Gabrielle Martin chats with Ondřej Hrab, Anastasiia Kosodii and Jana Svobodová about their show, Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival!

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Ondřej, Anastasiia and Jana discuss: 

• What makes your location so important to your work?

• What drew you to the non-musical form, and how does silence become part of the work's meaning?

• How do you approach staging texts so that they speak across borders without diluting their intimacy or specificity?

• What is documentary theatre and what is your particular approach with this new work? What questions are raised about authorship and collective responsibility?

• What did the title "for western audiences" mean and how did it impact the work?

• What is the importance of language and how do you deal with multiple languages in a performance?

About Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience

In Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, the political becomes profoundly personal. 

Drawn from the words of Ukrainian playwright Anastasiia Kosodii, this delicate yet piercing work meditates on the ordinary moments that fracture under the weight of war—boiling water, harvesting fruit, sleeping in one's own bed.

Across languages and borders, five performers gather to honour the small acts of living that survive in the shadow of war. Through text projection, music, movement, and light, they weave a collective reflection on distance, empathy, and responsibility—how to stand beside those whose lives are under siege. In its quiet sincerity, the piece invites us to listen: to the grain of a voice, the tremor of solidarity, the fragile beauty of life persisting against the noise of devastation.

About the Guests

Archa – Centre for Documentary Theatre continues the work its founders Ondřej Hrab and Jana Svobodová carried out for over 30 years at the renowned Archa Theatre in Prague. The Centre operates both locally and internationally. It actively collaborates with international theatres and artists, as well as with the rural community in the village of Dvakačovice, where it now focuses much of its activity. The Centre produces theatre performances, organizes the International Summer School of Documentary Theatre, hosts artistic residencies and workshops both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Its work focuses on documentary and socially specific theatre projects that emphasize collaboration between professional artists and representatives of diverse social groups.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Jana and Ondřej joined the conversation from Dvakačovice, Czechia, and Anastasia joined from Broumov, Czechia.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript