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In Pokémon lore, the distortion world is an evil parallel universe. For playwright Lyuba Ilnytska, it feels like an analogy for her native Ukraine under Russia’s unprovoked assault. Much as she would like a giant Pokémon bird to stand over Kharkiv, allowing its residents a peaceful night’s sleep, the reality is something more bleak. There is no escape from the terror.
Working with choreographer Anatolii Sachivko from the city’s Nafta theatre, performer and director Nina Khyzhna makes this theme concrete. As she presents it, the toll of life during wartime is not only psychological but also physical. Whether it is the bombardment of rockets and drones or the adjustment to prosthetics, air raid warnings and emergency Telegram groups, the impact hits the body.
“Movement is a must for a human being” is a phrase repeated in a dance-theatre performance that articulates the unspeakable experience of living in sleepless fear.
She dances, sometimes with small neurotic movements, a woman under pressure, other times with muscular fury, a victim fighting back, taking us through a theatrical poem that evokes the everyday oppression of war.
Based on interviews with residents, old and young, Someone Like Me is a collage of voices, unrelated to each other but unified in the face of terror and speaking as one. A child on tiptoes plays a game of civilians and snipers; an old-timer recalls the great famine of the 1930s and previous military conflicts; a woman tries to reassure her mother they will be safe when she can scarcely persuade herself.
Nik Akorn’s score clicks, rattles and unsettles, while Khyzhna moves with precision, mapping the streets of her beloved Kharkiv and embodying the trauma of her compatriots. It is a sad and serious creative response to a war that brings nothing but destruction and distress.
