“Aporia’43-47”, is a socially involved theatre project, comprising of two parts: Polish, directed by Łukasz Witt-Michałowski (InVitro Pre-Premiere Stage, Lublin) and Ukrainian,
directed by Svitlana Oleshko (Arabesky Theatre, Kharkiv). The artists used historical materials as well as interviews with the witnesses to talk about the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in Volyn in 1943-47. Both parts are played by the same team of Polish and Ukrainians actors. Every story that is told onstage documents real stories of certain people and places presented as a combination of documentary and verbatim theatre.

“Aporia’43” (dir. Łukasz Witt-Michałowski) refers to the events that took place in Volyn in 1943-45, where Ukrainian nationalists exterminated a large part of local Polish population, which led to acts of revenge committed on Ukrainian people by the Poles. The performance discusses also the inability of the Polish and Ukrainian authorities to agree on one version of this chapter of our history. Over the last two years the director has made numerous trips to that region, meeting people who witnessed the events. Therefore, each part of the performance documents a true story of people or places presented in the form of documentary and verbatim theatre. Despite the fact that the events took place almost seventy years ago, Polish and Ukrainian people are still unaware of what happened in Volyn. The actors join onstage to discuss the still unresolved problem; they open up an old wound of misunderstandings and hidden secrets. Provoking a public debate, they ask if it will ever be possible to start a dialogue about a subject so painful.

“Decalogue: Local World War” (dir. Svitlana Oleshko) is based on “Decalogue of an Ukrainian Nationalist” created by a twenty-five-year-old philosophy student. A “Decalogue” which was later memorised by hundreds of thousands of young. For them it was not just yet another document, it was a call for action. It describes how they lived and how they died. From the perspective of our times, the “Decalogue” may seem a bit odd, sometimes difficult to understand, sometimes funny, sometimes even frightening. However, the fact we should bear in mind is that those ten points defined hundreds of thousands of lives. Pieces of a broken mirror can be glued together, but instead of reflecting one clear image, it will show its fragments seen from different angles. It is like watching old photographs, read other people’s diaries, travel in time and expect that history will finally teach us something.