The trainer wanted youngsters for his summer season performing class in Kiev, which might culminate in a efficiency of an unique play.
“It is a course for blissful youngsters, free of their ideas and goals,” teacher Olesya Korzhenevska wrote on Fb final spring.
It was exhausting to search out blissful youngsters in Ukraine. The pandemic and the conflict with Russia had trapped some younger individuals of their properties, lonely and afraid, for greater than 4 years. Many didn’t know socialize and couldn’t think about a future with out conflict.
However two days after her Fb put up, Ms. Korzhenevska heard from the mom of a 16-year-old boy who requested her to simply accept him within the class.
Sasha Suchik was an unlikely candidate. A yr earlier, he had dropped out of the identical class and ended up in a psychiatric hospital, affected by medical melancholy, and had even injured himself. Weighed down by the conflict and gloomy ideas, he was nonetheless within the hospital the place he had spent a lot of the earlier yr.
“Your classes for him will probably be about having the ability to open up and make new pals,” his mom, Olena Suchik, instructed the trainer.
40-year-old Mrs. Korzhenevska remembered Sasha. Skinny, with lengthy brown hair and a type of clean face. He was gone after just a few hours. However now he despatched her a video of himself and he or she noticed that he had gained weight. His hair was quick. He smiled.
“I have been enjoying the guitar for 4 years and I have been enjoying the violin for 5 years,” Sasha stated. “I wish to be a part of the course to develop my inventive potential and make new pals.”
Ms. Korzhenevska was not skilled to work with troubled youngsters. However she was a affected person trainer and had discovered loads elevating her personal teenage son, who was autistic.
“It is fairly a problem,” she remembered considering of Sasha. “However I settle for it.”
Sasha was launched from the hospital in June. For the subsequent three months, he and three different younger actors attempt to put their cares apart and work on the play written for them by Ms. Korzhenevska. His theme was that life can get higher even when the whole lot appears to be falling aside.
The title of the play was “It is All Proper!” However is it actually potential?
The trainer
Ms Korzhenevska labored as an occasion organizer, trainer and movie producer earlier than beginning to run performing courses for youngsters through the pandemic.
A constructing in Kyiv’s hipster Podil district was her inventive laboratory. With its whitewashed brick partitions, hardwood flooring, and excessive ceilings, the bottom ground vaguely resembled a Manhattan tech entrepreneur’s loft. Ms Korzenievska named it College 9¾ after the magical prepare platform from the Harry Potter books and provided courses primarily on weekends.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ms. Korzhenevska used the house to coach navy recruits to fly drones and conduct drills. Upstairs, lecturers had been working along with her son and one other autistic teenager.
Mrs. Korzhenevska wrote a brand new play for every performing class. After the invasion, she targeted on conflict tales as a result of many college students had family members who fought close to the entrance strains. In 2023 college students got “Potted Turtle,” so named as a result of a young person’s household ran away from house carrying their pet potted turtle.
Ms. Korzhenevska instantly observed that the ambiance in 2024 is totally different. Everybody wanted a break from the conflict. She needed to assist college students think about themselves in a extra predictable, extra routine atmosphere. Someplace like America, Mrs. Korzhenevska thought, the place none of them had ever been.
She wanted a break too. Her fiancé Danny, whom she met at a music pageant in 2017, joined the military the day after the Russians invaded and he was nonetheless on the japanese entrance flying drones.
The sport
When creating her performs, Ms. Korzhenevska appears to the scholars for inspiration.
The category of 2024 had 4 college students. Solomiya Cherepushko-Zagrebelna, a 13-year-old who goes by the title Solya, spent hours a day on her magnificence ritual – sustaining stiletto nails and eyelashes that seemed like awnings. However in school she was critical, the scholar most fascinated by performing.
14-year-old Anna Yuzhda wore glasses and seemed nerdy, however she performed the guitar and exuded composure. Mrs. Korzhenevska determined that they is likely to be sisters, one stunning and one intelligent.
The third scholar, Alisa Pazushko, was an previous soul at 12 years previous. Two years earlier, when the Russians besieged her Mariupol house, her mom woke her up one morning and instructed her to pack. She grabbed two books – Methods to Prepare Your Dragon and Harry Potter – however left behind her favourite stuffed animal, a grey and black cat, and fled along with her household to a brand new life in Kiev.
Alyssa was taking on-line courses from Kiev, so she hadn’t made any pals in her new metropolis. Tall for her age, she seemed like she may take care of one thing, Mrs. Korzhenevska thought. Alisa may play the mom within the story that was starting to take form in Mrs. Korzhenevska’s head.
Tough Plot: A youngster from an prosperous New York household is orphaned in a automobile accident and despatched to reside in rural Mississippi along with her mom’s finest good friend, who’s so poor she will’t even afford pancake syrup. The lady had two daughters: a wise bookworm and a gorgeous cheerleader. The boy Simon fell in love with each of them.
Sasha will play Simon.
Ms. Korzhenevska selected her setting after assembly an American in a Kyiv bar who extolled the virtues of her hometown: West Level, Miss., a city of 10,000 with website boasting that it “embodies the perfect of America a era in the past.”
She included two American songs. One was “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” by Hillsong United, a reminder to maintain your religion in God even when issues appear troublesome. The opposite was carried out by Jane Marchewski, often called Nightbirde, who grew to become an international sensation after singing it on “America’s Acquired Expertise” when he had terminal most cancers.
