Blair A. Ruble, in her essay Talking to the Dead to Heal the Living in Focus Ukraine, sets the tone by highlighting the transformative power of art. American actor Joe Spano once observed, “The real hopeful thing about the arts is that you take painful experiences and shape them, you come out of experience like this not devastated, not demolished by it, but hopefully healed or having experienced a catharsis.” These words resonated with John Freedman during his Dictionary of Ukrainian Emotions podcast, immediately after Spano’s stirring dramatic reading of Tetyana Kytsenko’s Call Things by Their Names. The moment underscored not only the need to reclaim identity amid chaos but also how art can serve as a bridge between loss and healing.
For Kytsenko, the necessity of accurate terminology became apparent at 5 am on February 24, 2022, when Russian cruise missiles rained down upon Ukraine. She rejected euphemisms such as "special operation" or "conflict" and named the event for what it was: war. Her play, along with others in A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights, captures the visceral experiences of Kyiv’s Theater of Playwrights in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The book, edited by Freedman, gained recognition and widespread readership, with many of its plays being performed in theaters across the world. Seeking to broaden its impact, Freedman collaborated with Ukrainska Pravda to create a podcast series in late 2024 and 2025, featuring readings of nine plays by noted Ukrainian playwrights. Acclaimed actors from the U.S. and U.K., including Alessandra Torresani, Kristin Milward, Joe Spano, and Kathleen Chalfant, lent their voices to these narratives, amplifying their emotional depth. Notably, Kosovar American actor Kushtrim Hoxha brought personal resonance to Maksim Kurochkin’s Pobut (Everyday Life). Through post-reading interviews with Freedman, these actors reflected on how the Ukrainian texts transcended national and cultural boundaries, fostering a universal dialogue on grief, survival, and resilience.
A particularly haunting entry in the series was Kosodii’s How to Talk to the Dead, read by Torresani. Inspired by photographs of those lost to atrocities in Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol, the piece explores the necessity of engaging with the dead through storytelling. Kosodii posits that mourning in wartime demands new tools—that speaking to the dead is not an act of fantasy but of ethical remembrance. Her belief that "we need to invent stories so our dead will speak through them" echoes the broader responsibility of Ukrainian writers in this moment of crisis. The work of these playwrights, as elevated through Freedman’s podcast, affirms the transformative power of theater: to name suffering, to memorialize loss, and ultimately, to help the living heal through the voices of the past.