Natalka Vorozhbyt – författare

'I spend the night in an officer’s barracks, where no woman has ever set foot.' In the darkest recesses of Ukraine, a war is raging.A journalist takes a research trip to the front line. Teenage girls wait for soldiers on benches. A medic mourns her lover killed in action.Natal'ya Vorozhbit's play Bad Roads is a heartbreaking, powerful and bitterly comic account of what it is to be a woman in wartime.It was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, in November 2017, in a production directed by Vicky Featherstone. It was developed by the Royal Court International Department, and translated by Sasha Dugdale.Natal’ya Vorozhbit is the leading Ukrainian playwright of her generation and has worked with the Royal Court since 2004. Her work includes The Khomenko Family Chronicles, Maidan Diaries (Royal Court) and The Grain Store (RSC).

Two powerful plays about the shattering impact of war, and the astonishing resilience of those living through it, written by two of Ukraine's leading playwrights.'They've mobilised all the living now, the fifth call took the last of the living. But the war keeps on. So high command asked us.'Sasha, a Colonel in the Ukrainian Army, has died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving his relatives Katia and Oksana to mourn for him. But a year later, as war intensifies, the army has resorted to recruiting the dead. Sasha is anxious to be resurrected so he can rejoin the fight, but can his family bear to lose him all over again? Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha by Natal'ya Vorozhbit blends reality and the supernatural in a startling exploration of the effects of war and conflict.'I want to report a robbery... I was robbed. What was stolen from me? Almost everything... Home, land, car, work, friends, city, faith in goodness...'Donbas, 2014. A nameless woman stands in the street, trying to sell a basket of kittens. She has lost everything else she holds dear. Her only remaining hope is to find a home for the kittens, since she cannot offer them one herself. Pussycat in Memory of Darkness by Neda Nezhdana is an unflinching examination of Russia's war on Ukraine through the brutalised eyes of one woman.The two plays were translated by Sasha Dugdale and John Farndon, respectively, and performed in English at the Finborough Theatre, London, as part of their #VoicesFromUkraine season in 2022.10% of the proceeds from sales of this book will be donated to the Voices of Children Charitable Foundation, a Ukrainian charity providing urgently needed psychological and psychosocial support to children affected by the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine 1929. As Stalin launches the first of his Five-Year Plans, a closeknit rural community stands unwittingly in the path of his drive to create a thriving socialist Soviet Union. The outcome is catastrophic.What begins for the people of the village as an amusingly alien concept rapidly becomes an unstoppable force for change. Robbed first of their land, then their religion and independence, the whole country soon becomes engulfed by a tragedy that will scar a nation for generations.Natal'ya Vorozhbit's play The Grain Store was first staged in this English translation by Sasha Dugdale by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2009.