KHERSON REGION, KHERSON, KHERSON PEOPLE IN THE CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN DRAMA OF WAR

Abstract

After February 24, 2022, Kherson and most of Kherson region quickly found themselves under Russian occupation: Russian troops seized Antonivskyi Bridge on the first day of the full-scale invasion, and on March 1, they entered the regional centre. In the spring of 2022, Ukrainian playwrights quickly created various texts reflecting on the completely new experience of survival under occupation and throughout 2022–2024. A representative array of contemporary dramatic and post-dramatic works of fiction is dedicated to Kherson and Kherson region, written by Kherson residents who were outside the occupation but reflected on it with their loved ones (Natalia Blok, Oksana Hrytsenko), those who experienced the occupation personally (Artur Sumarokov, Ihor Nosovskyi, Olena Maliarenko, Anton Lysenko, Yana Malyha, artists of the Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre named after Mykola Kulish), and playwrights for whom Kherson became a symbol of the general Ukrainian resistance though it was not their hometown (Nina Zakhozhenko, Iryna Feofanova, and Lena Kudaieva). It is also worth paying attention to the playwriting practice of the local Kherson theatre, when plays not about Kherson region (texts by Neda Nezhdana and Natalka Vorozhbyt about the Russian invasion of Donbas) are interpreted in the context of war and occupation from the perspective of the “Kherson text.” A separate mention should be made of the playwright Valerii Puzik who took direct part in the hostilities in Kherson region and embodied this experience in a play dedicated to the Ukrainian bridgehead in Krynky, which was cut off from full-fledged logistics and communication. Purpose: to analyse the discourses about Kherson and Kherson region as places of collective trauma, areas of strength and Ukrainian resistance recorded in Ukrainian drama of 2022–2022, and simultaneously as a territory of tragedy and revitalized mysticism. Methods: source studies, cultural, historical, and contextual analysis. Results. The first representative picture of the theatrical vision of Kherson and Kherson region in confronting Russian aggressors in 2022–2024 was created. For this purpose, the activities and productions of the Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre named after Mykola Kulish, Ukrainian dramatic resources of these years, professional and open sources were analysed. The article considers 20 texts of contemporary Ukrainian drama, most of which require additional interpretations. Therefore, this generalized corpus will be interesting for Kherson residents as a field of future research. Transitional trends recorded in the theatrical interpretation of the discourse of Kherson and Kherson region in 2022–2024 against the background of the fullscale Russian aggression, occupation, and the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station are highlighted. Conclusions. In understanding Russian aggression against Ukraine after February 24, 2022, a considerable amount of dramatic and theatrical texts is devoted to Kherson and Kherson region. It is natural that one of the centres of resistance to the occupiers in the city was the Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre named after Mykola Kulish, which in the spring of 2022, outside the occupied regional centre, established its activities with stage readings and performances about the need to support Ukrainians under occupation. The dramatic discourse on the Kherson region and its resistance now consists of two dozen works in different writing styles – from documentary to fiction and postdrama, in different emotional modes – from tragic to tragicomic, in different genre coordinates – diaries, memoirs, confessions, conversation, interviews, mysticism. Collected in a coherent corpus, they represent a dramaturgical evolution in the comprehension of the discourse of Kherson and the Kherson region during the war. All the links in the bibliography are now interactive, so Kherson residents will be able to watch individual stage readings of the plays or find open electronic versions of their texts for reading and further interpretation.