An important new verbatim play about (extra)ordinary people living through revolution and war in Ukraine is a featured selection of the 2016 Hotbed Theatre Festival. The Summer before Everything is the work of Maria Montague and Bohdan Tokarskyi, two students from the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme in the Department of Slavonic Studies.

Montague and Tokarskyi recorded extended interviews with more than one hundred Ukrainians displaced from Crimea and eastern Ukraine since 2014. Their voices are now taking to the stage in The Summer before Everything, a stunning, innovative new work premiering in Cambridge next month.

‘I am very passionate about the study of Ukrainian culture and have returned to Ukraine many times since my first visit in 2012,’ said Montague, who is part of the Young Vic Directors Programme in London. ‘I lived in Kyiv during my Year Abroad at the time of the Maidan Revolution, a compelling experience that led me to delve more deeply into Ukrainian society.’

Montague and Tokarskyi conducted interviews with IDPs over a series of trips to Ukraine since 2014. They then edited and translated hundreds of hours of testimony and produced a compelling drama for the stage, which is certain to provoke the thoughts and feelings of audiences across Europe.

‘We participated in the two-month Young Writers' Workshop run by the Menagerie Theatre Company,’ noted Tokarskyi, who is a PhD candidate and Gates Fellow working on the poetry of Vasyl Stus. ‘There we had a chance to meet and exchange thoughts with amazingly talented young writers and to amplify the quality of the play immensely.’

The Summer before Everything premieres at the Hotbed Theatre Festival at the Junction on 9 July 2016. Tickets are available here.