Dimitro attended the premiere of the Ukrainian adaptation of Life is a dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, on September 30, 2023. On stage, his partner, Valeriia Saakian, in the role of Estrella. The young woman, now 24 years old, was part of a cast that had been preparing the play for months under the direction of the Spanish Ignacio García. The Russian invasion unleashed in 2022 did not stop cultural production in Ukraine and Saakian, along with her fellow Dramatic Arts students, took the leap in the midst of the conflict to become a professional actress.
García and the playwright José Gabriel Antuñano have created a war version of the classic. To do this, they have enriched Calderón de la Barca’s text with notes throughout the performance in which each of the actors reflects on their life in a country at war. But the drama that surrounds the harsh reality of the conflict ended up shaking Saakian in the worst way. Weeks after that historic premiere, a Russian bombing of the capital ended the life of her boyfriend, Dimitro.
Like Segismundo, the main protagonist of the work, the young woman has since lived in a kind of limbo that borders on reality and mirage. The remarks he makes on stage, like the rest of the actors, have been adapted to the situations they have to live in, he explains during the break of a rehearsal at the Lesya Ukrainka. “I imagine that he is still here and listens to what I say,” he says. That is why, she points out, representing Calderón is so important to her: “It is one of the few” that her boyfriend saw her perform. “As actors we each have our own story and our pain behind us and, although it may sound horrible, the fact that we each have our own story helps us mature,” he adds.
The company has its sights set on the premiere in Spain in November with a small tour of Madrid (at the Teatro de La Abadía on the 15th and 16th), Pamplona, on the 18th, and Logroño, on the 20th. The organization is in charge of the Madrid Autumn Festival, the University of Navarra, the Government of La Rioja and the International University of La Rioja (UNIR). Saakian, one of the 14 people who will make up the expedition from kyiv, shows a huge smile at the opportunity to go abroad and visit Spain for the first time and “check the reaction of the Ukrainians settled there and remind them of what happens here, how it is lived here.” A screen on the stage will allow you to follow the performance in Spanish.
“We are sure of one thing: we are not going to have to interrupt the performances due to the alarms that warn of the danger of a Russian attack,” adds with a smile the actor Oleh Zamyatin, 50, who acted as a tutor when the group was taking the master’s degree thanks to which they met Ignacio García and who, three years later, is still part of the company.
The Ukrainian Sigismund
Among the gloom of the room, Volodymir Mushikov (Segismund), 27, remains during the break, assuming the responsibility of playing a leading role for the first time. He comments that this forces him to push himself and put into practice everything he has learned in these years, something “very important in the career of a professional actor.” “All of this is a challenge given the circumstances we live in. It is a challenge to get up, come, perform, rehearse and work… that gives us strength and experience. For example, some nights I barely sleep a couple of hours, but it is good for me to come here to perform,” he details. In his case, he would be especially excited if his family, evacuated during the war from the Kherson front to the territory of the European Union, could come and see him perform in Spain.
During the rehearsal, García spurs them on, gestures, approaches them and addresses them with the words that this specialist in the Golden Age has been learning in Ukrainian throughout the 11 trips he has made since the great invasion began. “In all these months I have directed theater, zarzuela, orchestra and music band… I already feel like another Kievite,” he comments.
Despite García’s basic vocabulary, the voice of an interpreter, Julia Mijailuk, sounds in the room, who acts as a common thread and transmits in great detail the instructions and nuances requested by the director. In the midst of the cyclone of projects, García already has in his portfolio to prepare for next year The dream of reasonby Antonio Buero Vallejo, around the figure of Francisco de Goya and war. And he accepts the challenge of setting up something in Kharkiv, the country’s second city, next to the border with Russia and more besieged by bombs than the capital.
“It is being the most incredible and useful theatrical experience of my life,” confesses the director as he walks through one of the musty hallways of the Lesya Ukrainka Theater building (named in honor of that local writer), which will turn a century in 2026 and where time seems to have stopped before the disintegration of the Soviet Union three long decades ago. In one of the rooms, those responsible for the tailoring department dedicate a few hours a week to weaving camouflage nets used by local troops on the front to try not to be located by the Russian invaders.
The capital, of about three million inhabitants, is frequently bombed with drones and missiles, reminding the population that far from the battlefield the conflict also poses a threat. But, unlike towns closer to the front line, in kyiv it is necessary to go to specific places to witness the destruction firsthand. “The war in kyiv is in the people,” García emphasizes.
In the facilities of the historic theater, the rehearsals of the young actors and actresses progress between intense and cathartic sessions. One of the remarks starring Valeriia Saakian – each one expresses himself freely in those asides – caused those present to end up in tears. Ignacio García tells it while incisively remembering the title of the work, Life is a dream and he quickly recites the best-known passage of Sigismund’s soliloquies that are part of a text written four centuries ago, which takes place in a Poland threatened by no less than the Duchy of Muscovy and in which García himself plunged at the age of 15: “What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction, and the greatest good is small: that all life is dream, and dreams are dreams.”
Then, holding in her hand the sheets that collect each one’s notes, García spins with Saakian’s words that made the company tremble the first time the actress uttered them: “I dreamed that I burned myself. I burned my left hand. In the dream, my dear one kissed my fingers so that they would stop hurting. That morning I woke up and, while I was getting ready, I burned the same left hand. The burn didn’t hurt me. “It hurt me that he had passed away.”