It is fitting but painfully frustrating to note that I write these words on the day that marks exactly three years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What has that to do with theatre? Well, my Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings (WUPR) arose a few nanoseconds after that sad historical event, and has gone on to midwife over 700 readings, productions, installations, films, videos, conferences, and more in 33 countries. All of them present and promote the work of Ukrainian writers offering unique and powerful insights into their national tragedy.

The work of WUPR acquired a new urgency a few days ago when the president of the United States brazenly expressed his admiration for the invading Russian army, claimed bizarrely that Ukraine started the war, and declared that Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelenskyy was a “dictator” whose fault it was that the war had not yet ended. Perhaps this radical shift should not have shocked me so. As WUPR developed over the years, things changed drastically with each passing week. In fact, it is astonishing to see how much changed as we moved from early August 2024, when I accepted the invitation to write about my program, into late fall when final edits were being made, and now on to the first inklings of spring 2025 as the essay is about to be published. These seven months have brought despair, anxiety, and joy.

As I first sat down to write I was in the process of merging WUPR into the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD), whose founder, my longtime friend Philip Arnoult, had just died. Literally two days before Richard Schechner reached out to me, Ukraine launched an eye-popping, heretofore unimaginable offensive deep into Russian territory heading toward the city of Kursk. As my essay matured, A Dictionary of Ukrainian Emotions, a nine-part podcast I was in the process of recording with prominent US and UK actors performing Ukrainian texts, was completed, edited, and aired. One of the podcast participants, Wayne Maugans, who cut his acting teeth with Joseph Chaikin and runs Voyage Theater in New York City, now partners with WUPR and will host two events in collaboration with Ukrainian playwright Dmytro Ternovyi of Teatr na Zhukakh in Kharkiv in 2025. Andrii Kasianov, an actor at one of my frequent partner organizations, ProEnglish Theater in Kyiv, was killed on the front lines. Alina Sarnatska, only recently a soldier in the trenches, emerged as one of Ukraine’s most promising playwrights. The mighty Theatre of Playwrights, a central focus of WUPR’s activities, gave rise to the new Theatre of Veterans, a theatre-inside-a-theatre. They aim to tap into the experience, knowledge, and sensibilities that men and women who have served their country in wartime can bring to the theatre arts.

At a press conference in Kyiv just yesterday, 23 February 2025, President Zelenskyy spoke about the tenacity and focus that will be required to navigate peace negotiations in the current complex international political climate. We’re up for that. We have already scheduled our first event for January and February 2026—a production of Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Green Corridors at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago.

Read more from John Freedman in the latest issue of TDR, available now.

Nataliia Rybalkina and Andriy Kasianov (who enlisted in the Ukrainian army and was killed in August 2024) in Give Me a Taste of the Sun by Oleksandr Viter, directed by Jill Navarre. ProEnglish Theatre, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022. See “Necessity as the Mother of Invention: A Personal Account of Creating Worldwide Play Projects in Support of Belarus and Ukraine by John Freedman. (Photo by Artem Galkin)