The trainer wanted youngsters for her summer time performing class in Kyiv, which might finish with the efficiency of an unique play.
“It is a course for completely satisfied youngsters, free of their ideas and goals,” the trainer, Olesia Korzhenevska, wrote on Fb final spring.
It was exhausting to search out completely satisfied youngsters in Ukraine. The pandemic and the battle with Russia had trapped some younger individuals of their properties, solitary and fearful, for greater than 4 years. Many didn’t know how one can socialize and couldn’t think about a future with out battle.
However two days after her Fb publish, Ms. Korzhenevska heard from the mom of a 16-year-old boy, asking her to simply accept him within the class.
Sasha Suchyk was an unlikely candidate. A yr earlier, he had dropped out of the identical class and landed in a psychological hospital, affected by medical melancholy, even hurting himself. Buffeted by the battle and darkish ideas, he was nonetheless within the hospital, the place he had spent many of the earlier yr.
“Your classes for him can be in regards to the alternative to open himself up and discover new associates,” his mom, Olena Suchyk, advised the trainer.
Ms. Korzhenevska, 40, remembered Sasha. Skinny, with lengthy brown hair and a considerably vacant look. He had disappeared after only some courses. However now he despatched her a video of himself, and he or she noticed he had gained weight. His hair was quick. He smiled.
“I’ve been enjoying guitar for 4 years and performed violin for 5 years,” Sasha mentioned. “I need to be a part of the course to develop my inventive potential and make new associates.”
Ms. Korzhenevska was not skilled to work with troubled youngsters. However she was a affected person trainer, and he or she had realized lots elevating her personal teenage son, who was autistic.
“That is fairly a problem,” she remembered fascinated about Sasha. “However I settle for it.”
Sasha bought out of the hospital in June. For the following three months, he and three different younger actors tried to place apart their worries and work on the play Ms. Korzhenevska wrote for them. Its theme was that life may work out even when all the things gave the impression to be falling aside.
The title of the play was “It’s okay!” However may or not it’s, actually?
The Trainer
Ms. Korzhenevska had labored as an occasion planner, trainer and movie producer earlier than she began instructing performing courses to youngsters in the course of the pandemic.
A constructing in Kyiv’s hipster neighborhood of Podil was her inventive laboratory. With its brick partitions painted white, hardwood flooring and excessive ceilings, the bottom ground vaguely resembled a tech entrepreneur’s Manhattan loft. Ms. Korzhenevska named it the 9¾ College, after the magical practice platform within the Harry Potter books, and provided courses primarily on the weekends.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ms. Korzhenevska used the area to additionally educate army recruits to function drones and run drills. Upstairs, lecturers labored along with her son and one other autistic teenager.
Ms. Korzhenevska wrote a brand new play for each performing class. After the invasion, she targeted on battle tales as a result of many college students had family members preventing close to the entrance traces. In 2023, the scholars bought “Turtle within the Pot,” so named as a result of one teenager’s household had fled their dwelling carrying their pet turtle in a pot.
Ms. Korzhenevska observed straight away that the vibe in 2024 was completely different. Everybody wanted a break from the battle. She needed to assist the scholars think about themselves in a extra predictable, extra routine surroundings. Someplace like America, Ms. Korzhenevska thought, the place none of them had ever been.
She wanted a break, too. Her fiancé, Dani, whom she had met at a music competition in 2017, had joined the military the day after the Russians invaded, and he was nonetheless on the japanese entrance, flying drones.
The Play
When creating her performs, Ms. Korzhenevska seemed to the scholars for inspiration.
The 2024 class had 4 college students. Solomia Cherepushko-Zagrebelna, a 13-year-old who goes by Solya, spent hours a day on her magnificence ritual — sustaining stiletto nails and eyelashes that seemed like awnings. However at school, she was critical, the scholar most within the craft of performing.
Anna Yuzhda, 14, wore glasses and appeared nerdy, however she performed the guitar and exuded cool. Ms. Korzhenevska determined they could possibly be sisters, one lovely and one brainy.
A 3rd pupil, Alisa Pazushko, was an previous soul at age 12. Two years earlier, because the Russians besieged her dwelling of Mariupol, her mom woke her one morning and advised her to pack. She grabbed two books — “Methods to Practice Your Dragon” and a Harry Potter — however left behind her favourite stuffed animal, a gray-and-black cat, and along with her household, fled to a brand new life in Kyiv.
Alisa attended on-line courses from Kyiv, and so had not made associates in her new metropolis. Tall for her age, she appeared as if she may use one thing to take care of, Ms. Korzhenevska thought. Alisa may play the mom within the story that was starting to take form in Ms. Korzhenevska’s head.
The tough define: A teenage boy from an prosperous New York Metropolis household was orphaned in a automotive accident and despatched to stay in rural Mississippi together with his mom’s finest buddy, who was so poor she couldn’t even afford pancake syrup. The girl had two daughters: a sensible bookworm and a wonderful cheerleader. The boy, Simon, fell in love with each.
Sasha would play Simon.
Ms. Korzhenevska picked her setting after assembly an American in a Kyiv bar who extolled the virtues of his hometown: West Level, Miss., a metropolis of 10,000 with a website boasting that it “embodies what was finest about America a technology in the past.”
She included two American songs. One was “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail),” by Hillsong United, a reminder to maintain religion in God, even when issues appeared tough. The opposite was carried out by Jane Marczewski, generally known as Nightbirde, who turned an international sensation after singing it on “America’s Acquired Expertise” when she had terminal most cancers.
