Within days of the start of the war, a group of Ukrainian children and teenagers began recording interviews and audio diaries in English to share their stories with the world. They have become a remarkable chronicle of young people plunged into war and crisis - from becoming refugees across Europe to living under Russian occupation and recording from behind enemy lines.
The Clear Blue Skies uses excerpts from these gripping recordings, listened to live by actors on stage each night and performed using a real-time in-ear verbatim technique. The result is an urgent and intimate transmission about the trauma of war and the resilience and humor of young people in the digital age facing an unknown future for their country.
The production is a theatrical experience that goes past reporting to illuminate what is not or cannot be said and builds a visual vocabulary of how memory loops, how we look away from what we dare not recall, or how the words we use sometimes barely contain what they try to describe.
The Clear Blue Skies uses excerpts from these gripping recordings, listened to live by actors on stage each night and performed using a real-time in-ear verbatim technique. The result is an urgent and intimate transmission about the trauma of war and the resilience and humor of young people in the digital age facing an unknown future for their country.
The production is a theatrical experience that goes past reporting to illuminate what is not or cannot be said and builds a visual vocabulary of how memory loops, how we look away from what we dare not recall, or how the words we use sometimes barely contain what they try to describe.
CREATIVE TEAM
SCOTT ILLINGWORTH (Co-Creator) Directing credits include off-Broadway, regional, and international work including new play collaborations with Lucas Hnath, Mona Mansour, Christina Anderson, Keith Reddin, and Bill Bowers. His work has been seen across the U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia. Scott is the co-founder of SOCIETY Theatre Collective, the author of Exercises for Embodied Actors: Tools for Physical Actioning, and a Fulbright grant recipient. He is the Associate Chair of and an Associate Arts Professor in the Graduate Acting Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
OLEKSANDRA [Alex] OLIINYK (Co-Creator) is the founder, director, and teacher at Actors Lab Ukraine. She teaches acting and movement to both children and adults. Her special interest is working and creating with teenagers. Oleksandra was previously a professor at Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi Theatre, Cinema and Television University and did research as a Fulbright grant recipient at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts. As an actress she has worked in theatres throughout Ukraine and performed in international projects at LaMama, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego.