Episode Summary
Imagine having a silent witness, a partner who is with you all the time, even when you go through the hardest moments of your life. Imagine not being alone but instead being held, accompanied, supported. What might that feel like in your heart, in your body, in your bones? (This is part 1 of a 2-part interview with Alina Zievakova of ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine.)
Episode Resources
→ Blooming - Watch the Performance (47:49)
https://www.scenesaver.co.uk/production/bloom-in-violence/
(Registration is free and only takes a few minutes)
→ Part 2 of This Interview: https://ever-changing.net/episodes/s5-e4-blooming-amidst-the-war-pt-2
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Full Transcript
Zievakova: This character is always there, is always ready to support or to connect or to offer a different way. And we believe that is one of the most important messages in the whole performance, is that even when you're alone, you are not.
Imagine having a silent witness, a partner who is with you all the time, even when you go through the hardest moments of your life. Imagine not being alone but instead being held, accompanied, supported. What might that feel like in your heart, in your body, in your bones?
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we have a treat for you. Today we are joined by Alina Zievakova, a film and theatre actress and acting coach. Alina will be speaking with us about her work with ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine, an independent, English-Speaking, safe theatre in Kyiv - safe because it is located in the basement where there is more protection from russian missiles and drones.
Alina is here to speak with us about the war, but in a very hopeful way. She will be walking us through the experience of birthing a unique theater production called Blooming. Blooming is a powerful work that traces the path of healing after violence, finding the way back home to self after trauma. It’s an important work that I’ve had the honor to watch - and you can too.
This is the first of two episodes where Alina will be with us. Today she will take us behind the scenes as the three female creators connected with their intuition to organically allow Blooming to come to life. We will learn how the piece has grown and changed over time. And we will explore the fundamental rites of passage we see happen in the show. We’ll go now to my interview with Alina, which got off to a bumpy start when I realized I had neglected to press the record button.
Thomas: So it is amazing to get to have an hour with you!
Zievakova: Likewise.
Thomas: And I… I've really been wanting to know more about this performance. When I watched it, I was touched by how many layers and depth it had, how many colors, how many textures, how much truth…. It just really blew me away and I'm curious, how did it come to be in the world?
Zievakova: Thank you so much for your perception, which is so deep and soulful rich. And yes, it would be a pleasure for me to share. So the show is called Blooming and originally it actually was called Bloom In Violence, but we will get to the point where we decided to change the name. And it is created by three women, which is Anabell Ramirez, who is the director of the show, Jasmine Sotelo, who is my partner on stage (she's a choreographer and dancer), and myself. So we have been together as colleagues in a place that is called ProEnglish Theatre that is situated in a basement in Kyiv. And this is where we… well, we… me and and Anabell and my other colleagues ended up being, starting from the 24th of February of 2022, to the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russian federation to Ukraine. And both me and Anabell started doing whatever we can volunteering and subsequently working as fixers - which is a kind of a field producer who is accompanying foreign journalists. And we have been going to different locations to document war crimes, and one of them being the violence and specifically gender-based violence. And we've felt both of us very strongly that there is something we should do with all of this knowledge with all these stories that women have shared with us. And we have been exploring different options, but at the end of the day, without like, theater being our main thing in life is the strongest instrument we have. So we decided to create a performance about it.
Thomas: Wow, that is incredibly powerful. And in a strange way, it kind of mirrors, in a tiny way what I was doing, which was watching things from here and being especially drawn to stories of gender-based violence, and then figuring out what is my strongest thing? That's how that one meditation series, Everyday Magic for Ukraine, came to be. Because it seems in some respects, like, “How could this possibly help?” But then “Well, this is my thing. This is where I resonate. This is where I shine. This is what I can do.”
Zievakova: Absolutely. And thank you so much for those projects. They're incredible.
Thomas: Thank you. So can you tell us more about the creation process?
