Where Civilians Are Hunted, Theater Endures: Kherson to Host International Festival

The 28th Melpomena Tavrii International Theatre Festival will take place Sept. 12–19 under its longstanding motto, #TheaterWhereWeAre. Despite Russia’s war, the festival will return to Kherson, with performances also staged in Mykolaiv and at participating theaters across Ukraine. Founded in 1999, Melpomena Tavrii has presented 610 productions by around 230 theaters from more than 100 cities and more than 20 countries.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Kyiv Post spoke with festival president and artistic director of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Theatre Oleksandr Knyha about why the festival continues in one of Ukraine’s most dangerous cities, what theater means to Kherson residents today and why keeping the stage alive has become an act of resistance. Oleksandr Knyha. (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) Kyiv Post: Melpomena Tavrii continues despite the war, and in extremely difficult conditions. Why is it so important to keep the festival in Kherson? Oleksandr Knyha: In 2022, after we escaped occupied Kherson, I wrote on social media: “Melpomena will definitely take place in Ukrainian Kherson. Despite everything!” As soon as the city was liberated, we returned and began restoring the theater. Our team was scattered across Ukraine and Europe, while some people remained in occupied Kherson. We created a format that allowed our friends to participate and, most importantly, helped us tell the world what was happening in our city. Other Topics of Interest Zelensky Meets Negotiators Ahead of Talks With US Envoys President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Ukraine’s negotiating team, emphasizing that Kyiv is prepared for constructive peace talks. For us, Melpomena Tavrii has become a symbol of resistance. The festival was a symbol of Ukrainian identity even before the full-scale war. The theater itself has been badly damaged. How do you work under these conditions? We no longer work in our theater building because it is in a red zone. It has been heavily damaged and shelled, and we are trying to save it. Practically no windows remain. The roof is badly damaged. On March 8, 2026, a rocket from a multiple-launch rocket system hit the theater roof. Had it landed about 10 centimeters higher, it would have hit the auditorium. The team told me, “Let’s cancel the program. Nobody will come.” I said, “No. We won’t cancel it. Even if one person comes, it will be therapy for that person.” And the auditorium was full. It turned out that even being destroyed, even having bombs falling around us, is not enough to stop us. We are needed. People come to us like to a source – to drink healing water and keep going. The play “D.I.M.” (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) So theater has become a form of psychological support? Yes. I don’t want to use overly grand words, but it really is a mission. It is our duty and our responsibility to people. For years, we worked to make Kherson a theatrical city. We had six performance venues and could stage three productions simultaneously, all selling out. Audiences would line up at the box office. Today, people write to me saying that simply knowing the theater is still working in Kherson gives them hope that they will return one day. When people ask whether we ever considered moving the theater elsewhere, I say that we never even considered it. We are together with our city and together with our people. The concert program “A Country of Its Own,” which they rehearsed during the flooding that followed the Russian military's bombing of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) You have also taken the story of Kherson abroad. How do international audiences respond? This summer we toured internationally and presented the monodrama “One-Day Hero” at the Mostra Internacional de Teatro in Portugal. “One-Day Hero” is a performance based on Volodymyr Tuka’s play “Play22,” or “The Hero’s Journey.” At its center is the story of a Kherson veteran who witnessed the occupation, left the city and then joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to defend his country. He was wounded while serving at a position. The actor is the playwright himself. “One-Day Hero” is a performance based on Volodymyr Tuka’s play “Play22,” or “The Hero’s Journey.” (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) I was deeply moved by the Portuguese audience. After the performance, people stood in line to thank the actor and hug him. One of the spectators was Turkish director Kubilay Eldelikara, chairman of the festival jury. He understood neither Ukrainian nor Portuguese and watched the performance through a translator on his phone. At the end, he was sitting with tears in his eyes, while his wife was crying. The jury created a special award for Ukraine, and we also received an award for best direction. It was a performance about our war and our experience – yet it touched people who had never lived through it themselves. Kherson is facing another difficult winter. How does the humanitarian situation affect your work? Winter is approaching, and the city’s thermal power plant has been destroyed. Last winter, we learned to save energy locally. We have two shelters where we work and only start heating them shortly before an event. After the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023, German benefactors gave us several large stoves. We installed one in the staff café and prepared firewood from damaged trees. We created a ritual. Spectators would first come into our café, where there was warmth, a fire, coffee and pastries we baked despite everything. Then we invited them into the auditorium. We wanted to preserve not simply the possibility of watching a performance somewhere in a basement, but the atmosphere of hospitality that belongs to a theater. This year we deliberately linked two cities: Sept. 12 is Mykolaiv City Day, and Sept. 19 is Kherson City Day. Mykolaiv has become a refuge for us. When things become extremely difficult in Kherson, we can rest there or perform on a large stage. For actors, that matters. They spend the year working in small spaces, basements or adapted venues. In Mykolaiv, they can step onto a large stage again. Melpomena has retained its international character. Who will join the festival this year? Georgia will definitely be represented, as will Portugal and Turkey. A Polish theater also wanted to join us. For us, maintaining the festival’s international status is very important. What personally keeps you going? My family, my children, my wife, my Kherson. I am an honorary citizen of Kherson. I was not born there – I was born on the Kinburn Spit, in the small village of Pokrovka, which is now occupied. But Kherson became my home. I have led this theater for 36 years and have lived in Kherson all this time. When people see me in the city, they say, “You’re in Kherson! That’s wonderful.” I think that simply seeing me there is a symbol for them: “He didn’t betray us.” Kherson has always been a city of many nationalities and cultures. That atmosphere is part of what I love about the city. What are you working on now? Together with director Serhii Pavliuk and our creative team, we have built what we call a Living Theater – a theater that brings people together, attracts them and supports them. We are developing new projects, including a small, naive opera about Polina Raiko,one of the leading figures in the Ukrainian naïve art, and what we call the paradise destroyed by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. We are also working with children. Together with Wings Foundation, we produced “Margarita and the Teddy Bears.” We held auditions in Kherson, right in bomb shelters, selected 14 children and worked with them for two months. “Margarita and the Teddy Bears.” (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) The play is about refugees in Poland. A mother tries to comfort her daughter by telling her how beautiful their new surroundings are. But the girl says she does not want to be there. She wants to go home to Kakhovka because her teddy bear is there. Her teddy bear, like her home and street, was left underwater after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. The production has toured across Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia. We are now negotiating a performance in Romania. I understand our people very well because I am displaced myself. Everything we owned was left on the left bank of the Dnipro, in Oleshky. My own children are scattered around the world. As a family, we dream of the time when we can all be together again. What is your biggest dream now? Of course, to return to Kherson and bring our entire team back together. To start working, working and working. To rebuild everything. To bring my whole family together. Over these years of war, we have accumulated so much anger – an enormous amount of anger. We have to channel it not into destruction, but into rebuilding and restoring all of Ukraine, and Kherson in particular.