SASHA DENISOVA: «Theatre Is Not an Art — It’s a Weapon. And a Cold Shower»
Sasha Denisova / Photo from personal archive
SHORT PROFILE
Name: Sasha Denisova
Date of Birth: October 30, 1974
Place of Birth: Kyiv, Ukraine
Profession: Theatre Director, Playwright, Screenwriter, Journalist
Sasha Denisova is arguably the most prominent Ukrainian playwright and theatre director in the world today. Her four war-themed plays — Six Ribs of Rage, The Hague, My Mother and the Full-Scale Invasion, and Gollum — speak more powerfully about today’s tragedy than any bold news headline or statistical report. The first three have been staged multiple times across the globe — from the United States and Canada to Germany and Poland. The fourth is set to premiere at a theatre in Amsterdam.
A Kyiv native in the fifth generation and a graduate of Kyiv’s Shevchenko University, Sasha studied theatre and honed her craft in Moscow and London, including an internship at the Royal Court Theatre. She has directed around 25 productions, including Light My Fire, Alice and the State, and Hotel California.
To the international theatre community, she is first and foremost the author of The Hague — a tragicomedy featuring 18 characters, in which Putin, Shoigu, Kadyrov, Surovikin, and others sit in a Hague prison awaiting sentencing for war crimes. They are summoned for questioning, all while complaining about poor conditions and the quality of prison food. The story is told from the perspective of a girl from Mariupol, whose mind is consumed by a quest for justice.
Sasha now lives in Spain and is working on a literary version of The Hague, which will be significantly expanded to include the backstory of the girl who delivers justice. We spoke with Sasha on a Saturday morning. We discussed not only her book and her widely acclaimed plays — covered by major outlets such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, American Theatre, and The New Yorker — but also the nature of justice, theatre industry politics, audience fatigue, children’s perception of war, her mother who was born during the Nazi bombings of Kyiv, dark humor, and political theatre.
Andrii Alferov: Your plays about the war in Ukraine seem to refute the notion that one cannot write about such tragic events in the present moment — that time and distance are needed. But it turns out the tragedy can be portrayed while it’s still unfolding?
Sasha Denisova: Every artist must decide that for themselves. It can and should be done. Another matter is that there are very few successful examples. One of them is Charlie Chaplin with The Great Dictator, who in 1940 — when the world still knew nothing about the Holocaust or the full extent of Nazi crimes — mocked Hitler. And Chaplin did it so brilliantly that he immediately became Hitler’s enemy.
There are indirect reports that Hitler watched Chaplin’s film and stomped his feet in rage. That’s a satisfying thing for an artist. I would like that too… But Putin, of course, doesn’t watch anything. No one hands him memos saying he’s become a character in a play, a production… Unfortunately.
As for documentary theatre — rooted in the present — I know how to work with it. I was trained in it at the Royal Court Theatre. And it was the British who, by founding that theatre in its modern form in the mid-1950s, laid the foundation for contemporary drama by proposing that one should work with what is happening here and now. They taught me the skill of writing from life, so to speak. They trained me in the art of documentary theatre, whose motto has always been: «Capture what is».
Another principle I learned there: take real people and throw them into space. Waiting for things to «settle down» or «the war to end» — that’s not our way. Especially since the perspective on the war keeps shifting. What in 2022 still seemed like a horrifying tragedy has now turned into routine.
People in Ukraine have grown used to it — and so have the Europeans watching from afar. And you know, there’s another thing: audience demand. In Europe, for example. Audiences there no longer want to watch diaries from Bucha. Just a couple of years ago, many European stages held readings of real documents. But now — it’s over. They no longer spark interest. The audience is saturated with the tragedies of our war.
A.A.: Why do you think that is?
S.D.: Because the human psyche isn’t built to absorb other people’s tragedies for too long. Furthermore, the world changes too quickly—even the perception of wars shifts.
A.A.: And how do you understand what precisely the Western audience wants?
S.D.: When I staged my play in Poland, I realized how important it is to understand precisely who you’re talking to. Theatre is a dialogue. I’m constantly looking at the audience and asking myself: «Who are these people?» «What would I be interested in discussing with them?» Because doing theatre just for the sake of some abstract, entertaining spectacle is pointless. It’s no coincidence that Molière said a nation is shaped in the stalls. A playwright or performer needs someone to talk to — and needs to see some response.
Western audiences are no exception. I first understood what they wanted through the feedback of curators. It was they who first said: «Enough!» I remember about a year ago, in one European country, I was told they no longer wanted plays or productions about the war in Ukraine. «Not this season». That was it. «Give us something else. Write something about Europe — about war in Europe, for instance. Just not about your suffering».
And I get it. Why should they listen to and watch this endlessly? Why? I doubt Ukraine ever spent much time reflecting on other people’s wars or tragedies… We barely had time for our own. Yes, Europeans are tolerant, they’re capable of compassion — but other countries are facing their catastrophes. Twenty-seven wars are going on in the world right now!
