A Night Out For Ukraine

Were you unable to attend in person or online but still want to support the cause? Click the button to donate.

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*Sunflower Image courtesy of Vladimir Zimakov, a Boston-based book artist, designer and illustrator

A collaborative effort by the local theater community and other charitable organizations, as well as a host of local volunteers , A Night Out for Ukraine celebrated Ukrainian culture and provided our local community an opportunity to express our solidarity and support of the Ukrainian people. This fundraising event featured a roundtable discussion by local experts on the situation on the ground in Ukraine, more than one year after the Russian invasion. The evening also featured readings of four short plays by Ukrainian playwrights. In between, we joined together for a community meal of Ukrainian food provided by Crepes Tea House and music from the region provided by Burikes.

The event was part of the Ukrainian Hope Initiative, a global project of play readings that have taken place around the United States and the world, sponsored by the Center for International Theatre Development in Baltimore.

As we gathered together for this evening of education, entertainment, and insightful conversation, our main purpose was to raise money to help Ukraine and Ukrainians. Beneficiaries of all funds raised included Ukraine TrustChain, Jewish Family Service of Western Mass Refugee Resettlement Program, and the Ukrainian Performing Arts Fund. The entirety of each attendees' $5 ticket went toward these fundraising efforts. With their help, we successfully raised $4644.27!

The evening was LiveStreamed to Youtube and is still available to watch. We will continue to collect donations for the next few weeks, so please continue to give if you feel so moved. See the LiveStream below@

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The central purpose of the evening is to raise money to help Ukraine and Ukrainians. Your entire $5 tickets goes toward supporting these efforts, and we hope you will consider donating beyond the cost of admission to support these important organizations. Get to know our fundraising beneficiaries:

Jewish Family Service of Western Mass Refugee Resettlement Program

JFS, in partnership with HIAS and with the Massachusetts Office of Refugees and Immigrants, provides wrap-around support to refugees and asylees to help them feel settled and at-home in Western Massachusetts including individuals and families from Ukraine.

Ukrainian Emergency Performing Arts Fund

Donations to Ukrainian Emergency Performing Arts Fund support independent performing artists in Ukraine currently by providing emergency relief grants and supporting the continuation of art generation throughout Russia's attack on the country.

Ukraine TrustChain

Ukraine TrustChain supports volunteer teams and funds urgent aid and evacuations in the active war zone in Ukraine. Their small teams go where big international organizations can’t, to provide urgent food, medical supplies, and rides to safety. Donations go directly to the front lines.

We are grateful to our generous sponsors who have helped to make this event possible and ensured that all proceeds go directly to our fundraising recipients. Interested in becoming a business sponsor? Reach out to rachel@playincubation.org or click the button to donate.

Thank you!
A.PE., LTD
Burikes
Crepes Tea House
Edwards Church
M&T Bank
Main Street Stage Company
Northampton Open Media

B

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3:30-4:00: Doors open. Welcome music by Burikes

4:00-5:15: UMass Russian, Eurasian, and Polish Studies and Public Policy Programs Roundtable on the Russia's War in Ukraine. Led by Regine Spector, Alina Parker, and Nara Narimanova

5:30-6:45: Break for meal and music, provided by Crepes Tea House and Burikes.

7:00-8:30: Four play readings by Ukrainian Playwrights

8:40-9:30 Talkback and community dialogue facilitated by the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding

*While we encourage everyone to participate for the entirety of the evening, it is not required in order to attend. The registration form provides an opportunity to share which elements you plan to attend.

Signs of the Times
Written by Liudmyla Tymoshenko (Kharchenko) (tr. by John Freedman with Natalia Bratus)

Credits
PERFORMER Stephanie Carlson
DIRECTOR Ellen W. Kaplan

About the Playwright:

Liudmyla Tymoshenko (Kharchenko) was born in Kazakhstan, and graduated in 2000 from the Faculty of Philosophy of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Doctor of Political Sciences. Playwright, screenwriter, artist, university lecturer. Her plays have been shortlisted annually for Ukrainian and foreign drama competitions and festivals. Two premieres were scheduled for February-May 2022 at theaters in Kyiv and Lviv, neither of which took place due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Survivor's Syndrome

Written by Andriy Bondarenko (Tr. by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus)

Credits

PERFORMER Kermit Dunkelberg

PERFORMER Julian Findlay

DIRECTOR Sheryl Stoodley
TECHNICAL SUPPORT Robin Doty

About the Playwright:

Andriy Bondarenko is a Doctor of Philosophy, playwright, journalist and historian of culture. His plays have appeared in shortlists of the Ukrainian festivals Contemporary Play Week, Drama.UA, and the Love and Beaver Festival of Drama. Andriy is a founding member of Kyiv’s Theatre of Playwrights. He is the head of the literary and dramatic department (dramaturg) of the Lviv Puppet Theater.

