(18 May 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER:4435147
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Coimbra, Portugal - 11 May 2023
1. Wide of rehearsal of play, lights dim on stage to emulate bombings; UPSOUND of sound effect of an explosion
HEADLINE: Drafted Ukraine director misses play opening night
2. Actor playing the role of a Russian soldier with another actor on stage
ANNOTATION: "Silence, Silence, Silence, Please,” a play that tackles the war in Ukraine had its world debut in Portugal with its director missing from the audience.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 3 May 2023
3. Pavlo Yurov, 43-year-old director of Silence, Silence, Silence, Please sitting on theater chair.
ANNOTATION: Pavlo Yurov, the play's director had meant to be there but was drafted by the army weeks before opening night.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Coimbra, Portugal - 11 May 2023
4. Various of actors on stage
ANNOTATION: The show forces the audience to confront the psychological toll of being exposed to constant artillery and inhabiting life in survival mode.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv, Ukraine - 3 May 2023
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Pavlo Yurov, 43-year-old director of Silence, Silence, Silence, Please:
“My goal is kind of to make it possible for the audience to feel the conditions and the mental and physical states of the people who are experiencing this because theatre is like a real life medium."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Coimbra, Portugal - 11 May 2023
6. Actors on stage
7. Various of poster advertising the play, tilt up from Yurov’s name to title of play reading (English): “Silence, Silence, Silence, Please”
ANNOTATION: Yurov had applied for a special permit to attend the opening in Portugal as men of fighting age are barred from leaving Ukraine.
ANNOTATION: Instead he was drafted by Ukraine’s National Guard and had no choice but to stay and miss his show.
STORYLINE:
The show must go on, even when its Ukrainian director is drafted by the army weeks before opening night.
“Silence, Silence, Silence, Please,” a play that tackles the war in Ukraine had its world debut in Portugal last week, but its chief creator was conspicuously missing from among the packed audience.
Pavlo Yurov had meant to be there.
Weeks before the opening, he had gone to get special documentation that would permit him to make a trip out of Ukraine since men of fighting age are barred from leaving.
But there are exceptions and Yurov, 43, expected to be given a pass to attend his own show.
Instead he was drafted by Ukraine’s National Guard.
So Yurov had no choice but to stay, while his actors took to the stage in the Portuguese city of Coimbra and performed, and his name flashed in neon lights outside the theater halls.
The play is art imitating life.
Drawn from real-life experiences of Ukrainians living under constant shelling and enduring Russian occupation, it touches on the lives of soldiers and paramedics working on the front lines of the war, and volunteers delivering humanitarian aid to the population.
But Yurov wanted the play to touch the audience in a deep and immersive way.
The show forces the audience to confront the psychological toll of being exposed to constant artillery fire and of inhabiting life in survival mode.
"My goal is kind of to make it possible for the audience to feel the conditions and the mental and physical states of the people who are experiencing this," Yurov told The Associated Press in Kyiv.
The show was originally staged in 2020.
But when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he decided to rewrite it to reflect recent, real-life developments.
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