A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
The TRUMPETER
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
MORE THAN EVER
Humanitarian Scholar Blair Ruble has traveled extensively in Ukraine and writes about how Ukrainian creatives use art to resist Russian invasion and define national identity during the ongoing war. His book, The Arts of War, highlights resilience through music, street art, and theater, showcasing artistic defiance against cultural erasure.
The Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) publishes Blair's regular blog posts on the The Arts of War, a worthwhile read for anyone interested in how Ukraine is resisting and surviving this war through the Arts.
Blair just received this message from a friend in Kyiv:
If there is no heat, water in the house or neighborhood, if there is no urgent need to be at work every day, it is better to wait for a period where there is heat, water and Internet.
But the Opera house was packed. The shops are open. The gym is up and running. It's hard to find a place to sit down to drink coffee in a cafe before the show starts. We do not freeze. We have created a new norm. We can live and fight for these conditions.
To repeat, "the Opera house was packed"… and not just the opera house. The arts have consistently given sustenance to Ukrainians throughout this horrible war.
The arts are central to understanding Ukraine right now,
as the performance of The Trumpeter also reveals.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion began the arts have represented survival – recall in the play how the trumpeter keeps saying that survival is most important…
The arts continued to evolve. They moved from supporting survival to shouting resistance, from encouraging to securing a new cultural foundation.
And now to consolidation as Ukrainian arts are heading out into the world through hundreds of performances in various genres including tonight.
But the centrality of the arts in all their forms to independent Ukraine predates this war. A Ukrainian nation has come into being since independence; a realm bound together by a shared imagination transcending prior divisions of language, religion, region, and ethnicity. This imagination began and continues to find strength.
It is a strength that lies at the core of this play.
Take a minute to view this short video about the work HERE.
11 Performances from Thursday, January 22
to Sunday, February 1 - Tickets available HERE!