Two women and three men, all scarred from war, prepare to stage a play based on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The pain and scars are internal but rise to the surface in full force during the rehearsals. The setting is Ukraine, and the play isn’t the one written by Shakespeare; it’s a combination of “Hamlet” and the actors’ lives. Instead of “to be or not to be,” the question is “to live or not to live,” says Yaroslav, one of the actors, as he recounts the trauma he experienced in the Donbas region in 2014.
Now they are once again surrounded by war, and the rehearsals bring to the surface what the actors may have suppressed until today. They have real, candid, sometimes shouting debates about whether there is room for theater when war is raging. And that is the secret to this powerful viewing experience – the directors’ ability to convey all this in a direct and fearless manner.
