http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/24/ukraine-society-kiev-protests-natalya-vorozhbitNatalya Vorozhbit's play for Ukraine: 'We want to build a new and just society'
Kiev's Independence Square has been home to many writers and artists. The Ukrainian playwright Natalya Vorozhbit spent the last three months conducting interviews around the area. Her intention, she writes, is to create a piece of theatre to capture what happened when a peaceful protest escalated into horror
Natalya Vorozhbit
theguardian.com, Tuesday 25 February 2014 00.27 AEST
Playwright Natalya Vorozhbit near Independence Square, Kiev, Ukraine, where amid the protests and violence she has been gathering material for a new play
Today – 22 February – it is particularly hard to write. Too many things have happened in one day: Yanukovych's impeachment; the crowds entering and walking about in his luxury palace in Mezhigorye; Yulia Tymoshenko's release; the police's admission of guilt; the return to the 2004 constitution …
Only three days ago, such things would have been unimaginable. Three days ago, protesters were being murdered. On the night of 18 February the town shuddered with explosions almost every minute. On the 20th, snipers shot at living targets on the Maidan (Independence Square). A bright sun shone – the better for them to see their targets. And today we should be celebrating victory, but we aren't. For the second day we are saying farewell to fallen heroes on Maidan. Saying farewell to the "heavenly hundreds" – for that is what the people are calling them. It's hard to imagine anything more emotional, more overwhelming.
Three months ago, on 21 November 2013, a process began in the Ukraine that has had many different names. Some people have called it a revolution, some have called it protest, a revolt against the authorities, a fascist plague, the return of the Cossack Host, an antisemitic plot, a Jewish plot, a Russian plot, the fight for Ukrainian identity.
The main square in Kiev, the Maidan, became the heart of this process. It was to this place that people came, and are still coming, from all over Ukraine. They lived here for three months – here they stood – cold, hopeful, disillusioned – and here they died. Here they held weddings, they fought and they bade farewell to their dead. And what for? Who were these people? It was us. We were these people.
Natalya Vorozhbit
Natalya Vorozhbit in Ukraine. Photograph: Natalya Vorozhbit
On 22 November we came together to protest peacefully against the president's decision to choose a customs union with Russia over European integration. What does a customs union with Russia mean for the Ukraine?
Only a loss of independence, censorship, dictatorship, a return to the hated Soviet Union. Putin's government is a government of darkness. Our protest was peaceful for two months. It remained peaceful even after the special forces drove off students with bloody force. But the aims of the protesters on the Maidan had naturally changed and had become more definite by then. We wanted the guilty to be punished, we wanted political prisoners to be freed.
None of our requests were being granted. A period of repression began, of persecution, the beatings of protesters and the introduction of harsh and inhumane laws. There were a few attempts to break up protests with force.
With wooden sticks and shields, Ukrainians defended their right to free expression. Churches rang their bells and Kievans came out in the middle of the night to defend the Maidan, the symbolic place of our protest – and we defended it sucessfully. On 19 February the first shots rang out – snipers shooting down protesters trying to make their way to the Presidential Administration Building.
The rows of special forces wouldn't let them pass and the more radical protesters tried to push past with force. It was a bloodbath. It's a few days ago now, but we are still finding the mutilated corpses of protesters. They wanted to frighten us. But there was no way back by now. I want to stress that no one political party led or leads the Maidan protests. None of the opposition politicians became leaders on the Maidan.
Throughout the whole three months, my theatre colleagues and I gathered interview material for a play. We talked to people with every possible viewpoint: students, Cossacks, radicals, doctors and volunteers, we listened to each other. We are now using these interviews to put together a production.
The first staged reading will be in Moscow on 11 March. Our task has been to capture the reality, to challenge stereotypes and open people's eyes to what is happening in Ukraine, as outside Ukraine there are so many misconceptions.
Theatres in Poland and Germany are already waiting for this material and we will definitely show it in Kiev. There were so many writers, musicians, artists and directors all working on the Maidan. The level of involvement was striking. We were performing our duty to society, as well as to art.
Along with other Kievans we brought food and warm socks to Maidan, we built barricades. Simply because there are things that you just have to do – you can't not do them. You couldn't not come to the Maidan, or abstain from the fight with a criminal government and a corrupt state. I feel bound to declare that we are not terrorists, nor are we extremists or nationalists. We want to build a new and just society with humane and democratic legislation, we want to be proud of our country, to develop its culture and look after its old people and live in a lawful state. We have none of these rights now. Does that make us idealists? Yes. Only idealists will succeed. But we aren't irresponsible: we understand that success comes with heavy responsibilities.
It will be a struggle to realise our dreams. We live among the ruins that we have inherited. We have no experience. There is plenty to trip us up. It might be easier not to succeed, then we could just shrug our shoulders and say we'd tried but we were beaten down … But we will succeed, and huge responsibility will fall on us. We'll be disillusioned, without a doubt. It will be easy for others to sneer and say, look where you've got with your protests and revolutions.
Yes, we'll have to answer for our victory for a long time. But we will try and we will learn. It's the inevitable process of evolution. Our children will have easier lives. That's my religion now.
I keep saying "we". I suppose it isn't right. I should really only speak for myself. But during these three months we really did become "we". I no longer feel an isolated individual.
• Natalya Vorozhbit is a Ukrainian playwright and scriptwriter. Her play The Grain Store, which explores a Stalinist genocide-famine that killed seven million people in Ukraine and its neighbouring lands in the 1930s, was performed by the RSC in 2009. Her adaptation of a Gogol short story Viy has been staged in many theatres in Russia and Ukraine.
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
