Green Corridors / Зелені коридори

Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, “green corridor” has been the term used for designated escape routes for civilians to leave conflict zones – though all too often these corridors offer no safety whatsoever. How can the reality of the refugees’ abrupt existential uprooting even be grasped? In this commissioned work for the Münchner Kammerspiele, written by the Ukrainian playwright Natalia Vorozhbyt while she herself was fleeing, four women from Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Bucha and Kyiv make their way to the European border. They have all witnessed rape and death – except the one woman from Kyiv who is an actor and has not experienced anything terrible herself, though she can play everything. On the other side of the border, a woman named Europa awaits the refugees. She wants to do good but generally understands very little. In the “waiting room for a new life”, conflicts erupt between the characters that are deeply rooted in the history of Ukraine – and Europe. Who betrayed whom? Who profited from whom? Who collaborated with whom? Vorozhbyt is a specialist in the perspective of ordinary people in unspeakable predicaments; in her work, desperation is saturated with a deep-seated black humour.

After her successful play “Bad Roads” and her film of the same name about the situation in occupied Donbas, Natalia Vorozhbyt has created another present-day parable. In this case, the spirits and ghosts of history increasingly mingle with the living. Jan-Christoph Gockel is directing the world premiere with a mixed Ukrainian-German cast – a result of the ongoing dialogue between the Kammerspiele and Ukrainian artists as part of the “Sisterhood Kyiv–Munich” project.