Since I usually don’t write on commission from theatres, but only about things that genuinely concern me, that’s what I offer. And since the idea of nuclear war currently absorbs me — I’ve dedicated two plays to it (still in progress) — that’s what I proposed. Both are dark comedies—or rather, tragicomedies. And then the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites happened, and suddenly the material became very relevant.
That’s the inner politics of theatre — something that isn’t officially declared, of course, but you can intuitively feel how it all gets structured. And it depends on the geopolitical vibes. Right now, we — Ukraine — have dropped out of that trend.
A.A.: Completely dropped out?
S.D.: Not completely, but significantly. There’s still some interest. For example, in Amsterdam, they’re currently preparing a production of my play Gollum, which you’re familiar with — about the death of a Ukrainian intellectual on the front line. And its central question is: what was that life given for? What did he sacrifice it for? A documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and writer.
Why did he make that choice? That question probably couldn’t have arisen in the first year of the war. Now we see these cemeteries — like in Kyiv, at Lisove — stretching in rows to the horizon, and we inevitably start asking about the price. The war continues, generating new and increasingly complex themes.
A.A.: So, is theatre today an advocate or a prosecutor of humanity?
S.D.: I think it’s an advocate… Artists usually fall into two camps — those who believe that people are inherently good, and those who stand on the opposite side. Spielberg, for instance, is a convinced humanist, and all his films celebrate human dignity and kindness. Lars von Trier examines the evil inherent in humanity.
According to von Trier, the human being is a failed project, capable only of wrongdoing. And for Woody Allen, the person is always ridiculous — absurd in their helplessness. And for me, too. That’s probably because I often work in the tragicomic genre, and I can’t write a character who is entirely unsympathetic.
For instance, I’m currently writing another satire about the Kremlin, and one of the characters is a Russian TV host. In theory, I should portray him as a full-on Kremlin stooge. But I just can’t. I still have to find something in him — some vulnerability… Yes, war forces us to look at humans as social animals. It brings out the worst, the basest instincts. Or, conversely, the very best in people.
For a country that’s at war, it’s difficult to speak objectively about everything that’s happening and to depict the human qualities of the enemy. That kind of hard, documentary gaze is not yet possible. The wound is still open. But preserving all those «dark chapters of war» solely in the form of glorification isn’t the answer either. That destroys art.
A.A.: The main narrator in your plays and productions is a child. That’s probably why your perspective on life and war feels so straightforward and sincere. Your children — whether prematurely matured or prematurely aged (as in Harry on Fire, where we see J.K. Rowling’s characters fifty years later) — are always deeply curious. What does a child’s gaze give you in understanding the present moment and the war in particular?
S.D.: When I was writing The Hague, which revolves entirely around the behavior of Putin’s entourage — and Putin himself — in prison, I suddenly felt that something was missing. There was a sense of incompleteness.
And then I remembered the heroine of Alice in Wonderland. I thought: the most helpless person should stand in opposition to this demon of war. And who is the most defenseless among us? A child, because they’re physically vulnerable. They have no levers of influence over the events around them, except for one — imagination. And that’s a powerful thing, because imagination is what changes the world. I sincerely believe in that. And so does the girl in The Hague.
I came up with this girl, and soon she stepped right into my life, as if from reality itself. We met in Poznań. Her name is Solomiia. She lived with her parents in Saltivka, Kharkiv. On the first day of the war, precisely at five in the morning, a shell hit her bedroom. By a stroke of luck, she wasn’t there — she had spent the night in her parents’ room. That saved Solomiia’s life. She was just twelve at the time.
Initially, I wanted her to be part of the production. But time passed, Solomiia grew older, and eventually entered that teenage stage when she no longer fit the role. Still, we stayed close. We’re friends to this day.
When we met in July 2022, Solomiia showed me her drawings. She became the inspiration for the girl in The Hague. Her story intertwined with those of other children, refugees from Mariupol. Each of them told me about their war, not dramatizing it, but in hilarious, strange ways, with unexpected emotional shifts.
One girl, Sofiika, for example, kept saying: «The Russians bombed our favorite little market, and they had the best cottage cheese and cream that Grandpa and I used to buy…» — and then she would start crying over that cottage cheese. I wrote down these children’s monologues, observed their psychological responses, and their expressive capacity. And soon after, I rewrote The Hague, introducing the narrator — or rather, the narratrix.
In 2023, we staged the play. It was performed in Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, the U.S., and France. The central idea of The Hague is justice carried out not by adults, but by a child. Just recently, I decided to continue the story. After all, a play is a self-contained thing: 850 people might see it in a theatre, and then the production closes. Plus, the relevance of contemporary stagings fades. But a book remains. That’s when the idea of turning it into a novel came to me.
I went to Paris and found a boy who had survived the bombing of the Mariupol theatre and had lost his mother there. And a man who had been the military commandant of the entire theatre, and later adopted that boy. I also found Zhenia Zabahonska, the former commandant of the Mariupol commune theatre. I listened to them closely and at length. Real stories unfolded before me.
And now all of that is part of the fate of that same girl. In her imagination, she puts Kremlin war criminals on trial. And I continue to write that book.
A.A.: Will it be a more expanded story, a prequel to what’s shown in the play?
S.D.: Yes, a prequel. The Hague is a utopia cherished by a girl sitting under shelling in the Mariupol theatre for 20 days before the bomb hit. She invents this punishment for Putin — her version of The Hague.
A.A.: Do you personally believe in The Hague as a symbol of earthly justice? Do you believe in justice at all?
S.D.: I do. The concept of justice is deeply ingrained in us physiologically and is directly linked to our survival. And when we are given even an illusory sense of justice — for Ukraine, for example — it works. It feels almost real. That’s why, when I’m writing the novel The Hague, I sometimes feel a kind of pleasure from the justice being served in my writer’s imagination.
A.A.: Your girl in The Hague at some point sees Putin as a person with whom she can have a meaningful dialogue. Do you think adults are capable of such dialogue?
S.D.: Yes. She tries, in a childlike and sincere way, to understand why he attacked us. And he answers her like a character patched together from his absurd propaganda speeches — saying «we are one people», and «we came to liberate you», and so on. Adults aren’t capable of that, because they don’t see any value in trying to understand the enemy. They come up with their explanations, like «Putin is just a KGB man». They think they already know everything. But a child doesn’t know — and wants to find out.
She’s alone in that theatre — the adults are busy surviving. This child doesn’t know who to turn to, so she speaks with her imaginary interlocutor, asking him directly: «Are you going to kill us or not? Are you going to bomb us or not?» This also aligns with the idea that Putin is always on the minds of adults — he’s all they talk about. And the child hears it all and imagines him. She’s not afraid of him, because she doesn’t have fixed answers — she’s still searching.
A.A.: Despite working with tragic material, you call yourself a comedic writer. Do you agree with François Truffaut’s idea that humor is the politeness of despair?
S.D.: Yes. Life, seen up close, is a tragedy — but if you step back just a bit, it becomes a comedy. That’s what one British comedian said .
A.A.: The main character of another one of your war plays is your mother. The tragicomedy My Mother and the Full-Scale Invasion tells the story of a woman living between two wars…
S.D.: Yes. I’ve written about my mother before — many short stories are dedicated to her. But with the start of the war, she became the heroine of a play and a production bearing that same title. My mother has a strong character. When the bombings began, she told me: «I’m not going anywhere. Your grandmother and great-grandmother never left this place. I’ll stay here, with Zelensky». With the war, she began to see herself as a force capable of resistance. She’s a hardened person — she remembers World War II.
A.A.: She was, if I’m not mistaken, born in a Kyiv hospital bomb shelter, right before the Nazi occupation…
S.D.: She was born in the basement of Okhmatdyt. And when the hospital was hit last year, she pointed out that the Nazis hadn’t bombed Okhmatdyt. My mother was born on July 7, 1941. Her childhood unfolded in those horrific conditions. That’s where her incredible spirit comes from.
A.A.: Yes, in your play, she’s in direct contact with Zelensky and, between doing housework, prepares to issue a national address to politicians in Europe and the U.S., and even plans to shoot down a Russian drone with a jar of pickles…
S.D.: Exactly. She’s a woman defending her homeland. In the American production, we even use a projection of Kyiv’s «Motherland» monument, and against that backdrop, my mother stands guard over Ukraine with a cutting board and knife. She’s a warrior, a fury of war.
A.A.: Why have neither The Hague nor My Mother and the Full-Scale Invasion been staged in Ukraine, despite their tremendous success abroad?
S.D.: It’s hard to say for sure. A Ukrainian delegation came to Warsaw to see The Hague. I think they were a bit stunned. And after thinking about how it might be presented in Kyiv, they seemed to decide it would be too shocking for a Ukrainian audience. That it wouldn’t land. I recall them mentioning the prevalence of Russian themes.
I said, «Well, yes, there are ten people in prison — Putin, Patrushev, Kovalchuk, Shoigu, Kadyrov among them. They’re dancing Tchaikovsky’s ballet, discussing Russian literature — Pushkin and so on. Yes, it’s a play about the Russian power elite sitting in The Hague. Naturally, they’re discussing what went wrong. And all of Russian culture, Russian politics, and so on. That’s the essence of the play».
And I guess they felt that was unacceptable for a Ukrainian stage… Initially, there was discussion of staging The Hague in Kyiv as a performance to boost morale during these challenging times. But that hasn’t happened yet.
A.A.: Beyond being a form of therapy or emotional release, what do you see as your theatre’s mission?
S.D.: Reflection. You could call it political theatre — theatre meant to remind the world of the war in Ukraine. Today’s theatre is no longer just about entertainment. It has different responsibilities now. It’s not just art — it’s a weapon. And a cold shower. I try to disrupt the normalization of war.
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