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AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
The TRUMPETER
Dig Deeper into the Work
Inna Goncharova is a playwright, writer, actress, director, theater and public figure. Inna is author of numerous short stories, tales, novels, essays and articles and has directed over 15 theatre plays, and author of documentary movies focusing on Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
Inna wrote The Trumpeter in 2022, at the beginning of the Russian invasion. The play premiered in London in 2024, where Inna currently lives.
We asked John Farndon, the translator of the play to English, this question:
How did the idea for the play come to you? Is it inspired by specific incidents or individuals and if so how did you learn of them?
The plot of the play chosen for production is based on real events that took place in Ukraine in the spring of 2022. The impetus for writing the play was a message on social networks that caught the eye of the author of the play, Inna Goncharova, that in Mariupol "everyone is fighting, including the musicians of the orchestra.
The real events on which the plot is based take place in the basement of Azovstal in Mariupol. However, the play reproduces only an allusion to the real place of events, but it is not made definite that the events are taking place precisely in Mariupol and precisely in Azovstal - because similar events took place in Ukraine during the war on different parts of the front.
The focus of the performance is focused on the inner experiences of a person during the war, on the relationships of people who got into the war from different fields of activity (musician, lawyer, military), are of different nationalities (Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Poles, Jews), but they do one thing: protect homeland and their people, and they do it with full dedication.
Trumpeter is the main and only character of the play. This is the call sign of a military man who was actually a musician (trumpeter) of the marine brigade band, but during the war he was forced to fight at the same level and together with his brothers - real soldiers. He even became a trumpeter in the orchestra by accident, as he graduated from the composition department of the conservatory. Throughout the drama, the hero insists that he is precisely a composer, that is, not just an artist, but rather a creator. Painful experiences of a creator who is forced not to create, but to kill.During the entire performance, the real name of the soldier with the call sign Trumpeter will never be mentioned, in contrast to the names of those with whom he seems to be communicating.
The viewer decides for himself whether the events happened in reality, or whether everything is happening only in the hero's mind, tired of circumstances.”
Azovstal is the giant steelworks in Mariupol where civilians and soldiers held out for three months in appalling conditions against the massive Russian attacks. The civilians were eventually allowed to evacuate. The soldiers held on for a few more weeks until they told to surrender by Ukrainian command, to save their lives. It’s this last desperate period the play is set in.
János Szász - Director of The Trumpeter in Dupont Underground in January 202.
We asked János this question:
How did the decision to present the play in Dupont Underground change the nature of the production with regard to staging, sound, and audience interaction?
When Artistic Director Susan Galbraith of Alliance for New Music-Theatre first approached me about directing the contemporary Ukrainian play The Trumpeter, it was the exciting possibility to do such a play in the raw space that is Dupont Underground that most intrigued me.
First of all, I come from Hungary and have both directed and observed theatre in many cities in Eastern Europe and there is a kind of affinity with raw underground space such as this underground labyrinthian tunnel and what was an abandoned trolley station under Dupont Circle.
At different recent periods of history, in my country and neighboring countries, theater and other arts were heavily censored and forced “underground.”
Also, the very subject of Inna Goncharova’s play takes place in the basement of an industrial complex in Mariupol during the Russian invasion and the siege of that city. We did not want to be just like tourists but bring the audience into an immersive experience of being in a war zone. We find ourselves in the dark and it is cold and a little uncomfortable. We hear rockets and sirens above mixing with the sirens around Dupont Circle.
But there are also moments of human connection and humor, and poetry. We have four Ukrainian male vocalists, joining us on this journey and their sound is very beautiful in this underground space. They add something beautiful and special.
Too often I think we here in America think war is only over there and far away. But it could be here. What happens when as a country your freedoms disappear and your very right to exist is challenged?