Ukrainian Odyssey

Ukrainian Odyssey is a big theatrical project in which one team of artists creates 5 episodes in different cities of Ukraine (Kyiv-Lviv-Kharkiv-Odessa-Kyiv). The basis for the project is Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses, to start the conversation to reflect on war, evolution, and heroism.
Lesya Theater hosts the residence of the project’s authors (director Kostiumynskyi Dmytro, choreographer Viktor Ruban, media artist Mykhailo Panchyk, composer Henadiy Boychenko, producer Veronika Skliarova) and together with them creates a play that will become Episode II of the Ukrainian Odyssey.
The ancient Greek theater was a place of study of important human and social issues. They still give us a reason to understand the same problems in our own context and our present. Euripides ‘Medea sharply emphasizes the rejection of migrants and nationalism, Sophocles’ Antigone focuses on feminism, and Homer’s Odyssey once again makes us think about the hero, war, the (in) ability to return to normal life, the post-traumatic syndrome.
With the start of the war in 2014, Ukraine has become more of an object on the map of political spheres of influence, a statistic than a country with living people. The process of heroization in these conditions has intensified and gives rise to new myths and idols, which claim to remain in the history that is being written right now.
The first performance of the series – Heroes of Chaos