Episode 58 – Respect Beyond Borders

Gabrielle Martin: Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, Push’s artistic director, and today’s episode highlights the power of silence and the art of restraint in storytelling. I’m speaking with writer Anastasiia Kosodii, director Jana Svobodová , and dramaturg Ondrej Hrab.

These are the artists of Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 22nd to 23rd, 2026. Through fragments of real lives, Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience traces love and hope amid the everyday realities of war, reminding us of our shared fragility and enduring humanity.

Anastasiia  is a Ukrainian playwright, director, and one of the co-founders of the Theater of Playwrights Kyiv. And before the full-scale Russian invasion, Anastasiia  often worked with NGOs in Eastern Ukraine in towns on the frontline. Her international work is connected with Gorki Theater in Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele Theater, and Nationaltheater Mannheim.

Jana is a Czech theater director known for blending real-life stories with video art, music, and new technologies. Her internationally acclaimed works explore themes of personal freedom and collective experience. She is the founder and director of the International Summer School of Documentary Theater.

Ondrej is the founder of Prague’s Arca Theater, an internationally renowned venue for contemporary and alternative performance. For 30 years, he has promoted cross-cultural collaboration through innovative productions. Since 2023, he has been running Arca Center for Documentary Theater, which supports emerging artists and documentary theater projects worldwide.

Here is my conversation with Anastasiia, Jana, and Ondrej.

So I’m so thrilled that we could all meet despite different time zones and being in different parts of the world. I wanna just start, um, by acknowledging that I am joining this call from the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and also to acknowledge the violences of colonization that are not only historical, but ongoing here across Canada, globally.

And in thinking about Ukraine, which does come into the theme of this work we’ll be talking about today, you know, we’re also thinking about sovereignty, land, language, uh, and the human cost of empire. And these struggles are not the same, but in conversation with each other. Um, so I just wanna hold this conversation that we’ll have in a, in a spirit of shared resistance to domination and a belief in the right of all peoples to self-determination, home, and peace.

And I’d love it if you could share where you’re joining the call from today. 

Jana Svobodová: Um, well, we are sitting actually at the house, uh, in the village where my grandmother comes f- comes from, and this is actually a place where she was born and, uh, the house was inherited, um, uh, from my mother. And, uh, at the moment, Ondrej and myself, we built, a couple of years ago, we built a theater in barn.

Uh, and our, I mean, uh, we continue our work. We started at Arca Theater in Prague. We are called Arca Docu, and our major aim working here is to Uh, connect people in the village with our world means that the world which is a little bit wider, and we love to work with local people. We are involving them into theatrical processes.

We do documentary theater. We did show with local kids. And, uh, so this is something, uh, we are proud of. 

Ondřej Hrab: And at the same time, we are bringing people from all around the world to, to the village, and this is something, uh, which is the experience for them to, uh, meet a local people and local life, and as well for the, for our neighbors, uh, to s- to meet people from, uh, different countries, uh, uh, from actually all continents.

Jana Svobodová: Uh, luckily, before we will travel to Puš Festival in January, we will, we will rehearse in very close town, and, uh, mayor of the village will bring people from the village to see it, so which is something, like, we, we absolutely are absolutely impressed, and we did not even dream about this moment. So this is kind of connection between our small village and, and, and Vancouver and Puš Festival.

Gabrielle Martin: I love that. And what… Can you repeat the names of the two towns, the town you’re in now and the town where you- where you’re rehearsing? 

Ondřej Hrab: Our village is, well, I think for, even for Czech hard to remember the name, Dvakačovice And the, the, the closest city is Pardubice. So 

Jana Svobodová: Very Czech. Very Czech. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And Pardubice- Thank you … famous place for, for gingerbread. All in, in Czech Republic, Pardubice great gingerbread. Yeah. So this is where we are now. 

Gabrielle Martin: Thank you. Thank you. And Anastasiia ? 

Anastasiia Kosodii: Yeah, I’m, I’m joining also actually from Czech Republic. It’s, uh, weirdly this month we are, all three of us are in one country.

I came here for, uh, literature residency. Uh, it’s a small town of Bromov. It’s very beautiful, like medieval-like city. There’s also quite complicated history of Sudety and a lot of other things, which is, like, partly also connected to my family. So it’s, uh, it’s a good place to think about the history and maybe to write some new texts, uh, which I’m doing right now.

