In Solidarity - a day of play readings and a livestream on Friday 1 April in partnership with Theater of Playwrights Kyiv and The Guardian newspaper

DONATIONS WILL GO DIRECTLY TO SUPPORT UNICEF UK’S FUNDRAISING APPEAL TO PROTECT CHILDREN IN UKRAINE AND HELP OTHER HUMANITARIAN WORK IN THE COUNTRY AND WITH REFUGEES

In Solidarity will foreground the voices of extraordinary Ukrainian playwrights reflecting the immediate experience and deep roots of the current invasion. 

On the War, 10 short readings by Theater of Playwrights Kyiv, will take place in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at 2.30pm and 5.30pm and Bad Roads by Natal’ya Vorozhbit translated by Sasha Dugdale will take place in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs as an in person play reading and live streamed online. It will also be available to watch for a week on the Royal Court Theatre website and the Guardian.

The event takes place on Friday 1 April 2022.

Ticket revenue will contribute towards supporting the Ukrainian artists involved in this event. We are keeping ticket prices for the readings to a minimum to encourage bookers to donate to Unicef UK’s fundraising appeal to protect children in Ukraine please follow the links here.

On the War by Theater of Playwrights, Kyiv
Friday 1 April 2022
2.30pm & 5.30pm – Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
Tickets £8

For this project, ten leading members of the Theater of Playwrights in Kyiv tell their own stories about the war.

The Russian war against Ukraine began in 2014 with the occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Crimean peninsula. Eight years later, it continues with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Is this the right time for the theatre? Probably not. But it still gives us the platform to speak – about the war and the way it has changed the world. 

Written by Oles Barleeg, Natalia Blok, Andrii Bondarenko, Oleksii Dorychevskyi, Julia Gonchar, Anastasiia Kosodii, Lena Lagushonkova, Olha Matsyupa, Oksana Savchenko, Liudmyla Tymoshenko. Translated by Jack Clover, Molly Flynn & Helena Kernan. Directed by Nastazja Domaradzka & Sam Pritchard. Dramaturgy by Anastasiia Kosodii. Visual Artist Nikolay Karabinovych.

Project Partners: Münchner Kammerspiele, Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Maxim Gorki Theater, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Staatstheater Hannover, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre.

Bad Roads by Natal’ya Vorozhbit translated by Sasha Dugdale
Friday 1 April 2022
8pm – Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and live streamed on the Royal Court and Guardian websites.
Tickets £8

A staged reading of Ukrainian playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s seminal play, produced by the Royal Court to huge acclaim in 2017. Bad Roads documents Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and  Donbas.

This event is also available to watch live online for free on the Royal Court Theatre and Guardian website at 8pm on Friday 1 April and for a week after the initial event.

A journalist takes a research trip to the front line.
Teenage girls wait for soldiers on benches.
A medic mourns her lover killed in action.

Bad Roads is heart-breaking and powerful study of what it is to live in a time of war.

Directed by Vicky Featherstone.

Throughout Friday 1 April 2022 the Royal Court Bar & Kitchen will be giving proceeds from food sales to the #CookforUkraine campaign.

All performers to be announced.

See full press release here.