The Ukrainian Drama Network project launched to support contemporary national drama

In November, the Ukrainian Drama Network was launched with the goal of unifying scattered individual endeavours focused on contemporary Ukrainian drama. Its primary objective is to provide support and integration for these initiatives.

The aim of the project is to create effective mechanisms for promoting contemporary plays on stage, establishing sustainable communication between authors and theatres, and combining various links of play promotion in Ukraine and abroad, from publication and dissemination of information to translation and international exposure.

The project was initiated by the Theatre na Zhukah in partnership with the Ukrdramahab platform and the Theatre of Playwrights. The Ukrainian Institute became a partner in the international components of the project. The project is funded by the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education 2022 of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut.

According to Dmytro Ternovyi, co-founder of Theatre na Zhukah, playwright, and project manager, Ukrainian theatre has failed to keep pace with the “remarkable transformations” that have occurred in Ukrainian society since the Revolution of Dignity. He highlights that theatre has been slow to embrace contemporary Ukrainian drama, which, in contrast, readily responds to the pressing issues of our time. Ternovyi emphasizes the prevailing inertia within many theatres, as they often overlook modernity, even in the aftermath of the war. Determined to alter this state of affairs, he expresses a firm resolve to instigate change.

In this regard, he said, a number of events are planned as part of the project.

One of the most important tasks is a radical reconstruction of the most popular drama portal Ukrdramahab, which has been visited by more than 100 thousand users over the years. Now, the portal, together with the Ukrainian drama translation digital library of foreign translations of Ukrainian drama created in the summer, will be combined into a single platform for the full promotion of Ukrainian plays in Ukraine and abroad.

The founder of the portal, playwright Iryna Harets, said that the two sites will be similar in design and will complement each other in terms of functions, but at the same time Ukrdramahab “will be even more efficient and convenient for users.”

“We are planning to launch many new options, such as personal accounts for playwrights, and critics, granting them the authority to manage their pages independently, to offer their news, and reviews, the possibility for readers to rate texts and add comments, etc. Representatives of theatres will be able to follow the updates of the pages of specific authors. We hope that this site will eventually become a platform for sustainable communication between authors, critics, and theatres,” said Iryna Harets.

Another large-scale event of the project will be dramatic readings, to which only professional theatre audiences (theatre critics and directors from different regions of Ukraine) will be invited. The purpose of the readings and discussions is to establish contacts between authors, directors, and critics, and to promote professional networking. For the first time, plays that have won or been shortlisted for all major playwriting competitions in Ukraine will be read. For the readings, 12 texts have been selected that were highly praised at 8 competitions in 2021 and 2022 but have not yet been performed on stage.

“On the last day of the readings, we also want to hold a round table and hope that it will result in a working document with proposals to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy on mechanisms for promoting contemporary drama in the repertoires of theatres,” said Ternovyi.

Another important part of the project is to support theatre translation.

Anastasia Haishenets, the representative of the Ukrainian Institute, informed that the Ukrainian Institute has launched a playwriting competition “Transmission.UA: drama on the move”, selecting texts for translation into different languages every year. This year, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Drama Network project and the July Honey playwriting competition, 3 plays were selected for translation into Polish.

“We need to increase the number and quality of translations by contemporary playwrights to make Ukraine visible to foreign theatres. But at the same time, we are faced with another problem: a terrible shortage of translations of classic Ukrainian plays. That’s why another initiative was born within the project – the launch of a playwriting translation competition.  We start with the translation of Ivan Franko’s “Stolen Happiness” into English. The Theatre Translation Laboratory, established at the Department of Foreign Languages of Lviv National University, is of great help in implementing this initiative,” said Haishenets.

The project team decided to name this competition after Iryna Steshenko (an outstanding translator and actress of the Les Kurbas Berezil Theatre), bringing another worthy creative name back to the modern information space.

Thus, said Ternovyi, the project ties together various elements of contemporary drama promotion, and each of them forms its own circle of partners.

He hopes that this experience will provide all participants with a new level of communication opportunities and will contribute to the effective promotion of Ukrainian drama in theatres.