Gabrielle Martin: We’re gonna shift our conversation to Eight Short Compositions and, um, and, and how that fits into your wider practices, and I just, I’m so thrilled that this work is coming to Push. I really can’t wait for our audiences to connect with it. It is such a brilliantly touching, um, yeah, moving masterpiece really.

Um, Anastasiia , your text begins by offering eight sh- eight compositions on the lives of Ukrainians for a Western audience, yet it refuses the easy narrative of war reportage. It’s fragmentary, poetic, and unscored. What drew you to this non-musical form, and how does silence or the imagined music become part of its meaning?

Anastasiia Kosodii: Uh, thank you. Um, so I, uh, just to give a small bit of a context to this text also, also it was written in 2022. I think in May it was commissioned by Jam Factory in Lviv, and when they commissioned it, they specifically said that they wanted a text that can be used primarily for theatrical readings, not for the full performance because at that time, I think whole Ukrainian, like, playwriting scene was mainly focusing on texts like that just because, you know, just to spread the word, just to bring more awareness.

Um, and a lot of theaters in Europe especially, you know, they … it’s, it’s quite hard for them to suddenly do something like that, but then they could do a small reading, and that’s what we did. And the, you know, the text has quite a long title, which is ironic because, uh, I don’t know. But also it was for me also a way to deal with this sort of a weird task of explaining certain things in the moment when you really cannot, you know?

Because usually artists have, um, a distance of sorts, uh, to the subject that they’re writing about. But resisting, like, this, this war, there was, there was no distance. I think I wrote the text in one month and Yeah, um, and a lot of tragic thing happened before and after. So I, I really tried to create this distance through sort of a metaphor, I think, and through this, like, the text that’s supposed to be, like, musical text, but doesn’t have music.

Uh, that’s, that’s I think what did it for me. And I also, uh, I don’t know, I se- I was sitting at that time in, like, in a tiny apartment in Berlin that was offered to me by friends, and I was mo- mainly, like, hating myself because I couldn’t write much. But then I tried different angles and I said, “Okay, maybe, like, just one small monologue at a time, and then we’ll see what happens.”

It is… I would, I would say that now I do write completely differently. It was, uh, a time for this sort of a diary-like, although it’s not a diary and it’s not only my experience. It’s, like, autofictional mixture of my experiences. Now I switch to something completely different, a bit more plot-based, but still, like, like, for this interview, I revisited the text, and some of it doesn’t sound very relevant now to me, and some unfortunately does.

Gabrielle Martin: And Jana , I had another question for you about, you know, the, the desire, the impulse to work with Anastasiia ‘s writing. Um, I mean, my first question was really, you know, you say that you were struck by it because it opens the door to our personal experience. So I am curious in how you approached staging these texts so that they speak across borders, uh, without diluting their intimacy or specificity, and also, um, you know, how this text And this is probably a second question, so I’ll just put it out there, but I can come back to it.

I’m curious about how, um, the nature and the kind of composition, the cadence, the rhythm, and the style of this text may be similar or different from other texts you’ve worked with, but I can circle back to that question. 

Jana Svobodová: Usually because I, I, I do documentary theater, and my major passion, and it happens through my life because I worked a lot in refugee camps, and I did lots of interviews with people who were escaping from the places where the war was happening.

So I met people who just appeared in Czech Republic waiting in refugee camp. They were not speaking any Czech, no English, so we did not have words. We did not, we could not communicate through words. But this was happening in my life, like, around 2004. I- a long time ago, but we, and my team and m- many artists, me and Ondrej, we brought to refugee camps.

And we actually, like, maybe, maybe, I don’t know what happened, but it actually brought me a feeling that, um, m- m- I don’t know, d- I don’t wanna, it, it, it will sound pathetic at, at, at, at any point, but kind of respect and anything what people can share with you, what, what’s not written in words. So it’s like, uh, because so I, I don’t work so much.

Actually, I always say, Anastasiia  text was big exception for me. I don’t work with pre-written text, and this one, because we were in, in relation to Jam Factory, what Anastasiia  mentioned, because it was commissioned by Jam Factory in Lviv by one v- very, very great person, Bozhena Zakaluzhnaya, who actually approached me if I would like to do something.

Uh, and she sent me three texts, and I was like, “Oh my God, text, I don’t know what to do with it,” because I don’t put, um, I don’t do drama theater. I, I, I compose it very different way always. And so I was like, “No, no, no, uh, no text.” And suddenly I read this one, which is not a play, it’s a text, and the text which was resonating with me right away because of

J- just don’t take it literally, but when I say simplicity or straightforward, because these lines, which Anastasiia  wrote, it’s very poetic, but also it touches daily experience of all of us. And of course, when I read the text, I, I, I wait what happens with me and the, the moments which were, which are written there in all these compositions, uh, one to eight, you know, very, very different moments, uh- Somehow touched me deeply, my experience.

