YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS UKRAINE
Laura Cahill Founder/Artistic Director
After the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a group of Ukrainian students ages 15-19 met over Zoom with New York-based writer Laura Cahill to write plays in response to war.
In July 2022 their first collection of short plays and monologues was read by professional actors for a Zoom audience. The collection was subsequently translated into Swedish and produced at Orion Theatre in Stockholm Sweden in March, 2023.
In April 2023, with the WGA strike imminent and SAG strike looming, professional writers and directors joined the young writers for a mentorship project which culminated in 9 ten-minute plays produced for a Zoom audience.
In May 2024, The Vineyard Theater presented a reading of 7 plays from the ten-minute play project.
In the same month, 5 of their plays were part of the Segal Center World Voices Festival in New York.
In August, 2024, four of their plays were part of Ukraine Fringe, in Kyiv. It was the first time any of their plays were performed in Ukraine.
More than two and a half years later, the young playwrights are all college students. They study acting, writing and directing. Many are at home in Ukraine, some are displaced. Four are college students in the U.S.
They continue to meet every week to write.
The young writers talk about the shock of war, and writing their early plays, in this film directed by Karina Syrota for Orion theater in Stockholm, Sweden.
“Life is a good thing when old friends come together to make art with young playwrights. However, this experience with Young Playwrights Ukraine was a truly humbling, deeply felt journey as we read the work of these young people who are going through so much pain and tragedy and still are reaching for art with all the love and hope of any artists ever anywhere. The cruelty these young people have born witness and their desire to write about it..to talk it…breathe their truth and make a greater good through their art is one of the most profound experiences that I have ever been blessed enough to engage in. Learning the meaning of gratitude…I was taught so much…”