This performance is about confronting what we usually avoid. It’s a dialogue with our own darkness, which turns out not to be a phantom of the past, but a companion of the present.
On stage, a space comes alive where the personal becomes political, and the historical collides with the intimate. Quotes, slogans, distorted voices, and hallucinations resound here – traces of the era of crisis we live in. Confronting the Shadow is an action filled with doubt, pain, and irony, but at the same time with resistance, laughter, and the search for meaning. It is an attempt to name the darkness, step into fear, and find there the strength for transformation.
Tamara Trunova is a leading Ukrainian theatre and opera director. She has been the Chief Director of the Left Bank Theatre in Kyiv since 2019 and is regarded as one of the foremost figures in the new generation of Ukrainian theatre. Trunova has directed over 30 productions in Ukraine – and internationally in Germany, Great Britain, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden: she also has several playwrighting credits. Her work has been awarded numerous prizes, including the prestigious Shevchenko Prize.
The production was created in partnership with the Left Bank Theatre (Kyiv, Ukraine) and Berliner Festspiele (Berlin, Germany), with the support of the Goethe-Institut.
