These excerpts illustrate fratricidal wars, the complex nature of politics, the rending of family ties, and unending grief. Yet, they will also prove that above all there is still hope for love in this sea of hate.
—Michel Marc Bouchard, playwright, winner of the Prix Journal de Montreal and Prix du Cercle des critiques de l'Outaouais 

Maksym Kurochkin is a playwright. For almost three years, he and 19 other Ukrainian playwrights had been planning to build a new theater in the heart of Old Kyiv. The group found a magnificent old structure that they were busy renovating in order to open the Theater of Playwrights on 12 March. On 24 February, Maksym and his colleagues awoke to the horrific sound of bombs. 12 March came and went.
—Viktor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine 2005–2010, The Guardian 

The texts of the authors' collective created a theatrical platform for all kinds of spectators —refugees, their supporters, average theatergoers. They worked like a canvas on which all of us worldwide could project our fears, hopes, and questions.
—Andreas Merz-Raykov, director 

There were so many tears in the post-talk of the Ukrainian play reading performances this afternoon.
—William Wong, director, Hong Kong 

These intimate stories from Ukrainian writers during a time of war not only move us to tears but connect us to real  people and the details of their lives as war unfolds — from the guilt of leaving loved ones to the bravery of taking on an armored transport, from love across a screen to the chaos of uncertainty. These stories make it personal.
—Ronda Spinak, founder and artistic director of The Braid, a global nonprofit theater, Museum of Jewish Heritage, mjhnyc.org

These texts are realistic in a new way. They will inspire new theater forms of expression which we desperately  need in our time of constant change.
—Natalia Korczakowska, artistic director of Teatr Studio, Warsaw. 

These Ukrainian texts are extraordinary. So vivid (and vividly translated), and so various, heartbreaking, beautiful,  funny, and honest.
—Carey Perloff, director and playwright 

There is no way we can ignore these moving, theatrical elegies.
—Ari Roth, co-producer of Voices Festival  Productions in Washington, D.C., Theater Arts 

These texts are very brave and filled with raw emotion.
—Michaela Králová, Trinity News, Dublin

My Tara by Liudmyla Tymoshenko. A reading created by Theater Bielefeld, Germany. Performed by Brit Dehler, Doreen Nixdorf, Carmen Priego, and Susanne Schieffer. Video direction, concept, and editing by Sabrina Anastasia Treptow. Sound engineering and editing by Morgan Belle. Irene Wildberger, editor.

The plays of our authors are already resonating with people all over the world and defining what it means to be Ukrainian. — Maksym Kurochkin

Images from A Public Evening of Readings, on 24 June 2022, Kyiv, Ukraine, held in advance of the forthcoming, official, triumphal opening of the Theater of Playwrights. Photos by Nataliya Torzhevska and Oleksandr Prymak. Texts commissioned by grants from Philip Arnoult’s Center for International Theatre Development.

An introduction to the anthology by John Freedman