KYIV, Ukraine — War’s timeless ache — death, captivity, the agonizing wait and the pull of home — has found a new stage in wartime Kyiv , with Homer’s epic reimagined as a contemporary Ukrainian odyssey.
Director Ivan Uryvskyi is candid about how the play recasts the ancient poem’s themes of return and those trapped in exile and captivity. Mireshkin, the lead actor, and playwrite Oleksii Dorychevskyi are members of the 1st Corps Azov. Dorychevskyi drew on a year of interviews with former prisoners of war for the production.
An estimated 600 Azov brigade servicemen are among the thousands still in Russian captivity, according to the Corps. The actor spoke to The Associated after a final rehearsal Tuesday, ahead of a premiere that has been repeatedly delayed due to successive Russian attacks . Because the play was written from scratch, “Of course, very little of Homer’s original text remains here,.
“This story helps us talk about these topics, which, as it turns out, haven’t lost any of their relevance,” Mireshkin said. We simply took the core narrative arc — Odysseus’ return home,” he said. “It’s about the fate of Ukrainian women who wait, believe and hope, but who can also feel powerless, hopeless and stripped of faith,” Leheida said. “It’s about the temporarily occupied land waiting to come back home,” she said. “It’s about the children and people who are waiting, what we face during this waiting and the toll that war takes on us.”
“I think this combination of myth and modernity allows us to draw parallels and understand just how critical the question of return is: the return of military personnel to civilian life, the return of our territories and the return of ourselves to our true identity as Ukrainians,” Mireshkin said.
