Six Young Women Putting On A Play - A Diary of Theatre and War: Kyiv, Winter 2025

“I am more than what has happened to me.”
With the world’s politics in a mess, with an American President leading that charge, American playwright, Richard Nelson, wrote and directed a play for Theater on Podil in Kyiv, Ukraine. Throughout the ten weeks of rehearsals for When the Hurlyburly’s Done, he kept a diary.  Day after day he was inspired by his six young actresses, some as young as twenty-one, and so they had lived half their lives  in wartime.  They laughed and cried as the play, their characters, their lives and the war entwined. An inspiring and very human story about making art when everything else feels out of one’s control.

RICHARD NELSON has directed over twenty of his plays, as well as those by Chekhov and Turgenev. His plays include The Michaels, Illyria, The Gabriels (Hungry, What Did You Expect? and Women of a Certain Age), The Apple Family Plays (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry and Regular Singing), Conversations in Tusculum, Nikolai and the Others, Farewell to the Theatre, An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award Best Play), Two Shakespearean Actors (Tony Nomination, Best Play), Some Americans Abroad (Olivier Nomination, Best Comedy), and others. His musicals include James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey, Tony Award Best Book of a Musical, Tony nomination for Best Musical); his screenplays include Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell, director). With Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he has co-translated plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, and Bulgakov. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels ‘Master Playwright’ Award. He recently directed his play, Notre Vie Dans l’Art at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris, translated by Ariane Mnouchkine. He lives in Upstate New York.