Six Young Women Putting On A Play - A Diary of Theatre and War: Kyiv, Winter 2025

“I am more than what has happened to me.”

With the world’s politics in a mess, with an American President leading that charge, American playwright, Richard Nelson, wrote and directed a play for Theater on Podil in Kyiv, Ukraine. Throughout the ten weeks of rehearsals for When the Hurlyburly’s Done, he kept a diary. Day after day he was inspired by his six young actresses, some as young as twenty-one, and so they had lived half their lives in wartime. They laughed and cried as the play, their characters, their lives and the war entwined. An inspiring and very human story about making art when everything else feels out of one’s control.