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'The cultural front': Ukraine theatre goes underground
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Actresses perform at the Mykolaiv Drama Theatre for the first time since the start of the war in Mykolaiv on August 25, 2022. (AFP/Dimitar Dilkoff)
I
t's an opening night like no other at Mykolaiv's theatre, with the audience ushered down into an underground shelter this week for the first performance since war broke out.
"We need this place to fight on the cultural front too," says artistic director Artiom Svytsoun.
The tiny underground stage and the minimalist set provides "a form of 'art therapy'" for the people who have stayed in Mykolaiv and need something other than the grinding fear of war.
Welcoming audience members, giving tours of the subterranean theatre and taking care of the myriad technical details, 41-year-old Svytsoun is the beating heart of the operation. He is the one who worked to get the theatre reopened in the relative safety of an underground bunker.
With the help of a European aid fund, his team took two months to transform a shelter four metres below ground into the 35-seat venue, its irregular white walls covered with a fresco reminiscent of classical theatres.
The strategic port city of Mykolaiv had a population of half a million souls before Russia invaded on February 24.
Now it bears the scars of the many bombardments it has endured almost daily for the past six months.
