Balance

The performance contains profanity, artificial smoke is used. Certain scenes and sounds in the performance may be emotionally challenging. We ask viewers to take their own sensitivity into account while watching the performance. Thank you for being attentive to yourself.

In school, she was the “forty-first”—an extra child on a broken chair, learning to balance so as not to fall. Many years later, this skill helps her survive on the front lines.

“Balance” is a candid story about war beyond black-and-white pathos. While the “voice from heaven” offers soothing (or not so much) breathing and grounding exercises, reality tests the characters with the smell of bleach, poor-quality body bags, and a complex choice between feelings and duties. Here it is hard to distinguish heroism from absurdity and impossible to understand where black humor ends and tragedy begins—nor is it necessary. Because such is life. Or death.

Occupied with balancing on the edge, the characters in the performance perceive the reality of war as it is “here and now.” In the exact same way, they tell us about it. Sincerely, without embellishment. Without unnecessary delicacy or pathos. Sometimes bizarrely, sometimes detachedly, sometimes like a fairytale. Just as they experienced it.

The performance is dedicated to the Hospitallers and all combat medics—those who save lives every day, bringing light back to where darkness reigns.

Created by:
Director: Artem Vusyk
Set Designer: Andriy Khvorostyanov
Costume Designer: Svitanok Nastav in co-authorship with Bozhena Mamchuk
Composer: Stanislav Kononov

Cast:
Yeva Fedchyshyn, Andriy Vatamanyuk, Natalya Dashkovych, Karina Kuzenko, Andriy Lanovenko

Content warning! The performance contains profanity, artificial smoke is used. Certain scenes and sounds in the performance may be emotionally challenging. We ask viewers to take their own sensitivity into account while watching the performance. Thank you for being attentive to yourself.