Beyond perekop

The performance was created as part of the cultural and artistic project “Beyond Perekop”, implemented by the Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Drama Theatre with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. In addition to the performance, the project brings together educational and artistic events that provide an opportunity to learn more about Crimea, hear different experiences and look at its history through art.

An important part of this work was the collaboration with people whose knowledge and experience helped
deepen the conversation about Crimea and its culture. We would like to thank for their collaboration and support the project’s lead consultant, Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute, journalist, researcher and manager of educational and cultural projects Alim ALIYEV, as well as the mentor of the performance laboratory, director, performer and civic activist Halyna DZHYKAEVA.

“Beyond Perekop” is a performance about Crimea as a space of memory that can be erased neither by distance nor by borders.
Crimea here is not a backdrop or a distant geographical location, but a living fabric of personal, family and historical memory. Different languages, cultures, views and experiences coexist here, and there is no unshakeable boundary between “one’s own” and “the other”. Identity is shaped through relationships, choices, knowledge, doubts and the ability to hear the other.

We will tell you about a friendship that became a journey of discovering another person’s, and later one’s own, history. Through childhood, school, first love, family disputes, and an encounter with Crimean Tatar culture, language and the memory of deportation, a complex mosaic of Crimea will gradually unfold before the audience.

The stage version and directorial concept by Ihor Bilyts is structured as a multi-layered theatrical structure that incorporates three interconnected layers. The first – the direct narrative of Anastasiia Levkova’s novel. The second – debates that transform the Stage into a space for public discussion and invite the audience not only to observe, but also to take a position, ask questions and share their own thoughts. The third – documentary chronicle of the occupation of Crimea in 2014, when personal stories suddenly find themselves within the larger history.

The boundary between these layers gradually disappears. What the characters argued about in childhood and adolescence acquires real consequences. Language, memory, attitudes towards the past, and the right to call Crimea one’s own cease to be merely subjects of discussion. Perekop, which in the final part of the chronicle becomes a “wall”, acquires symbolic significance: it is no longer simply the isthmus between the peninsula and the mainland, but a boundary created by occupation, violence and historical amnesia.