Perspective | They bombed a theater in Ukraine. Somewhere, Chekhov is crying. –

The latest artistic casualty of the war is the Mariupol Drama Theater, which was largely destroyed by an air raid.

On March 16, the Drama Theater in Mariupol, Ukraine was destroyed by an air raid. Several hundred Mariupol residents were hiding in the theater. (Donetsk Regional Civil-Military Administration Council / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock)

Theater has a special connotation when it comes to war; It is a word that military refers to the territory – land, sea or air – where the military is campaigning. In Ukraine, the terminology became even more painful when war broke out in the theater. On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said the Russians had dropped a bomb.

And not just another landmark of the brutally besieged city: the sanctuary. Hundreds of women and children were fleeing from the basement where the Mariupol Drama Theater was bombed during an air raid. Miraculously, some of those who took refuge in the underground bomb shelter are known to have survived.

“Would you look at that red roof?” “This is a dramatic theater in Mariupol,” wrote Ilya Ponomarenko, defense correspondent for the English-language newspaper Kyiv Independent, captioning a photograph of the facility through the eyes of a drone. Ponomarenko told his 1 million followers that he spent five years as a student in the city and that he loves theater. “We called it ‘drama'”, he wrote. “Do you see those little letters in the square?” “Children” reads in Russian. It was a message to the Russian bomber team. But you know, they still bombed the building with ash.

In another Twitter post, Ponomarenko posted what he presented as a now-dilapidated photograph of a beautiful stone building, a square with white columns and a classical frieze.

The acts of barbarism documented every day hit the heart of civil society: hospitals, schools, apartments. Meanwhile, the civilian death toll is rising. It seems that even the temples of culture are not to be plundered by the Russians; The ruins include places where people gather for music, dance, theater, and events designed to bring people together to laugh, celebrate, think.

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This type of atrocity aims to destroy people’s confidence in the future, their link with the inspiring pillars of civilized life. It threatens the aspirations that define us as human beings. What is the immoral mentality, do you have to think that you can issue such an order, carry it out, designate structures that give peace to ordinary citizens and aim to destroy them?

You will be surprised that the country has transformed the theater into a war theater. Russia is a nation that loves theater, music and dance. The Moscow Art Theater is a world-class institution – I saw the extraordinary “Uncle Vanya” there thirty years ago – it has long collaborated with American theater companies and acting schools. The Bolshoi Ballet was universal in ballet technique. It is a nation that inspired Gogol and Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Turgenev and Baryshnikov, Stravinsky and Makarova, for God’s sake.

And Anton Chekhov. I wonder what Chekhov is doing to the atrocities committed in the name of Russia? (Although Russia has denied responsibility for the theater strike.) When he did not write Chekhov “The Three Sisters” or “The Cherry Garden, or other fundamental works of global theater, a doctor. Whether it’s the doctors he plays in comedies, the world-weary cynics or “Uncle Vanya,” who warns of the destruction of the environment more than a century before climate change entered the popular lexicon, Dr. There may be visionaries like Astrov.

“We cut down trees when necessary, why destroy entire forests?” Astrov states as translated by playwright Richard Nelson in his 1899 play. “Russian forests groan under the ax, billions of trees die, animals and birdhouses are destroyed, rivers rise to the surface and dry up, beautiful landscapes disappear. .

Am I too dramatic to imagine that Chekhov will receive the news that his country has bombed the theater and that the playwright will cry?

There is a lot of talk in theater circles these days about making practitioners aware of their peers’ rights and feelings, about opening more theaters for people of all colors and identities, making them safer spaces. It is incomprehensible that in 2022 frightened women and children are turning to the theater for physical safety and their safe space being destroyed by an alien force aimed at destroying Chekhov’s human legacy.

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Source: Washington Post

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