Zievakova: Sure. [LAUGHS] It's a bit non-traditional, I would say, since we are, all three of us are non-traditional. First of all, it happened so that both Anabell’s direction in her art and my direction in my art coincided in desire to step out from the traditional theater of the classical way of seeing things. And Jasmine being the choreographer and the… her language is body… also fit perfectly into our trio. So yeah, we… Our first meeting was just a conversation where we pretty much decided what is the most important message that we would like to convey… or messages… through the performance. And here comes the non-traditional no thing. So this might sound silly, and unfortunately, in the… at least in Ukraine, what I'm seeing… the notion of tarot cards is very stigmatized and very… is associated with something… fraud, or something icky. Whereas we see a lot of archetypical and depth and knowledge in that, therefore, we picked up a deck of tarot cards. And we decided to kind of lay a passage, a journey, through which the main characters go throughout this performance, exploring different emotions in different states of a person who has experienced violence. And it gave us the… also broader and deeper understanding of things that we can include into each of those steps.
Thomas: Wow.
Zievakova: Yeah, and interesting that when we started, we didn't have any text. So we went absolutely intuitively out of what we have felt, and we started creating a lot of physical aspects of the performance. Because as you can see, if you watch it, it is a lot of visual aspects of this performance. So it is lights and blocking and physical work of our bodies. And only then when you know, there was a fertile soil of that base that we have laid this way. We started picking the texts that naturally flew into this already created flow, which has been the text from a book called “Daughter” from Tamara Horicha Zernia who is a Ukrainian writer, and also personal testimonies.
Thomas: So it started with the body and the intuition.
Zievakova: Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah, it has such a strong, embodied feel. It kind of feels like since there are so few words... that it opens it up so that each of us can experience it in our own way, even more than if they were words. Does that make sense?
Zievakova: Yes, absolutely, absolutely! It gives more metaphorical meanings that can be interpreted by everyone. Therefore, that is what's crucial for us that even though it is a show created by women, based on a book written by woman, it's still for us, it isn't important that it's universal. It is for anyone who has gone through trauma or through violence. And that is, luckily, what we have managed to achieve according to the feedback that we have gotten through different audiences.
So now you have a sense of how the show came to life. But that was only the beginning, only the beginning of a true journey.
Zievakova: It was born in Kyiv. We performed it in June of 2022 and then it started its journey abroad, since we have been traveling and touring with it throughout different countries. So we've been to Italy, Poland, Denmark, Sweden with it, and we continue to plan. So our next stop will be Prague good this spring and… Well, first of all, we changed the name, the name was Bloom in Violence at the beginning, because again, the atmosphere in which we created, it was absolutely different than the atmosphere is, is now in Ukraine, for example. And the violence, the level of it in the air was visceral. You could feel it, you could touch it almost. And that's why it was so crucial for us to put a balancing aspect to even it out, to give a passage, to give an opportunity for people who have gone through such a horrible experience in their life to at least have a notion that there is a way. And it is absolutely individual for everyone, but here we are with some options for you. And therefore Blooming it was you know, this almost as heart-beating word to, to balance it out. But then as the time passed, and the atmosphere here changes drastically, atmosphere when you traveled changes and affects your perception. And therefore, after our tour to Denmark, when we came back, we decided that how the show was developing… Because it also it is, you know, it is an entity of itself. It grows with us, it develops with us, and we trust it, we listen to it. And therefore, it felt like violence has no place even in the name of the show, therefore, we left only Blooming.
Thomas: That's, that's so wonderful that you're letting it be a being and growing and breathing and telling you how it's changing. That's beautiful. How has it been for you… How many performances have you had? And how has it been for you as you've gone through all of those, like, the trajectory?
Zievakova: I think we had around 16. It's been different every time. It also… every time since it's a live performance, a theater performance, it depends on the audience, because they also are co creators with us. And at some point in the beginning, that's also something that has changed. We have been incorporating audience members at the end. We are inviting them on the stage and we are offering them crowns and flowers as this common ritual that we share as… as they are also characters of the show equally as me and Jasmine. And recently, we've also changed it, this summer. Because it also felt that even though it was a very powerful moment, and again at the moment it felt right. But recently we have discovered that we don't need even to bring people to the stage. We are entering the audience and we are sitting with them and giving them flowers and just sharing the space, you know? So, there is no pressure for people even in that regard to come out of the stage, because it also can be stressful and people usually are, you know, not so comfortable on the stage in general. So that is something that we have applied as well.
