Performance on Democracy - Exploring Social Processes
Performance on Democracy
About the Performance
A team of people from different cities and professions, with diverse backgrounds and views on social processes, tests the democratic system in the process of creating a performance. Applying personal experiences and diversity of positions and views, we test how an attempt to create a democratic process works in such a small but diverse community.
In the space of the theater, which involves the open co-existence of people, the question arises whether this process really stands behind the need to create a community or perhaps an arena for which everyone chooses their right to vote.
We have some idea of what democracy is, but it never fully satisfies us. Each conflict situation becomes a challenge, an obstacle on the way to consensus, to the dreamed of utopia, that well-ordered garden in which a place for necessary plants is pre-determined and preventive measures are provided against unwanted ones. And how to enter the conflict as a process with the potential for change that forms local natural connections and non-universal solutions? Perhaps, when we voice our needs and visions, pointing out the weak sides of the current order, we will be able to reconsider the world that exhausts and relentlessly hunts for new utopias on Earth and somewhere else.
CREDITS
Director
Roza Sarkisian
Dramaturgues
Joanna Wichowska and Lyuba Ilnytska
Architect
Nelya Moroz
Performers
Nina Stepanko, Anya Na, Roman Kryvdyk, Vlad Vazheevskyi, Anton Romanov
Project Manager
Bohdan Hrytsyuk
The performance takes place in the AIR Space, where the team sang and studied sympoetics for a month.
Jam Factory Art Center
Human Rights Education Center in Lviv
International Renaissance Foundation
Harald Binder Cultural Enterprises
Gallery
Roza Sarkisian is an Ukrainian theatre director and curator. Her innovative work explores themes of memory, identity, and resistance, often employing queer art strategies and documentary theatre techniques.
Roza Sarkisian holds degrees in Theatre Directing from the National University of Arts named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky in Kharkiv (2012) and in Political Sociology from V. N. Karazin National University in Kharkiv (2009). From 2014 to 2017, she served as the artistic director of Kharkiv’s independent theatre DeFacto. From 2017 to 2019, she was the principal theatre director at the First Ukrainian Academic Theatre for Children and Youth in Lviv, and during the same period, also worked at the National Academic Drama and Musical Theatre in Ivano-Frankivsk.
Her notable works include My Grandfather Dug. My Father Dug. But I Won’t (a Ukrainian-Polish co-production, co-directed with Agnieszka Błońska, 2016), The Great Filter Theory (Theatre of Contemporary Dialogue, Poltava, 2017), Psychosis (Actor’s Theatre in Kyiv, 2018), Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful Times (First Theatre in Lviv, 2018), and Macbeth (Lesya Ukrainka Academic Drama Theatre in Lviv, 2019). Additional acclaimed works include H-effect, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine (a Ukrainian-Polish-German co-production, NGO "Art-Dialog", 2020), Radio Mariia by Joanna Wichowska and Krysia Bednarek (Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, 2022), Ship. Bridge. Body (a co-production of the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv, Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig, and Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, 2023), and Fucking Truffaut (a co-production with Reszka Foundation, Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, and Gorki Theater in Berlin, 2023), Karabakh Memory (Gorki Theater in Berlin, 2025).
Her productions focus on themes of collective and individual memory, national identity, non-normativity, power, and social oppression. She combines radical imagination with queer art strategies, often using devised theatre techniques, personal stories, and elements of (post-)documentary theatre and autoethnography to connect personal experiences with broader social contexts and explore the boundaries between reality and fiction. Working with both professional and non-professional actors, she rethinks conventional aesthetics, introduces new ways of thinking, and creates space for alternative narratives. Her works have been recognized with several awards and invitations to festivals in Ukraine and internationally.
Roza has been recognized with several prestigious accolades, including winning the British Council Ukraine's Taking the Stage 2017 competition, the Gaude Polonia Scholarship 2017 from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, International Mobility Grants through Culture Bridges, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation Scholarship, Culture Moves Europe, the Artistic Scholarship of the President of Ukraine for 2019/2020, and the Warsaw City Artistic Scholarship in 2023. She was also named "Personality of the Year 2018" in the Theatre category in Lviv.
In addition to her theatre work, Roza has initiated and curated various artistic and educational projects for young people and children, including Desant UA: Independent Ukrainian Theatres Review (2017, Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, Warsaw), Drama Teen Lab (2019, Lviv), and Young Directors for Children (2018, Lviv). She has also been involved in projects such as Voices of the Neighborhood (2019, Lviv), Documentary Theatre for Children Evacuated from near Kyiv (2022/2023, Kahl-am-Main, Germany), Korczak Festival: Focus on Ukraine (2022, Warsaw), and Film and Theatre Workshops (2022, Warsaw). Roza has led numerous workshops for teenagers and has created performances featuring young non-professional actors and people with disabilities.
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