Sashko Brama

Sasko Brama, born in 1988, is an independent playwright and stage director of experimental theatre based on a documentary framework. His artistic path began in 2008, when he participated in an amateur theatre group. After that he wrote several plays, amongst them “Pork liver” (2011), “COMA” (2012) and “iDream” (2013).

His first directorial work “Diploma” was developed in 2014. The project was based on a sociological study and presented a critical view on the Ukrainian education system. The actors were cast from amongst the students of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv’s Drama faculty. The shows took place in the Les Kurbas Theatre and at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.

In 2014, the political situation in the Ukraine worsened, which led to revolution and war. These events were reflected in two of Brama’s projects. In 2015, the performance-concert “R + J” was created, a Shakespearean tragedy about Romeo and Juliet adapted to modern-day Ukraine and laid out as a history lesson about events of the recent past, told in the language of heavy alternative music. The performance was shown at the following festivals: radikal jung (Munich, Germany), GOGOLFEST (Kiev, Ukraine), Divadelná Nitra (Nitra, Slovakia), GLOBALIZE:COLOGNE (Cologne, Germany), In Schönheit sterben (Berlin, Germany). The occupation with the militaristic theme was continued in the project “Call sighn Rama”, created 2017 in cooperation with the Pôtoň Theatre in Slovakia. The plot is based on the testimony of people who have experienced the war in eastern Ukraine.

Brama defines his further works as a theatre of experience, since his artistic work is based on his own life experiences, which he obtaines through deliberate immersion into and the engagement with a particular subject. Doing research on the subject of aging, transience and (un)fulfilled longings, he regularly visited the senior home in Lviv together with a group of artists over a period of one year. The collected material resulted in the performance “Fall on Pluto” and was presented at the festivals DESANT UA! Pierwszy Przegląd Teatrów Ukraińskich (Warsaw, Poland), DEMOLUDY (Olsztyn, Poland), and also was a part of the Ukrainian showcase within the international theatre conference IETM. Currently Brama works, together with post theater (Berlin, Germany), on the musical multimedia performance “Orpheus UA”, which is based on material collected by the author during a seven-month expedition from the EU border to the east of the Ukraine.

As of February 2019