News from the Past

Four actors meet to record a radio feature and ask themselves: How can extreme violence be narrated? How do you evoke suffering – without repeating it? The Ukrainian-German devised play “News from the Past” looks back at the 1930s and 1940s and embarks on a search for our shared history with our distant neighbour of Ukraine. The piece combines personal memories with a text-collage of historical news items, like the Soviet genocide Holodomor, the Stalinist annihilation of Ukrainian elites, the National Socialist reign of force, Hitler’s warmongering, and the 1941 mass murder of Jews in Babyn Yar near Kiev. The examination of the past also awakens memories of individual experiences, for example, when actress Vitalina Bibliv talks about her experiences in Butsha, Ukraine, in 2022. This moving show illustrates that war is always a fight for future narratives of the past, too, and explores how looking back can lead to a better understanding of the present.