Life at War: Purchase impossible to sell. Part 1

Initially, I wanted to begin writing this text in a vulgar and feeble manner: "In connection with the events in the East of Ukraine that led to the occupation and armed conflict the genre of documentary theater began to develop in Ukraine..." Further I should write boring "blah blah blah" with quotes from commentaries of stage directors and authors of the performances. Well, I would end some banal commonplace phrase a la: time will tell. Or something else.

Nothing like this has happened. I did not climb up with the recorder to the speakers, do not rush in search of creative mood and notorious inspiration. As usual and at the same time unusual spectator, I have watched two very amazing performances. The first was the "Commodity" in the Theatre of migrants by Alik Sardaryan who has acted as the author, stage director, and performer. Quite a young man, almost a kid, who dreamed before the Maidan and War to become a stage director, and further has gone through Debaltsevo as a hospital attendant. The second was a solo performance by Galina Dzhikaeva "Militants" of another Migrant theater from Crimea - PostPlayTheatre according to the play of Dan and Yana Humennye "I've bought the bike to my daughter Masha".

... The theater without wings, scene, memorized positions and views. Without spotlights and prompters. Without make-up and acts. In the intimate semi-darkness, in which it is easier to talk about that it is impossible to say and not to say. The art of our time when it is too early to make heroes and steep war in legends. The war is not over. We are full of it. But after an hour of testing your heart by documentary material about which you know exactly it was in real, and it was just the way, you want - to the point of trembling - peace and spring to come without the deafening echo of explosions cutting the pained and native land of Donbas seemed so far away.



... "Commodity". Commodity is a life. And death in the war is the commodity, too, although much less valuable. Life is more expensive. You can sell, buy, exchange a life. It can not be returned - this is the only flaw of the commodity with the tag "life". To understand the value of life, you die first. Your way is cut off on a stretcher with bloody Ukrainian fighter. Finally you exhale scaring to death a young hospital attendant who believes at the moment that life can still become a commodity! It can be sold at high prices to his family by a simple phone call: "He's alive. In the hospital. Pulled off. " He has not survived. There, on the "Cross". He had not any chance.

Here, it flashes, the ill-fated "Cross". In Debaltsevo. Intersection of two roads. Two worlds. Two lives. The one where there were peace, spring and easygoing pink coat which I have instinctively dressed for a performance. And another, where camouflage ingrained into the skin for two years. They should meet. Other life and fuchsia-colored coat which is so inappropriate in a war as a death. Or life.

Please follow the link to read the 2nd part of the story

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