This music, “It is All Proper,” gave the play its title. Ms. Korzhenevska would say later that she wrote it with Sasha in thoughts.
The star
On a Sunday in July, a generator stood close to the theater’s entrance door in case the ability went out, because it typically did when Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy provide. Air raid sirens interrupted the hum of site visitors. It was about 90 levels.
However on the makeshift stage was Mississippi. Sasha, enjoying Simon, slumped into the room and sullenly slumped right into a chair. Very unhappy, thought Mrs. Korzhenevska. By this level within the script, Simon has been residing together with his new household for a number of months.
“You are still unhappy, however a bit of bit funnier,” Ms. Korzhenevska defined. “You have been right here for some time and that is why you are a bit of extra cheerful. You was once horrible, however not a lot anymore. Now you may smile.
Sasha tried once more with a small smile. Worry of chance, a uniquely teenage emotion.
The pandemic was exhausting on Sasha, who went to high school on-line and spent a whole lot of time alone. After the conflict began, his mom and stepfather despatched him to Poland, the place he could be safer, to reside together with his father.
For nearly a yr, Sasha bounced between his mother and father relying on whether or not his faculty in Kiev was open. Within the chaos, unhappiness prevailed, which landed him within the hospital.
The solid did not speak about such issues. They targeted on the mission.
Simply as Sasha had the central function within the play, he grew to become the middle of the category, with the three youthful women seeming to chuckle at him. With Anna, he practiced Nirvana songs from the piece on guitar. Alyssa most well-liked to speak to Sasha over anybody else.
“We have now extra pursuits in widespread than the opposite women,” Alyssa stated.
College students discovered on the go. Ms. Korzhenevska taught Sasha maintain her skateboard within the center so it does not grasp awkwardly. She instructed Anna, who performed the sensible sister, that she ought to hand an apple to Sasha in a flirty means. The younger actors labored exhausting, memorizing their strains. Sasha discovered a poem about loss and hope.
“And even when your soul is the barest desert, then one thing will develop out of it,” he repeated.
Nevertheless, conflict intervened. Ms. Korzhenevska noticed a psychiatrist to cope with her worries about her fiance and her nation, however the remedy made her wish to sleep on a regular basis. Some days she could not get away from bed.
“The one factor that will get me out of my home is that this play,” she stated. “I am advantageous for the rehearsal.”
Dani, whose full title has not been launched as a consequence of navy laws, was answerable for a bunch of drone operators close to the japanese metropolis of Pokrovsk. On September 6, a automobile carrying two of his troopers hit a mine. The driving soldier misplaced the decrease a part of his left leg. Danny despatched Ms. Korzhenevska a video of the panicked journey to evacuate her, they usually cried collectively as they watched it.
9 days later, the premiere of the play passed off.
No regrets
Outdoors the theater, greater than 40 individuals, together with Sasha’s mom, had been ready, wearing Sunday garments and holding bouquets. Some had not been to the theater for years.
Inside, Sasha was sitting on the ground of the dressing room in shorts and his favourite shirt, which had English phrases like “insurgent” printed on it. He chews the within of his lip. His face, at all times expressive, was someplace between stunned and amused.
Alice was strolling. Sasha and the opposite two women tried leisure methods: shaking fingers, enjoying meditation music. Will they have the ability to keep away from laughing after they sing American songs?
Ms. Korzhenevska offered the manufacturing sporting a blue and white polka dot gown along with her blonde hair pulled again.
“We’re in the midst of a conflict,” she instructed them. “We have now been speaking about conflict for a very long time. However this efficiency is totally different. We needed to point out one thing gentle, romantic and never about conflict.”
Alice went out first. Quickly Sasha appeared as Simon. Mrs. Suchik, overwhelmed to see him in such an necessary function, started to cry.
Sasha forgot a line and so did one of many women. Nobody within the viewers knew. Because the story unfolds, Simon falls in love with each sisters and involves phrases with the demise of his mother and father. He ultimately moved on, however left items: pancake syrup, a glittery gown designed by his mom, who was a designer, and $2,000 so the sensible woman may get Lasik eye surgical procedure.
The viewers responded as if the play had launched one thing in them that they’d held again. “Ultimately, nobody died and the whole lot was advantageous,” Ms Korzeniewska stated. “However individuals had been crying.”
Alyssa’s mom stated nobody ought to choose the efficiency by her household’s response, as all of them had PTSD. Tears streamed down the face of Alisa’s aunt, whose ex-husband disappeared and was presumed useless after Russian troops captured Mariupol.
Sasha stated the category helped him make pals and return to high school. Now he desires to develop into a psychologist, he stated, to assist navy veterans and youngsters.
He talked about his character, Simon, as if he had been actual.
“I do know Simon is fairly unhappy, however with this household that loves him, the hero, he was beloved by somebody,” Sasha stated. “It was excellent for him.”
After the efficiency, Ms. Korzhenevska joined the actors on stage and praised every one. Sasha, she stated, had developed a type of peace and internal calm.
“I am simply on tranquilizers,” Sasha stated. The viewers laughed.
“Me too,” admitted Mrs. Korzhenevska.
“Simply kidding,” he replied.
Mrs. Korzhenevska hugged him. “I am not,” she stated.
Evelina Ryabenko contributed reporting.
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