That music, “It’s OK,” 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 sat close to the entrance door of the theater in case the electrical energy went out, because it usually did when Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy provide. Air-raid sirens punctuated the hum of visitors. It was about 90 levels.
However on the makeshift stage, it was Mississippi. Sasha, enjoying Simon, slumped into the room and flopped glumly onto a chair. Too unhappy, Ms. Korzhenevska thought. By this level within the script, Simon had been residing together with his new household for just a few months.
“You’re nonetheless unhappy, however slightly extra enjoyable,” Ms. Korzhenevska defined. “You’ve been right here for some time, and so that you’re slightly extra cheerful. You have been horrible as soon as, however not a lot anymore. You’ll be able to smile now.”
Sasha tried it once more, with a touch of a smile. Angst with chance, a singular teenage emotion.
The pandemic had been exhausting for Sasha, who had gone to highschool on-line and spent loads of time alone. As soon as the battle started, his mom and stepfather despatched him to Poland, the place he can be safer, to stay together with his father.
For nearly a yr, Sasha bounced between his mother and father, relying on whether or not his faculty in Kyiv was open. Within the chaos, the unhappiness that put him within the hospital took over.
The solid didn’t speak about such issues. They targeted on the challenge.
Simply as Sasha had the central position within the play, he turned the middle of the category, with the three youthful women seeming to fawn over him. With Anna, he practiced Nirvana songs from the play on the guitar. Alisa most popular speaking to Sasha over anybody else.
“We now have extra pursuits in widespread than with the opposite women,” Alisa mentioned.
The scholars realized as they went. Ms. Korzhenevska taught Sasha how one can maintain his skateboard within the center, so it didn’t grasp awkwardly. She advised Anna, who performed the brainy sister, that she wanted handy an apple to Sasha in a approach that conveyed flirtation. The younger actors labored exhausting, memorizing their traces. Sasha realized a poem about loss and hope.
“And even when your soul is essentially the most desolate of deserts, then one thing will develop from it,” he repeated.
Nonetheless, the battle intruded. Ms. Korzhenevska noticed a psychiatrist to deal with her fear about her fiancé and her nation, however the remedy made her need to sleep on a regular basis. On some days, she couldn’t get off the bed.
“The one factor managing to get me out of my home is that this play,” she mentioned. “For the rehearsal, I’m effective.”
Dani — whose full identify shouldn’t be being printed due to army guidelines — was in command of a gaggle of drone operators close to the japanese city of Pokrovsk. On Sept. 6, a automotive carrying two of his troopers hit a land mine. The soldier driving misplaced the decrease a part of her left leg. Dani despatched a video to Ms. Korzhenevska of the panicked journey to evacuate her, and so they cried collectively whereas watching it.
9 days later, the play would premiere.
No Regrets
Exterior the theater, greater than 40 individuals, together with Sasha’s mom, waited, wearing Sunday outfits and holding bouquets. Some had not been to the theater in years.
Inside, Sasha sat on the dressing room ground in shorts and his favourite shirt, which had English phrases like “insurgent” printed on it. He chewed the within of his lip. His face, all the time expressive, settled someplace between startled and amused.
Alisa paced. Sasha and the 2 different women tried rest methods: shaking out their arms, enjoying meditation music. Would they be capable to keep away from laughing once they sang American songs?
Ms. Korzhenevska launched the manufacturing, sporting a blue and white polka-dot costume and along with her blond hair pulled again.
“We’re in the course of a battle,” she advised them. “We now have been speaking about battle for a very long time. However this efficiency is completely different. We needed to point out one thing simple, romantic and never about battle.”
Alisa got here out first. Quickly, Sasha appeared as Simon. Ms. Suchyk, overwhelmed to see him in such a outstanding position, started to cry.
Sasha forgot a line, as did one of many women. Within the viewers, nobody knew. Because the story unfolded, Simon fell for each sisters and started to simply accept his mother and father’ demise. Ultimately, he moved on however left items: pancake syrup, a glowing costume designed by his mom, who had been a clothier, and $2,000 so the brainy lady may get Lasik eye surgical procedure.
The viewers responded as if the play had launched one thing in them that that they had been holding again. “No one died ultimately and all the things was OK,” Ms. Korzhenevska mentioned. “However individuals have been crying.”
Alisa’s mom mentioned nobody ought to choose the efficiency by her household’s response, as all of them had post-traumatic stress dysfunction. Tears streamed down the face of Alisa’s aunt, whose former husband disappeared and was presumed lifeless after Russian troops took over Mariupol.
Sasha mentioned the category had helped him make associates and return to highschool. He now needs to change into a psychologist, he mentioned, to assist army veterans and youngsters.
He talked about his character, Simon, as if he have been actual.
“I do know Simon is fairly unhappy however with that household that loves him, the character, he bought cherished by somebody,” Sasha mentioned. “It was excellent for him.”
After the efficiency, Ms. Korzhenevska joined the actors onstage and praised each. Sasha, she mentioned, had developed a type of peace and inside calm.
“I’m simply on tranquilizers,” Sasha mentioned. The viewers laughed.
“Me too,” Ms. Korzhenevska admitted.
“I’m simply joking,” he replied.
Ms. Korzhenevska hugged him. “I’m not,” she mentioned.
Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
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