In the vast and ever-shifting landscape of global storytelling, a remarkable phenomenon has quietly emerged and taken root: the English-language podcast as a vessel for Ukrainian drama. Not as fragments of translated news or sporadic interviews, but as complete dramatic texts, breathing, urgent, alive. This is the story of how Ukrainian plays, born in a time of war and upheaval, found their voices not only in their native language but also in the shared global tongue of English. It began with a question: can a nation's emotional truth travel across language lines and resonate?
It began with "A Dictionary of Ukrainian Emotions."
This project marked a significant first—the birth of a full podcast series based entirely on contemporary Ukrainian plays, translated into English and performed for an international audience. Produced by Ukrayinska Pravda, the podcast was created in collaboration with American and Ukrainian partners. Each episode was a composite of elements: dramatic performance, author interviews, reflections, and context. At the core was the edited collection, "A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War," compiled by John Freedman.
John Freedman, editor and host, anchored the project. His presence carried both gravitas and empathy. With him came Nina Kamberos, the founder of Laertes Press and co-visionary of the publication. Together, they curated, recorded, and assembled a team of actors whose voices could transform translation into theatre. Dmytro Volkovynskyi and Fedir Popadiuk ensured that the technical production met the emotional clarity of the text, while Ukrainian dramaturgs like Dmytro Ternovyi, Valentyna Tujina, Iryna Harets, and Anna Halas translated not just words but intentions.
The inaugural episode featured actress Alessandra Torresani performing "How to Talk to the Dead" by Anastasiia Kosodii. The play, written during the initial days of Russia's full-scale invasion, set the tone. Here was grief without filter, fear made audible. A conversation between Freedman, Kosodii, and Kamberos followed, exploring how memory turns to language under siege.
Kristin Milward, a classically trained English actress with a deep bond to Ukraine, followed with "I Want to Go Home" by Oksana Savchenko. Her history with Ukrainian culture, including a performance in Kyiv during wartime, gave her reading a tone of both intimacy and advocacy. In her episode, performance and personal testimony blurred.
Then came Wayne Maugans with Oksana Grytsenko’s satirical and stunning "The Peed-Upon Armoured Personnel Carrier," capturing the defiance of a village under occupation. Maugans, known for his thoughtful engagement with socio-political work, turned a moment of absurdity into a powerful reflection on resistance.
Joe Spano, veteran American actor, entered the series with "Call by Your Names" by Tetiana Kytsenko. Here, themes of identity, memory, and legacy took center stage. Freedman’s conversation with Spano returned again to the question of who we become when our countries are attacked, when our history is under threat.
Kevin McMonagle, under the guidance of director Simon Usher, performed "Survivor’s Syndrome" by Andrii Bondarenko. This poem-play journeyed from end to beginning, examining the emotional aftershocks of war. It asked what begins after everything ends. Bondarenko’s discussion with Freedman revealed a playwright reshaping his entire creative process to meet a new emotional reality.
Kathleen Chalfant’s reading of Iryna Harets’ "Planting an Apple Tree" evoked a world both destroyed and rebuilt. It was less about theatre and more about ritual—planting as promise, performance as survival. Freedman’s dialogue with Chalfant examined the spiritual warfare of modern Ukraine.
Jessica Hecht, known worldwide for her TV roles, offered the tenderest episode in many ways. In Olha Matsiupa’s "Flowering," she voiced a journey through memory, traveling across Ukraine in thought as the real country burned. With Hecht’s voice and Matsiupa’s metaphor, even a cracker became a relic of history.
In "My Tara" by Lyudmyla Tymoshenko, Sharon Washington captured the story of a child caught between Soviet military life and a grandmother’s kitchen sanctuary. A story of loss and the persistence of memory, it reached global resonance in its metaphor of home destroyed not once, but twice. The conversation revealed how Ukrainian specificity became universally legible.
Kushtrim Hoxha closed the series with Maksym Kurochkin’s "Three Attempts to Improve Daily Life." This final episode offered no comfort. A war-torn village. An abandoned house. Friends who become ghosts. Hoxha’s Balkan background deepened the resonance, as Freedman and he spoke about shared trauma and small joys.
But even as "A Dictionary of Ukrainian Emotions" found its audience, something equally powerful was happening across the ocean—in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
But even as "A Dictionary of Ukrainian Emotions" found its audience, something equally powerful was unfolding across the ocean—in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
There, the Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga embraced Ukrainian drama as part of its distinguished podcast project, "LIGHTS UP!" In Season 5, the company introduced English-speaking audiences to a pair of plays that echoed and expanded the work of the "Dictionary" series, deepening its themes of fragility, identity, and memory.
The first, Episode 1 of the season, featured "On the Eve (Everything Will Be Alright)" by Dmytro Ternovyi—a prescient and poetic script set in the hours before the full-scale invasion began. Directed by Garry Lee Posey and featuring a cast of American performers (Karen Henderson, Jason Russell, Claire Bartlett, and Eric Wyatt), the episode captured the stillness before the storm. Its soundscape by Eric "Red" Wyatt mirrored the emotional claustrophobia of knowing change is coming—and being powerless to stop it.
The second, Episode 2, turned inward. "Chronicles of a Lost Soul" by Anna Halas, a Ukrainian playwright, translator, and scholar, was a duet between inner voices—I-Body and I-Soul. Performed by Deb Meeks and Jessica Weaver, and again directed by Posey with sound by Wyatt, this production pushed further into the emotional fractures of war. How does trauma split the self? How does theatre help piece it together?
In both of these U.S.-based productions, Ukrainian stories found new resonance through American voices. They were not translations as distance, but as closeness—as recognition.
Across continents, two podcast series were doing the same thing—elevating Ukrainian dramatic writing through English, not as mere translation, but as transformation. These were not simply recordings. They were bridges, built in real time.
Together, these projects have established a new tradition: Ukrainian drama in English podcasts, shared with the world, not as news, not as propaganda, but as emotional testimony. The text becomes voice. The voice becomes memory. The memory becomes action.
https://ukrdrama.ui.org.ua/en/news/rise-ukrainian-drama-english-language-podcasts
Anna Halas