Bunker Cabaret

“Bunker Cabaret” is the current performance of the Hooligan Art Community, which took its starting point in the bomb shelters of Kyiv. Combining music, poetry, dance and film, this work is a powerful exploration of love and totalitarianism as well as the personal conflicts involved in creating art in wartime. The performance, ironic, raw, funny and harrowing, relentlessly reveals the artists’ individual experiences with war while conveying a shared humanity in moments of connection between artists and audience.

Hooligan Art Community is an independent theatre company established in Kyiv in 2019. They make performances in non-traditional spaces that explore the dynamic relationship between actor and audience. The group has worked entirely outside of the state theatre system, creating work that advocates for freedom of expression and equality. On 24 February 2022, the full-scale Russian invasion brought war to all of Ukraine. The company’s work was disassembled overnight. In May 2022, the group came together remotely: women from the company travelled to a residency in Germany, but the two male members of the company remained in Ukraine, restricted by law from leaving the country. In spite of this, the male actors worked together in a bomb-shelter in Kyiv, developing new scenes which would become the inspiration for “Bunker Cabaret”.