Sofiia Melnyk - Green Corridors

In this commissioned work for the Münchner Kammerspiele, written by the Ukrainian playwright Natalka Vorozhbyt while she herself was fleeing, four women from Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Bucha and Kyiv make their way to the European border. They have all witnessed rape and death – except the one woman from Kyiv who is an actor and has not experienced anything terrible herself, though she can play everything. On the other side of the border, a woman named Europa awaits the refugees. She wants to do good but generally understands very little. In the “waiting room for a new life”, conflicts erupt between the characters that are deeply rooted in the history of Ukraine – and Europe. Who betrayed whom? Who profited from whom? Who collaborated with whom? Vorozhbyt is a specialist in the perspective of ordinary people in unspeakable predicaments; in her work, desperation is saturated with a deep-seated black humour.

During the whole play I'm sitting on stage, creating light and elements of the scenery with live drawing and animation. I also painted the costumes.