Tonia, Asya, and a Plane
Written by Nina Zakhozhenko (tr. by Valeriya Kosmidaylo, ed. by Olha Drobotai)

Credits
TONIA Sofia Cerciello
ASYA Anne Gallivan
DIRECTOR Milan Dragovich

About the Playwright:
Nina Zakhozhenko is a playwright and theater maker from Kyiv, currently living in Lviv. She studied literary and dramatic theory at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She has collaborated with a number of government and nongovernment theaters as a digital artist, cultural manager, translator and playwright. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, she wrote a series of short dramas about the feeling of freedom and security during the war. Most of these texts were included in the play titled Me, War and the Toy Grenade. Her most recent premiere is I'm Okay, about the life of teenagers in a city under Russian occupation - on July 1, 2022 at the Kharkiv Puppet Theater.

23.24.25
Written by Andriy Mai (tr. by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus)

Credits
PERFORMER J. Golden

About the Playwright:

Andriy Mai was born in the city of Kherson. He graduated from the Kherson School of Culture in 1999. In 2008, he graduated from the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema and Television in Kyiv. In 2011, he graduated with a Master's degree at the Moscow Art Theater School. Mai helped found the February/February theater festival in 2009. He has been a permanent curator of the Contemporary Play Week festival in Kyiv since 2011. From 2013 to 2016, he was assistant artistic director, and curator of special projects at the Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv. As a director, he has participated in the Golden Mask Russian National Theater Festival, festivals at the Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), Lessingtage, Thalia Theater (Hamburg), Die Besten aus dem Osten, Volkstheater (Vienna), and Eurokontext.sk at the National Slovak Theater (Bratislava), as well as the Monodrama festival in Bitola, North Macedonia. He is associated with the Theater of Playwrights in Kyiv. He is married to theater and film actress Maryna Kukliniy-Mai with whom he has a son.

Regine Spector Regine Spector is an associate professor and director of the Russian, Eurasian and Polish Studies Program at University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Alina Parker is a full-time lecturer teaching courses in the Writing Program and in the Russian, Eurasian, and Polish Studies Program at UMass Amherst. She holds a PhD in Communication from UMass Amherst (2022). Her interdisciplinary dissertation discusses politics of history in Russia after the Crimean annexation. Her research interests include postsocialism, Eastern Europe, political contention, far-right politics, and historical memory, which she examines through the prism of discursive and institutional analysis. Her research has been published in East European Politics and Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research. She has also taught at Smith College, the University of Tampa, and the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, Russia.

Nara Narimanova is a Master of Public Policy and Administration Candidate at the School of Public Policy, the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She came to pursue her master’s degree in the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar from Ukraine. She is an intern with the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative to assist the SCRI in advancing its mission and objectives through research, and public policy activities to protect cultural heritage and scientific collections threatened or impacted by the war in Ukraine and to help the Ukrainian community preserve their identities and history. Additionally, she is involved in projects supporting the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab, using satellite imagery to monitor some 28,000 cultural sites in Ukraine to document damage and destruction and share that with relevant authorities.
Nara Narimanova began her advocacy career in Crimea working for a local civil society organization on the protection of human rights, until the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014. Nara has been a Program officer and journalist with 9 years of experience coordinating programs. She has been a leader of advocates, supporting Ukraine’s democracy by providing training to countless local civil society organizations and thousands of citizens across Ukraine on how to engage with and monitor local governments; build coalitions to advocate for issues of concern to the local community; and include women, internally displaced persons, persons with disabilities and other minority groups in local government’s decision-making processes. Through Nara’s tireless efforts to develop, support, and defend civil society in villages and cities across Ukraine, hundreds of individual, independent housing associations have been formed and dozens of proposals and policies drafted by local groups of citizens have been adopted by their respective local governments.

Bogdan Prokopovych
Senior Lecturer at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, teaching social entrepreneurship and sustainable enterprise. Formerly at IFC of the World Bank Group in Ukraine. Former Executive Director of a Kyiv-based NGO and IREX US Embassy Policy Specialist Fellow in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. PhD in Management from the University of Rhode Island, a Master’s (MPPM) from the University of Pittsburgh.

Were you unable to attend in person or online but still want to support the cause? Click the button to donate.

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