National Heroes is a devised-documentary and participatory performance in development, exploring national identity, democracy, collective memory, war, sacrifice and everyday survival in a time of displacement and historical rupture.
The project began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its central questions already seemed urgent and almost dystopian: What does nation mean today? What do we owe to our country, and what does it owe to us? How does democracy survive when it is attacked both from outside and from within?
Then reality entered the rehearsal room. The invasion began, Mariupol was attacked and the artists were forced to flee. The project remained unfinished because the catastrophe it was trying to imagine became real.
THE QUESTION OF THE HERO
National Heroes is interested in what happens to the idea of the national hero when the official heroic narrative comes to an end.
The future development of the project could bring together Ukrainian war veterans, displaced artists, local participants and professional performers. Veterans would not appear simply as documentary evidence or symbols, but as co-creators, performers, witnesses and citizens, bringing their own lived experience into the work.
At the centre of the project is a question that remains unresolved: who are the national heroes of a great defeat? What happens when the soldier returns home? How can society listen to veterans without reducing them to the role of hero, victim, symbol or wound?
FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE TO COLLECTIVE MEMORY
The project brings together personal stories with wider questions about nation, liberation, empire, migration, democracy, violence and belonging.
Its documentary material is developed through encounters with participants and through research, while the theatrical form combines poetic and allegorical elements with documentary theatre, participatory assembly, multimedia performance and embodied testimony.
National Heroes is conceived as an adaptable transnational work, allowing each new context to contribute its own histories and questions to the performance.
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Testimonies from the Years of the Great Defeat
NATIONAL HEROES
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THE WORK IN DEVELOPMENT
National Heroes has never premiered. Its interruption by the full-scale invasion is part of its history and part of its meaning.
The first exploratory workshops began in May 2026 and are continuing with Ukrainian veterans. These encounters mark the beginning of a longer process of gathering material for a future performance created with veterans, displaced artists, local participants and professional performers.
Because the project works with lived experience, war memory, return, citizenship and trauma, the process requires time, trust and ethical care. The material cannot simply be extracted or rushed; it needs to unfold through workshops, testimony, embodied practice and collective reflection.
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FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
The project is in development. Public presentation dates and host venues will be announced once confirmed.
Its future form remains open, allowing the artistic process and encounters with veterans and other participants to shape the work as it develops.
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A PARLIAMENT OF MEMORY
The performance is conceived as a surreal parliament, where different voices and experiences meet.
The stage is imagined as a poetic space between a greenhouse, a supermarket and a pig farm. Through workshops, testimonies, questionnaires, historical documents, poetry, multimedia and live public participation, the performance creates a theatrical and civic mosaic of voices.
The audience becomes part of the dramaturgy through live polling, projected responses and participatory encounters, forming a shifting parliament of public memory and collective responsibility.
