What remains when everything is occupied – except hope?
Ukrainian playwright Oksana Grytsenko’s L’Euphorbier takes us to a village in southern Ukraine under occupation. At the centre of the play are three generations of women – a grandmother, a mother and two daughters – trying to hold their family together while living through fear, uncertainty and the absurdity of everyday life during war.
When the grandmother becomes seriously ill and essential medicines disappear, an old family legend returns: the story of the Euphorbier, a protective demon born from euphorbia seeds. According to the legend, he once saved the family during the tragic years of the Holodomor in 1932–1933.
Myth and reality begin to overlap. Alongside the reality of occupation, the play brings together black humour, tenderness, family quarrels, mysticism and tragedy. L’Euphorbier is ultimately a story about survival – and about the extraordinary ways in which ordinary people search for hope in circumstances that seem impossible.
The play is inspired by real events and has already been presented in Ukraine and France. In December 2024, L’Euphorbier was included in the second edition of the Ukrainian Drama Week at Paris’s Théâtre du Soleil. The French-language stage reading was directed by Macha Isakova, with a French cast, and was part of a programme presenting contemporary and classical Ukrainian drama to French audiences. The French translation was prepared by Dmytro Tchystiak and Clarisse Brossard. (Théâtre du Soleil)
About Oksana Grytsenko
Born in 1981 in the southern part of the Kherson region, Oksana Grytsenko is a Ukrainian playwright, screenwriter and journalist. She studied political science and journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Grytsenko worked in journalism, primarily in English, before turning to playwriting in 2019. She is a co-founder of the Playwrights’ Theatre in Kyiv. Her work often focuses on contemporary Ukrainian reality and the human stories revealed by war.
L’Euphorbier in Liège
The play is now receiving its first and only Belgian production at Théâtre de l’Aléna in Liège.
The production is directed by Ukrainian theatre director Anna Horianska, with Vitalina Horina as assistant director. The performance is presented in French, using the translation by Dmytro Tchystiak and Clarisse Brossard.
For Belgian audiences, L’Euphorbier offers an opportunity to encounter contemporary Ukrainian drama not simply as a story about war, but as a deeply human story about family, memory, fear, love and the stubborn need to hope.
Theatre website: Théâtre de l’Aléna — L’Euphorbier (Théâtre de L'Alena)