Thomas: Wow. Have there been any moments that you can share that have been especially powerful with relating to the audience?
Zievakova: Definitely. Well, there is another important aspect to mention before I go there. So usually we don't only perform this show, but we combine it as experience with a workshop that we're bringing. And the workshop is called RAW. It's abbreviation for Relief Acting Workshop, it's a workshop that I have created. Again, starting from the full-scale invasion. It's basically a training based on breathing techniques, meditation techniques, acting techniques, body movement techniques that we are… we have been offering in ProEnglish since the spring of 2022. And it is targeted to offer people the place to breathe out, to relief in any way that connects to them personally. And we have been cooperating with different organizations to offer and target it to different groups. For example, displaced people, refugees, military, cadets, military students, veterans, women, men, and family members of people whose husbands or brothers or sisters or mothers are in the military, in the service. So we usually, especially when we travel, but here as well in Kyiv, we have it as a workshop, first two hours. And after the workshops, it's like, final touch is the performance. So the person has, you know, this journey of their own as well. And it feels more personal for them. And when we were doing this in Poland, in one of the cities because we had a tour, there was a woman who's actually Ukrainian, she… she's a refugee there. And she came, and she attended the workshop. And then she attended the performance. And she approached us and she said that this event changed her life. And she… she said that, even though it sounds very, you know, fundamental and maybe too loud, but at the same time, she felt like it was something crucial that she needed to, to grasp in order to go on with her life. And, you know, stories like that - at least one story like that makes you sure that what you do is needed, is crucial to share. Especially in in this kind of way through art, when it is applicable, let's say to different people.
Thomas: That's wonderful that she was able… that she felt comfortable enough to tell you that because there may be people who felt that way who didn't actually tell you, right?
Zievakova: Right. Right
Thomas: Wow. And I didn't know you were doing it at the end of the workshop. That really paints a different picture for me, because I know how powerful it can be to get people together out of their regular routine, more into their bodies than normal, creating community… Being in bodies in a community in a safe place, can really open people up, bring a sense of safety that allow the hearts to open and then to have something once that space has been created… at the end of that it… I know it can be very, very powerful. So that's amazing.
Zievakova: Thank you. Yeah, definitely it makes all the difference in the world.
Thomas: Yeah. Have you ever done the show without the workshop?
Zievakova: Yes, we have. Because we adjust to circumstances and especially when we travel, we are not always able to control everything how it goes. So in some venues were not able… or some venues are not suited for workshops. So then we just have it also after the show, it is mandatory for us to have a discussion. So people who want to leave can leave and again, you know, digest and process in… on their own but people who want to share, there is this opportunity of creating the community in a discussion in Q&A in still an exchange you know, so there is a closure.
Thomas: Yes. Yes. That's wonderful. That's… that's really important too, right? Because there's an opening of the heart watching… I wish I had had that. Although I suppose I'm having it now with you. To get to, sort of, process everything that came up because it is such a heart-opening experience watching it.
[MUSIC]
Thomas: I want to go back for a second to when you said you're working with the tarot cards, just… I'm just curious. When you were working with them, were you like, looking through the tarot cards and kind of picking the ones that felt right that matched the journey you were thinking might be there? Or were you letting them fall out of the deck? Or did you reading? Or how did you interact with them?
Zievakova: I love that we're talking about this, thank you so much. I really want, to you know, to give honor to this and to be on that side that protects it protects its true meaning. So we chose, we took out the higher arcanes and we only worked with those. And kind of… we took turns each one of us out of three, to… having them all in front of us pick… seeing them, pick the ones that resonate the most when we talk about this performance. And we kind of, each one of us, built their own picture out of this higher arcanes. And we discussed again, then comparing all three and kind of combining them into one common passage, we decided what are the most strong ones that speak to us that we can use whenever addressing each element of the performance or each stage of the performance.