Plus, I realized that it was exaggerated by changing the context because I am drinking my coffee, I eat my porridge, I eat… I, I go outside, I pick apricots. But when you change the circumstances, which means that this exactly the thing is happening, you drink coffee when the war is going on, or when you have desire to pick apricots, but you cannot because war is there.

It’s only in your wish. So suddenly, it really was very, very striking for me. Otherwise, I, I would not do it because I, I don’t know much how to stage the text. Because I worked with peoples and par- people I work with, they usually have their own texts. So this is the way I work. So very, very specific kind of work and very striking, and I absolutely fell in love with the text.

I really love it because it’s not, it’s not drama. You could… It was very challenging for me how to stage it, and it was struggle, of course. Big struggle. Yeah? So that’s just, if I’m answering your question. So it’s really, uh, some- somehow touched me. Otherwise, uh, truly, I, if you would tell me to stage the text, you know, it will be an order from some theater, I, I usually, I, I, I don’t know how to do it.

I, I don’t know because I usually work with people’s statements and, and feelings or, or written things or, you know, all these things. So very, very exception work for me, and I’m grateful for it. 

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah, and maybe just building on that, you know, talk a little bit more about Arca, ’cause it has such this long history of documentary theater, merging testimony, music, visual composition, and, um, maybe you could just speak a little bit more to how this work extends that tradition, but specifically, like, what new questions were raised about authorship and collective responsibility?

Ondřej Hrab: I must say that, uh, you know, in Arca we have not, uh, did only our own ta- uh, projects, but we also had a Accent Festival, the International Festival of Documentary Theater, and we were, um, trying to create a platform of, for confrontation of, uh, different forms of documentary theater and inviting people like Rimini Protokoll or Lola Arias or, um, or, uh, uh, Milorad or Shishi Pop or Wen Wei.

So, uh, all these artists are doing different forms of documentary theater. But I think there is one thing which is common, and this, uh, this is that, uh, uh, this always reflecting the actual situation of the society And, uh, this is something what, um Uh, needs to, uh, be, uh, done, uh, I would say very specific way.

You know? It, it can be like Rimini Protokoll, uh, we could produce the, uh, actually table game. You know, people were sitting in the kitchen around a table, and we had, o- our task was to, uh, uh, to organize, uh, 12, uh, apartments in Prague and people who were able to host 12 people, uh, for three hours to, to play the game.

And, um, or, uh, Lola Arias, uh, uh, she asked us to reconstruct the one day of Czech revolution. So this, uh, this was always like, um, uh, uh, a different project, but in fact, we were not asking the historical facts. We were asking the question, who we are today? And this is also, uh, I think the case of, uh, of this, uh, of this piece of eight compositions.

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah. I guess, and I’m wondering if you have more to say about, you know, in this case, it’s, you know, written by you, Anastasiia . It’s specific to a time and place, but you’ve integrated, um, five performers from different countries, uh, that inHrabit this work, each using their own language, body, voice. And so what kind of dramaturgical or ethical space does that create between witness and representation, between the ones in conflict and those reflecting from a distance?

It’d be interesting to hear all of your thoughts on, on how the work has been realized in this version, or how the text has been realized and staged. 

Anastasiia Kosodii: I was thinking today about this performance, and it was, I think, like, two years ago. No? When it was in, in Prague and I saw it, and I was, you know, fortunate enough to see some, a lot of the readings of this text, like in, in, in Germany and some in Austria.

But this one, I, I think was the one that surprised me the most and, like, was actually the best one. Also with, like, director’s decisions and, you know, and, and there were moments that I know if they would be done, like, a bit differently, it would be a big disappointment for any playwright. Like, for example, that scene when the text is just the subtitles, but it was so brilliant and so, like, on point.

So I just want to say, Jana and Ondrej, I’m so grateful to you because I was a huge, I don’t know, happiness for me, and still today I was remembering it and I thought, “Wow.” Um, because it was so subtle and so not- manipulative also with emotions, you know, because I tried to write it as dry as possible also to sort of leave this, like, space of, for, for actors, for directors to fill this text with something that they would feel themselves and for audience also to not feel, you know, pressed to, I don’t know, to cry or to feel.

