of Russian brutality.

Levchenko, 54, recruited young drama students from Mariupol for his new theatre in the Ukrainian capital.

"We won a small grant competition, which was enough to pay the actors a little and rent a rehearsal room here in Kyiv," he told AFP.

'It gives me goosebumps'

Sitting in the audience, Khrystyna Borisova, 40, was moved to see the theatre revived in Kyiv.

"It's like we lost something there and it's been moved here," she said. "It gives me goosebumps."

Levchenko said that when he was arrested and held on suspicion of terrorism, extremism and incitement of hatred after the 2022 invasion, he was questioned about his stagings.

"It was very funny: 'Tell us about the play!'" he said. "I spend three hours telling them who enters when and says what."

"'Where is the propaganda of anything inhumane here?' I asked."

He suspects a former colleague may have denounced him for "pro-Ukrainian activities."

Mariupol actors split

Some of Levchenko's former actors have formed a new theatre in western Ukraine and staged a show based on their experiences called "Mariupol Drama." Others have decided to stay and perform under the occupation.

"They are putting on plays for the Russian authorities and telling horror stories about how Ukrainian nationalists would not let them live peacefully," he said.

Levchenko began working at the Mariupol Drama Theatre in 1994, becoming its general director and trying to make it into a European-style theatre.

But his contract was terminated in 2020 -- he says over his pro-Ukrainian position -- and he founded his own theatre company, Terra Incognita, staging a mix of Ukrainian, Russian and international plays.

'Rebirth of this theatre'

His show that has just opened in Kyiv is a one-act dark comedy written by Ukrainian playwright Neda Nezhdana about two women who find themselves trapped in an underground morgue.

The women discuss possible explanations for their incarceration, from being in purgatory to a nuclear attack, before finally realizing they are free to leave if they choose.

There is absurd black humor but also serious messages about personal freedom, Levchenko said.

Nezhdana attended the opening night.

"It's an honor for me that the rebirth of this theatre is with my play," she told AFP.

"Thanks to Anatoliy Levchenko, Mariupol has become a close, home-like place for me," she said.

Nezhdana added that she wrote the play intending the morgue to represent the Soviet Union but now sees it as the Russian empire, which "has come to life."

"Unfortunately my play is relevant and the staging is relevant, but all the same I would like there to be light at the end of the tunnel," she said.

Levchenko said the war had forced many "to make a choice for ourselves."

"That's why [the play] always seems to me to be topical, and now even more so."