Devised Play Project

2025

In January, 2025, as Kyiv entered a long dark winter, the young writers interviewed 15 university students in Kyiv about their dreams, relationships, and living with war.

The result is a devised play set overnight at Karpenko Kary National University of Theater, Cinema and Television in Kyiv, where a group of acting students meet on a Sunday night to clean their studio before their professor calls off their rehearsals of Hamlet.

When a blackout hits Kyiv and they can’t clean anyway, they rehearse by candlelight, celebrate over borscht, fight, confess, fall in love and miss curfew. Stuck over night in the studio together, they face the reality of war and their stolen youth.

A reading is planned for August 2025 in New York City.

Thank you to Theresa Rebeck, Jacquelyn Reingold, Stephen Belber, Jessica Blank, Erik Jensen, Jessica Goldberg, Daniel Goldfarb, John Gould Rubin and all the actors.