And, and I was, I was very happy to see that the, the direction also followed this sort of, um… And, and yeah, for me it was a huge joy and, and

a big happiness to see it. 

Jana Svobodová: I don’t know, you know, because I, of course, work intui- intu- intuitively also with, on the stage because, um, the team I, I, I have for this, I, I worked with, uh, was fortunately trained, uh, by us during the summer school, so… And I did not know, I did not know that something like this can happen because, uh, we, you, we, we took part…

Actually, we hi- we did stage reading during the summer school, and I did not know that they could be next step towards the show, and it was September, and in October we had performance. So it’s, uh, something that there was lots of coincidences. And when we were rehearsing it, I had one strong feeling, like, be humble as much as possible because the war just started, and it was very fresh.

It was there. And of course, as a, as a visual artist, I have lots of images. Like, you know, I, I see many things, you know, all the time. And to hold… I, I had the strong feeling that we should not… Normally, I work with video art, for instance, or so- big sound design, and suddenly I felt, “No, we, we, we cannot do this,” you know?

Just it was not only that I said to myself no, it was just happening. And, and team, all these four performers They are so, so… They went, they rolled with us so beautifully that we did not have any conflict, any other visions which we did not, we, we just, we just did it, you know? And it was just also common understanding what is it for, why we are doing it, h- what, what, what, I mean, tools we are using.

And it appeared that we have on the stage, actually there are two dan- one, one actress only. I mean, literally actress, one dancer, one musical composer, and one violinist and, and musician. So it’s kind of team which could be lots, I mean, I mean, very difficult to work with, but it was not. It was so, so amazing.

And I must say, Anastasiia , when you, you came and they said, “Ana- yeah, we invited you,” I was very, very worried that what, what you will say, because you, you don’t know, you know? I was like, “Maybe, maybe she would not like it.” And I was so happy when she said, “Yeah, I like it, and, and I’m happy of it.” I was like…

And, and you don’t know actually, because it’s so fragile, so fragile and, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it now going back to the situation when we were hoping that war will be over soon, that, that it, it… And, uh, that was very urgent feeling of artists and people in Lviv mainly, because the It was, uh, it was like, uh, I think the, the, the reason why Bozena approached you writers in Ukraine was, as I remember well, to send a message from Ukraine because she told me when we were talking about this, uh, project that artists are sort of locked in war, uh, there because they could not communicate.

So you had also very strong reason to do something. It was a voice of someone who cannot much speak, and also the message of, for me, it was mainly daily life of or- ordinary people in the war, which spoke to me very strongly because this is something what I’m actually doing always. I search for stories of ordinary people, and through these private and very small stories, ordinary stories, I try to touch, let’s say, the bigger topic or something what’s happening in bigger, bigger world, bigger, bigger story.

So this is actually what I do. So all this was very complex and, and very beautiful work for me. 

Ondřej Hrab: Yeah. And I, I think also the basic, uh, thing what we had at the beginning was that we should not, uh, ruin the text by interpretation. 

Jana Svobodová: Mm. 

Ondřej Hrab: We didn’t want to interpret the text. We, uh- We wanted to take it- … wanted to stage it, uh, with a great respect and, uh, not to bring some aesthetic, uh- 

Jana Svobodová: Extra aesthetic

es- 

Ondřej Hrab: extra aesthetic … there’s 

Jana Svobodová: no aesthetic, but like, like, uh, d- you know what I’m, what we mean. It’s like, you know, because artistic work usually it’s like, “Oh, let’s put this and that. Let’s do this and that.” And, and there’s lots of also labor on the, on the, on the stage because they are working. They are plugging the, the wires.

They are moving the lights. So besides dance and music, there’s lots of like- 

Ondřej Hrab: They operated it- 

Jana Svobodová: They operated- … technology … the lighting board and et cetera. So yeah. So yeah. And also, I felt that what Anastasiia  a- already mentioned, that there was a space for silence. There was … You can allow yourself just not to speak because people are challenged to read.

So the, the major, and also we struggle- struggling in the beginning that maybe the time, w- we had to learn to give time to audience just to read and feel and bring them back for something else. So it was very specific kind of work and, and beautiful, yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: Part of the title is For a Western Audience. Um, what conversations did that title open up in your collaboration?

Is that for a Western audience an address, an invitation, a warning? How do you situate that? 

