A group of performers have traveled from Ukraine to New Hampshire to prepare for a new musical about the experiences of children during the war.
A barn in Newbury serves as the rehearsal space for the production, “Voices from Ukraine.” The show opens with the actors reciting letters written by Ukrainian children about their villages and parents.
Common Man for Ukraine is putting on the production. It’s an organization started by New Hampshire residents, including Alex Ray, founder of the Common Man restaurants. The group raises money for Ukrainian aid and delivers food and supplies there. They also coordinate a monthly trauma retreat in Poland for Ukrainian children who have lost parents in the war.
“We've been on the ground and seen children in the very front lines and what they're dealing with,” Susan Matheson, co-founder of Common Man for Ukraine said. “We feel like there's a whole other story to tell to understand the effects of war and the generational trauma that these children will be dealing with.”
For one of the trauma retreat’s therapeutic exercises, the kids wrote letters to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about what life is like for them in wartime. Those letters have become the backbone of the musical.
Trish Lindberg is a former Plymouth University theater professor who ran theater programs at the retreats. It was her idea to turn the letters into the show, which she’s now directing.
“You start to see themes and that becomes your musical numbers,” Lindberg said. “So, like a lot of kids were saying, ‘If it wasn't for the war, we could have done this. If it wasn't for the war, we would be here.’ So there's a song called ‘If Not for the War.’ They were all talking about wanting to see their father again or their mother again. So that's where ‘Beyond the Veil’ came [from].”
Lindberg auditioned Ukrainian actors for the production and Common Man for Ukraine helped them get visas to fly here. They didn’t participate in the retreats where the letter source material came from, but their own experiences have made it into the show.
“Right now I live in Kyiv, so every night is like a lottery because you never know when explosions will be, and if you will be lucky enough to wake up in the morning and do your routine,” Sofiia Kopytko, 18, said.
She has a monologue in the show about her friend, Arina Yatsiuk. Arina’s parents were shot by Russian soldiers while trying to leave Kyiv in March, 2022. They separated Arina from her sister and took her away, only to be found in a morgue in Belarus years later.
“It's so hard for me to comprehend even this, because she was 15,” Kopytko said. “And we don't know, and we will never know, through the hell she went through in her last hours, days or weeks of her life. And this is – Oh, it was so, so scary. I was crying for like a couple of days after we found out.”
Taisiia Grygorova, 19, is another actress in the show. She’s from Kharkiv and started going to therapy to help with the panic attacks that started with the war. She says she’s trying to adjust to all the ways it’s changed her life, but she worries about her youngest brother.
“He's six and he's facing it almost from the beginning of his life. He didn't remember the peaceful life,” Grygorova said. “He is always like, ‘Oh, a rocket.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ Just a child. He's six and he knows what explosion is what. ‘It was a rocket. It was a drone. We need to hide now. We don't need to hide now. It's safe.’ It's hard. He can’t even go to an ordinary school because of war.”
Taisiia turned to a local theater group to socialize with her peers after feeling isolated since the Russian invasion. The “Voices from Ukraine” production has also become a kind of trauma retreat for her and the other actors.
“It's like psychodrama,”Grygorova said. “For us, we are living through our stories and others’ stories, and we can let it go partly and continue living more peacefully.”
She says the experience has also been a welcome cultural exchange for the performers. Common Man for Ukraine has arranged for the actors to stay in a donor’s cabin while they’re rehearsing. Local families cook meals for them and take them out on day trips around the region.
“It's making our days better, much better. It's really cool to see other countries and other cultures, so we really enjoy it.”
The actors will perform “Voices from Ukraine” for the first time in York, Maine on Aug. 20. Over six performances, they will travel around New England to share their stories, and those of other children. After that, they’ll return to their lives, and the war, in Ukraine.
