In war-weary Kyiv, veterans turn epic poetry into living testimony

Описание: (21 Feb 2026)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 19 February 2026
1. Various of actors on stage as part of play

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 18 February 2026
2. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Olha Semioshkina, play director:
++STARTS ON SHOT 1, PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 3 - 5++
"They don't act. This is a condition of our cooperation. An actor is a person who can convey his state, his feelings, share them and calmly talk about it. Not so much time has passed since we started to calmly talk to them and it is important for them. They don't hide like most veterans." 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 19 February 2026
3. Various of Semioshkina preparing show and kissing actors 
4. Wide of veterans preparing for the play 
5. Wide of stage

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 18 February 2026
6. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Olha Semioshkina, play director:
++STARTS ON SHOT 5, PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 7 AND 8++
"We didn't set the task of dressing up the image. Aeneas is the person who went to war. Yes, he returned mutilated, broken, but they are learning to live." 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 19 February 2026
7. Closeup of prosthetics

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 18 February 2026
8. Various of 27-year-old Ukrainian veteran Yehor Babenko rehearsing play 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 19 February 2026
9. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Yehor Babenko, 27, Ukrainian veteran and actor:
++STARTS ON SHOT 8, PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 10 AND 11++
"What does theater mean to me? Probably both psychological and physical rehabilitation, because I noticed that I began to feel my body better, better act in public, so to speak, express my thoughts more clearly."
10. Various of Yehor acting in play
11. Various of actors bowing at the end of the show
STORYLINE:
Sitting in a circle on a black mat a day before the premiere, war veterans and drama students took turns reading their lines from a script that has traveled centuries to reach them.

At the center was Olha Semioshkina, 51, chief choreographer of Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater, directing the group through her adaptation of Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevskyi — itself a Ukrainian reimagining of Aeneid.

Behind them, musicians with a tambourine, cello, violin, piano and drums filled the rehearsal hall with a low instrumental hum.

The actors — men and women in their 20s to their 60s — included Ukrainian veterans who returned from the front with amputations, burns and sight loss. Many had never set foot on a stage before this play.

It took more than a year to prepare for the grand premiere.

The result premiered on Thursday at National Academic Molodyy Theatre, becoming, according to Semioshkina, the first amateur troupe to enter the repertoire of a professional drama theater in Ukraine. Production will continue to run.

Semioshkina’s concept is simple.

In Virgil’s epic, Aeneas wanders after the fall of Troy, searching for a new homeland.

In Kotliarevskyi’s 18th-century satire, the Trojan hero becomes a Cossack, rowdy and earthy, carrying humor through catastrophe.

On Kyiv’s stage, Aeneas wears prosthetic limbs and carries scars from the war that is nearing its fourth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

She draws parallel between actors with combat past and the character they play on stage: “Aeneas is the one who went to war. Yes, he returned mutilated, broken, but they are learning to live.”



The play’s final act departs from epic poetry altogether.




The war intruded even before the curtains rose.













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