Ondřej Hrab: Uh, maybe- Maybe, well, I think, you know, um, uh, from my personal experience, I know how difficult it can, uh, sometimes be to watch a work created for someone else about my country or, uh, and my own experience. You know, I, I must say that, um, I don’t know, maybe you saw the film, um, many years ago, uh, the American movie called The Unbearable Lightness of Being of, uh, which is, uh, based on novel, uh, by Milan Kundera.

Uh, it was, uh, unbearable for me. 

outro : Mm-hmm. 

Ondřej Hrab: You know, because it was speaking about my private experience, but, uh, it was totally misinterpreted by American filmmakers. 

Gabrielle Martin: Mm. 

Ondřej Hrab: And it was really painful. And so we, we want to, uh, we s- really strive to take the most ethical approach as po- uh, um, as possible. Um, although Ukraine is only few hundred kilometers from our border, and we have a lot of common, we had to be very, very careful not to speak on behalf of people from another country.

Um, and, um- But, uh, from this reason, uh, Anastasiia  text is project- projected on the screen and, uh, with- without any interpretation and commentary. And actually we speak for ourselves. 

Jana Svobodová: Mm-hmm. 

Ondřej Hrab: And, uh, um, actually moreover, each performer is, uh, as you know, from different country, and this actually allows the, this message of performance to resonate with everyone no matter where, uh, they are, uh, from.

Anastasiia Kosodii: Like, I- I’ve been writing text since 2014 and they, like, mostly they are on the subject of Russian war against Ukraine. But be- between, like, 2014 and ’22, I mean, I traveled often to the frontline and I did some projects with kids there, but also, like, war did not affect me directly in a way that it did after the full-scale invasion.

And I think it is generally very uncomfortable feeling when suddenly you are not, let’s say, an artist who comes to help somebody and, like, to do a project and, but then you are subject of all the projects that you did before. And I think I try to think also of about this shift, that it’s, like, it- it- it is very uncomfortable, like, physically and mentally to be in it, and then also to be this, like, spokesperson for your country for, let’s say, audience in a, in so-called Western world.

Um, which is also, like, brings with itself the whole, like, vocabulary that you, that’s not, you do not really want to have. Like, for example, like, saying that you are an author in exile, which is something that is not really true because it, it, it brings, like, this memory of the 20th century. But, like, obviously, of course, Ukrainians are not in exiled.

We are not exiled from our country. We are just sort of temporarily out of our country because of the war. And so, like, in this text, I think I tried a bit, uh, in this, like, early months also to, to kind of fight against all of this, you know, like, forced perspective, and also try to give- My own perspective and I, I mean, yeah, that, that, that what I tried, what, what, what I tried to do.

Jana Svobodová: Maybe I have one, one thing I’m thinking I did not mention it because there’s one, one thing which was kind of, I think, brave decision. I was the most afraid that Anastasiia  would not like it. Yeah. Uh, and actually it was okay finally, and I think it also works as a… Because there’s that moment, not only that people are reading the text, but also all these performers are giving their perspective emotional, a kind of emotional echo I would call it, because we hear all the languages.

They say something. I absolutely don’t know till now what they are talking about. But it’s something like, uh, mm, you feel that something is happening. It’s, it’s related to what’s written, but we hear the languages, which was very important for me, and maybe it comes from my previous experience working with people who don’t speak one language, so we let them speak all their languages.

So the language is there, and the words and fragments of the text, we don’t know what’s there, but it’s, it’s kind of it bring, brings the level of, of, um, of, I mean, um, mm, how to say it, um, support. I would call it supportive energy from people who are not in the war, but who are related to it, and we decided to express it through the words, uh, their own language, which has the very different taste.

Well, so- Well, I mean, the- There 

Ondřej Hrab: is Irish, there is English, there is Swedish, there is, uh, Dutch- And, 

Jana Svobodová: and 

Ondřej Hrab: Ukrainian … and Ukrainian. 

Jana Svobodová: Yeah, and they, they communicate with each other. It’s a dire- dialogue, but we don’t… They understand each other, but the language is different, so it’s kind of game with what’s possible to how people can understand each other without not knowing the, without knowing the language and culture.

So it’s like a, a, edited, uh, like, um, a- Additional … additional level to Anastasiia  text. 

Gabrielle Martin: That’s great. That’s great. I mean, I, we could keep talking clearly. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our producer will try and fit that in. That’s really, yeah, it’s really, um, an extra layer for people to think about as they’re coming into the work.

It’s great. Thank you so much. Thank you. 

Ondřej Hrab: Thank you. 

Gabrielle Martin: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.