How Kyiv-Based Documentary Theatre Amplifies Ukrainian Resilience

Alem Kent is a documentary theatre creator based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Kent graduated from Boston University in 2019 and was introduced to Lisa Rafferty by Boston University professor Anne Donahue, whose journalism students contributed to Finish Line, a documentary play about the 2013 Boston Marathon created by Rafferty and Joey Frangieh. Rafferty and Frangieh are now working with Kent and the members of ProEnglish Theatre to bring their documentary theatre work to Boston and New York City this year.

Lisa Rafferty: Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Alem Kent: I'm a documentary storyteller and artist based in Kyiv, Ukraine. I've lived here for the last three years as an adult and previously spent my childhood here. After finishing university at Boston University, I moved back right after. I was starting as a journalist and then, at the same time, a filmmaker and photographer. I’m working on documentary theatre, acting in documentary theatre, producing documentary theatre productions, documentary films, documentary podcasts, exhibits. All sorts of different formats of storytelling.

Lisa: Tell me about your work with ProEnglish Theatre and the two documentary plays that you're working on.

Alem: This is my first time working with ProEnglish Theatre, and we've got a production called Our Response Ability—with a slight play on words of it being our “response” and "ability” in one. This is a verbatim documentary theatre production that the director, Vitalii Havura, has created. He interviewed many different Ukrainians, people who are important to the infrastructure, to society, such as train conductors—because the trains are incredibly important to getting people out of the cities to safer locations—surgeons, doctors, volunteers, people who work at the grocery stores. Because even when you're under occupation, you need to find food. Even if there's a fire and bullets happening, you have to get water. So these are all people that have to continue to work and continue to take part in society as the war goes on.

We started actively working on rehearsals, and it got cut down to four interviews. Vitalii interviewed many more, but four is a good amount because with any more, people would be so emotionally dead. They are not really light topics. There are definitely comedic moments, but these are all pretty serious stories. And the show itself runs almost one and a half hours, maybe one hour and fifteen minutes. So any longer, I think, would be too much. We want people to not be completely empty leaving the production, but feel the heaviness, be able to process it better.

A lot of people hear stories about certain cities and certain people, but since this is the first time they're really getting to know Ukraine, they don't know the deeper history.

The other production is called The City of Mary, the Siege Diaries, and I'm the producer for it. The director is my friend Evgenia Vidishcheva. Her friends, Anya and Nastya, who I know, are activists from Mariupol. Twin sisters. They're now twenty-three years old. They were stuck and had to live under the siege in Mariupol for a month. Every day, Anya would write in her diary, and we have those diary entries of their life and the days progressing under siege until they finally made it out. And now they're refugees in Georgia, and they made it to Tbilisi.

The plan is for it to be a multidisciplinary documentary production. So it's not only going to have the two actresses retelling the events through the diary entries and these follow up interviews that we have, but we also plan on having live music on stage because music is a great way to portray emotional reflection. And we’ll have a DJ with some techno, and there's this incredible tie with techno and the war and the music and how it all mixes together. Then we also need projections and animations in the back because we want to give a better context and deeper context. A lot of people hear stories about certain cities and certain people, but since this is the first time they're really getting to know Ukraine, they don't know the deeper history. Maybe they've only started really following along to this relationship between Ukraine and Russia in recent years. And so that's why we'd also like to have these animations, projections that people really understand the full story.

It’s going to be incredibly powerful, getting to see a specific personal experience of what it's like to live under siege.

We just had the premiere of Our Response Ability on 9 October in Kyiv. We specifically wanted this play to be in English so that English-speaking audiences could understand it and we could be speaking to them. Because the people that we interviewed, they are not able to come and tell you about their stories, and so we're doing in their stead.

So it is word-for-word, what they told us. It's just another way for people abroad to meet the real people and hear the real stories if they don't like reading the news every day. Not everyone is ready to doom scroll, and some might prefer listening to these stories, these very intimate, raw stories from real people.

Lisa: Amazing. Why is it important to bring Our Response Ability to the United States?

Alem: Well, we had two Americans in the audience. And their reaction solidified our understanding that yes, this needs to go to the United States because there's a lot of nuance that is lost when you’re constantly reading the news because it’s hard news.

Here, it's a lot easier, it's a lot quicker for an American audience to actually meet Ukrainians rather than just through the internet, just through Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. It really shows the human aspect of it. We're not just statistics. We're actual human beings. And even the actors who are portraying these people, they themselves are from Ukraine and have their own experiences.

It's a very truthful retelling of the reality of Ukrainians.

we're bringing this world and reality to you right at your theatre next door, to spend an hour really enveloped in this environment that we've curated to foster understanding on a human and deeper level.

Lisa: There's something so visceral and immediate about documentary theatre versus film, or versus reading a book or a magazine. You and I share a passion for this genre.

We are working with you to bring this production to Boston and New York so that people can learn about it.

Alem: So we're bringing this world and reality to you right at your theatre next door, to spend an hour really enveloped in this environment that we've curated to foster understanding on a human and deeper level.

Lisa: It's a beautiful piece.

At the beginning of this Zoom, you just held for a minute because there were air raid sirens going off. How often are air raid sirens going off at this point?

Alem: Now that Russia has started its targeted attacks at Ukraine's energy and electricity infrastructure, we're hearing a lot more of these air raid sirens.

Lisa: And you've mentioned in the past that the kamikaze drones—this was a couple weeks back at least—hit a playground nearby.

Alem: Yes. So this was the day after our production actually. Right as the play started, the air raid sirens went off. We didn't go into the bomb shelter. We've already started; we're just going to continue with it. And at that point, Kyiv hadn't been hit for a very, very long time. So things had been normalized. There's air raid sirens going and no one's going to the bomb shelters. Everyone's sitting outside and drinking their coffee. And quite literally the next day was the first time that the rockets hit Kyiv since beginning of the full-scale war.

And it wasn't too far from our theatre either. First, it hit the intersection in front of one of the main universities in Kyiv. Then, ten seconds later, it hit the other side of the park where the children's playground was. And this is my childhood park. This is my favorite park in Kyiv. That week leading up to it, I was in that park every single day because it's beautiful in the fall.

I’ve seen photos of kids playing around in these burnt tanks that were left by the Russians, so it's like how life adapts to the new situation.

I think one of the reasons this war is happening is that it's in our identity to fight for freedom with our willpower and democracy.

Lisa: You speak so beautifully about the reality of what you're living and what you as artists are doing to share these important stories.

Are there specific realities you'd like those of us in the United States to know about?

Alem: There's a lot of disinformation online—manipulation and twisting of stories to control the narrative.

This documentary play is going to be completely without any manipulation. There’s nothing political about it. It's telling you the true accounts of why. It might help people understand why Ukraine needs help from the West and why Ukraine needs help from the United States, because that help is going to save these people. There's no proxy war. This isn't a war between Russia and the United States. It's nothing to do with NATO.

I do the work that I do because I don't want people to view Ukraine only through the lens of trauma and war, but through the facts that we're creative, we're incredibly brave, we're resilient, and it's inspiring. I'm constantly inspired, and I want those in the United States to also feel that way. I think one of the reasons this war is happening is that it's in our identity to fight for freedom with our willpower and democracy. And I think that's something the United States really needs right now, that energy and that motivation to take their current political reality into their own hands and fight for their future.

And Ukrainians were successful. We were doing that, and that's the reason why Russia was threatened, They understood that Ukraine is successfully fighting and progressing and developing into a truly free democracy, and that's a threat.

It would be great for Americans to meet Ukrainians as the way that they are. As resilient, brave, and inspirational people.

Lisa: I would like that people reading about your work and what you're doing to understand that we say “Ukraine,” not “the Ukraine.”

Alem: So “the Ukraine” refers to the Russian based-narrative of Ukraine being a territory to control and not an independent state. Ukraine is an independent nation; it has nothing to do with Russia. So we refer to it as “Ukraine,” not “the Ukraine.” The same way Kyiv, spelling-wise. It’s K-Y-I-V and not K-I-E-V, because K-I-E-V is the Russian spelling of it. So there’s the Ukrainian version and then the Russian colonial version.

Lisa: Anything else you would like to add?

Alem: When people actually hear these stories of Ukrainians, I would like them to really understand the reason I, as a person who actually holds an American passport, decided to go to Ukraine and stay in Ukraine. I think that it'll make sense as to why Ukraine continues to fight, why there is no sense in giving up.

The whole thing of the lens of Ukrainians is creative and resilient. That's my main message to Americans. I mean when I was in the United States, I would always say, “Be brave like Ukraine.” So hopefully Americans can take that bravery with them and continue to not only support Ukraine, but improve their own society.