YOUNG UKRANIAN VOICES FROM THE CONFLICT IN THE DONBASS REGION
CONTACT LINE
Produced and presented by I-DO LAB
FREE ON DEMAND - WATCH HERE NOW
2014. There is war in Donbass. So much of this conflict was happening in the dark, away from the media gaze… Contact Line brought together young adults that live on the different sides of the demarcation line in Eastern Ukraine. They grew up in the same region without borders and shared the same culture.
Since the war broke out, young people have experienced events differently depending on which side they have remained. However, they have similar experiences. Injury, which is the primary interior content of war, is what children and young people face in the war zone. It is difficult to reconcile ideology with the immediate activity of war for those who have experienced it first -hand.
Schoolchildren/witnesses from both sides of frontline speak up about their experiences for the first time. Can people open their hearts when bullets are an immediate danger? Does contact bring reconciliation or deepen wounds? Contact Line performance is not what people are open about, but what they are silent about – the “real” that remains unspeakable.
Contact Line was performed in Ukrainian House, Kyiv in 2020.
PLUS EXCLUSIVE Live watch party and live stream preview of I-DO Lab's upcoming 2022 production, Visit to Minatour, with sections read from the new work plus live Q&A, September 11th at 7:30pm, Studio 2
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Visit to Minatour will debut in full, online, as part of the Cockpit's Voila! Europe Festival in November 2022. Watch this space for more details!
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Past Dissident Voice events are available to watch below, On Demand.
PROPHETIC POEMS FOR THE PLANET
From Blake in 1791 to Bukowski in 1991.
According to the Secretary of the UN, António Guterres, and the worldwide majority of climate scientists, Armageddon is already on its way. In the next three years, global temperature will have risen over the danger line of a 1.5°C increase. A lot of people baffled by mainstream and social media are looking the other way, just hoping someone will fix it. The disaster could be prevented, but climate crisis denial is being sponsored by many, very wealthy sources. Our Government is simply greenwashing. The opposition majority isn’t much better. As a Nobel prize-winning poet (guess who) wrote, LET US NOT TALK FALSELY NOW, THE HOUR IS GETTING LATE.
Watch Here, on Demand:
Actors:
Kristin Milward
William Hope
First performed and broadcast Sunday 20 February, 2022
Watch Here, on Demand:
VOICES FROM THE NEW BELARUS
by Andrei Kureichik
Originally performed and broadcast in studio 1 on Saturday 27 November 2021.
Watch here, On Demand.
INSULTED
by Andrei Kureichik
English translation by Hon Freedman
August 2020. The streets of Minsk are teeming with protesters, as news gets out that the presidential elections have been rigged.
Thugs have been flown in from all over the ex Soviet Union, they're given free rein to do what they like to the protesters - terrorise, beat them to death, threaten gang rape.
A manicurist and a football hooligan meet in a prison van.
The President screams, "If you don't want Lugashenko, you'll get Putin!"
The woman standing against him asks of us all, "What are you willing to do for love?".
Andrei Kureichik wrote this play on the hoof, as events spread like wildfire in Belarus last summer. It's a damning indictment of a repressive regime, where rigged elections are a commonplace and violence is currency. The police lob grenades at the protesters, but they just keep on protesting...
First broadcast as a live stream on Saturday 26 March 2021.
Watch here, On Demand.
Cast:
Oldster (Lugashenko): Peter Marinker
Youth (Lugashenko's teenage son, Kostya): Tom Cawte
Novice (Svetlana Tikhonovskaya): Polly Misch
Cheerful (Lena): Saffron Coomber
Avian (Roma): Dikran Tulaine
Corpse (Nikita): Sam Mac
Mentor (a teacher): Kristin Milward
Directors: Kristin Milward and Oliver Senton
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PEN is a worldwide voluntary movement and international charity that connects writers, human rights defenders, and community groups. For the past century, PEN International has successfully worked to celebrate literature, defend freedom of expression, protect writers at risk, support writers in exile, repeal attacks on women writers, and promote equal rights for language communities.
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· Creative Witnesses brings together musicians and creative artists in support of writers who have been imprisoned, harassed, or put at risk because of their commitment to freedom of expression. https://pen-international.org/creative-witnesses-take-action-for-writers...
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