Thomas: Wow, that's so cool. I'm seeing the three of you now and then there's that powerful symbolism of the three women doing this work, right?
Zievakova: Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Isn’t that cool? I mean, that’s my type of theater production. Where intuition and archetypes are welcome. Where the story evolves on its own through deep listening and collaboration. I don’t want to give too much away about the performance before you’ve had a chance to see it, but I will tell you that in Blooming, we see a woman going on a journey that has many phases and many colors. She often has a silent companion with her who has a bit of an ethereal quality. As Alina said, most of the content is delivered through movement and sound, and music and lighting. There are very few words, which allows the actions to become even more noticeable. One scene that stood out for me was when this mysterious companion took out a tube of red lipstick and began drawing symbols on the wrist of the main character.
Thomas: Since Shame Piñata is all about rites of passage, I have to ask you a little bit more about rites of passage, I felt like that part where she was drawing those symbols on the arm of your character, that that really resonated for me as a beautiful rite of passage. And one that was… just felt like a rite of passage for me to get to watch it, right? That's the way theater can be. And… were there other aspects of the show that were a rite of passage that I might have missed?
Zievakova: Well, I guess it has several of them, because we do explore a whole journey. So we start when the main character is, you know, in this very light and infantile stage of her life, when everything is …light, yeah, I guess that would be the most appropriate word for it. But then whenever circumstances change, or events enter her life, she adjusts. But at the same time, there is the second character, the one that Jasmine plays who represents for us, well, it can represent so many things. And that's why we prefer not to give it a specific name. It can be nature, it can be intuition, it can be something that we cannot name, something present… presence. And this character is always there, is always ready to support or to connect, or to offer a different way. And we believe that is one of the most important messages in the whole performance is that even when you're alone, you are not. There is some so much in that second character again, who at the same time represents the Ancestors and the whole crowd of people being in one. And that's why she does the initiation. That's why she draws on my hand and on my eyes, and she shows me the way. She also interacts with the audience and, you know…in regards of rites of passage, that is what felt right to us at the moment of this unity in one.
Thomas: Yeah, and I love that description of her. I was trying to decide - who is she? At first I was waiting for her to speak. I thought she was just a person who was with you. She's also in the role of the witness, right? Which is such a sacred thing…
Zievakova: Absolutely. Yes, and you're right in. That's how… that's why that's why it's so up to interpretation. And in some moments of the performance, she does represent another person in the room with me. And she is a witness, which is such a precise word that you have chosen because that's what we were doing. We were witnessing other stories at the beginning in spring of 2022, and it was very important for us to give them proper dignity and proper way and rite of passage, actually, to transform it to, transcend it above of the physical reality.
Thomas: Yeah. So how can people see the show?
Zievakova: There is a website, a platform that is called Scenesaver, and you can register, it's absolutely free and it takes just a couple of minutes. And you can watch this show and many, many other shows. It's a great platform that offers a online theater experience. And also, we are touring. So maybe at some point, we'll end up in the US, hopefully. And yeah, we are looking forward every time to a new location, since the experience is different, the cultural differences, in fact the perception of the show, and it is also very valuable this international experience.
Alina will be back with us next time to explore the cultural differences the team noticed as they took Blooming on tour throughout Europe, to highlight some of the uniquely Ukrainian symbolism within the show, and to share some of the feedback the team received from survivors who attended.
In the meantime, I highly encourage you to check out the performance linked in the show notes and consider supporting the Relief Acting Workshops for the National Guard of Ukraine. These Relief Acting Workshops are ongoing so you can support them no matter when you are listening to this episode.
Alina Zievakova is a film and theatre actress and acting coach from Ukraine. Before February 24th 2022, she was dedicated to a career on the screen, premiering as a female lead in the film "Rhino" at the Venice Film Festival. However, during the russian full-scale war in Ukraine, she has mainly been acting in socially-relevant theatre pieces and adapting her acting coaching for stress-relief workshops.
Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on YouTube, IG and X at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our new 10-part series 10 Minutes for Your Heart, Meditations for Ukrainians. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.
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