'The Hague' premieres in the US: it's a darkly funny story about Putin's trial

In June, the United States will premiere The Hague, a location-based phantasmagoria from the famous Ukrainian documentary playwright and director Sasha Denisova. The Hague is a darkly funny, gripping and fantastical journey through the aftermath of war, based on the true stories of Ukrainian refugees.

Photo: arlekinplayers.com

You can watch the performance live at the BEAT BREW HALL (13 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA 02138) from June 2 to 18. Tickets - here.

In addition, online screenings of the performance will be available from 8 to 18 June. You can buy tickets here to register:.

In The Hague, Putin and his henchmen sit in a Hague prison awaiting punishment. They discuss the fact that they are given GMO sausages in the prison canteen and think about how to avoid trial. They still have illusions and hopes - about their connections in the corrupt governments of Europe, about financial leverage, about money. But gradually they begin to betray each other. Patrushev continues to rave about Ukrainian military geese spraying viruses. Oligarch Kovalchuk quotes Pushkin with bitterness. Simonyan, like a weather vane, changes her mind in court - claiming that she has always been against Putin. Kadyrov cries, remembering his Ferrari. Matvienko is quietly drinking himself to death. Shoigu dreams of returning to the taiga and fishing. This is a black comedy in which war criminals look pitiful and funny.

The main character is a Ukrainian girl, whose house was bombed, whose relatives were killed by bombs and missiles, and it is she who has to condemn them. In her childhood fantasy, The Hague takes place, where formidable war criminals, thieves and bribe-takers, who today threaten the world with an atomic bomb, become characters from Through the Looking Glass. They will have to answer for Bucha, Mariupol, Bakhmut. There will be no mercy, each of them is doomed to their own personal hell.

The performance is in English.

The play was written and staged by Sasha Denisova - Ukrainian, director, playwright and writer. She worked in Russia for many years, began her career at the legendary Doc Theater, graduated from the Theater Leader School (Moscow Art Theater School and Meyerhold Center), studied drama and documentary theater at the British Royal Court Theater, made more than 25 performances on leading Moscow stages, received “Golden Mask” in 2012, brought performances to theaters in Germany (Schaubühne), Poland (TR Warsaw). In the first days of the war, Denisova fled from Moscow and from Russia, “which ceased to exist for her, forever becoming a terrorist country.”

She fled to Poland, where there are now more than 3 million Ukrainian refugees, and began collecting their stories. Denisova recorded documentary monologues of Ukrainian women, and then based on them she wrote and staged the play “Six Ribs of Wrath” and two plays about the war - The Hague and My Mother and the Full-Scale Invasion.

Sasha Denisova. Photo provided by the organizers of the show

“Today my main goal, as a Ukrainian, as an artist, is to talk to the world about the war in Ukraine, to remind the whole world that the brutal war continues. Europe and America must not forget that today Ukraine is paying a high price for the freedom of the whole world - with the lives of its citizens. During these months, I thought about what could give hope to me and those who are waiting for victory. The biggest inspiration was the trial of Putin and his government. That is, The Hague,” Denisova said about how the idea for the play was born.

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