Bunker Kiev

Script, concept and artistic direction by Stefano Massini.
Soundscape curated by Andrea Baggio.
Final track composed by Piero Pelù.
With Lorenzo Antolini and the Ukrainian actor Anna Donchenko.
A special project by Teatro della Toscana.

A year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24^th of February 2022, Stefano Massini takes the floor to allow us to experience what it means to survive in war-torn Kyiv today.  The Florentine writer and storyteller, the only Italian author to have ever won a Tony Award, the New York theatre worlds equivalent to the Oscars, felt the urgency of a work that is first and foremost a powerful political statement.

He debuted with Bunker Kiev in Florence on the 6^th of March and following the first performances, in an ideal theatrical and testimonial relay, Massini handed on the script to other interpreters.

Using eye-witness accounts, drawn not only from newspaper articles and videos, but also social media messages and blogs by those experiencing life in the bunkers, Massini has created a powerful, ruthless drama that is already in demand among international publishers and theatres (France, Germany and Greece) eager to publish or stage what is a paradigmatic and very simple work, capable of transmitting the experience of such shelters, distillations of humanity and pain. A jigsaw puzzle of broken, cracked lives, put at risk by  military folly that forces people to forego sunlight and take refuge underground like hibernating animals.

The war in Ukraine is not a news item, it is an open wound in the heart of Europe. It concerns us closely: it could have been us, and it could be us some time soon. Bunker Kiev accompanies us through the ruins and the shadows, showing us courage and fear, suffering and hope. There where the silence of thoughts is broken by the noise of explosions.