Marta Abbà
In the dance-theatre solo Someone Like Me, interviews with residents of besieged Kharkiv (eastern Ukraine) are transformed into a bodily map of resistance: the body as a political archive, theatre as an act of collective survival. Through the work of artist and director Nina Khyzhna, war is brought onto the stage.
Nina Khyzhna steps onto the stage and her body becomes an archive. Every gesture tells the story of Kharkiv (eastern Ukraine) under siege, every movement translates the unspeakable: life twenty minutes by car from the frontline, where theatre is made in shelters and air raid sirens punctuate rehearsals. Someone Like Me1 is a dance-theatre work born from interviews with those who stayed — soldiers, volunteers, children, elderly people — transforming collective trauma into scenic poetry. Not to spectacularise horror, but to give voice to those who live “too close to the ground” to be heard.
Nina Khyzhna is a Ukrainian theatre director, performer, actor and choreographer, born and trained in Kharkiv. She studied theatre and film acting at the Kharkiv National University of Arts named after Kotlyarevsky and has collaborated with European theatres in Poland, Slovakia and Austria. Co-founder of the Nafta Theatre, an independent alternative theatre founded in Kharkiv in 2018, her work focuses on themes such as identity, memory, the political body, war and resilience, through experimental, post-documentary performances and dance-theatre. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, she experienced a period of artistic exile, but returned to Kharkiv in 2023 to reopen the theatre, stating that “life elsewhere was meaningless”. She is best known for the physical solo performance Someone Like Me (premiered in 2024), which explores the bodily trauma of war through movement and dance.
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Khyzhna is an actor, director and co-founder of the Nafta Theatre in Kharkiv2. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, part of the team dispersed: some evacuated the area, others enlisted, others organised rescue operations. She chose to come back, after a year of artistic exile between Poland and Austria. «Coming home was wonderful and terrible at the same time», she says. Back in Kharkiv in 2023, Khyzhna reopened Nafta with just four people out of the forty who were there before the invasion. Today the team has grown again and numbers around twenty. They create documentary theatre, site-specific performances and shows that combine movement and testimony.
Someone Like Me, the itinerant performance that premiered in Kharkiv in 2024, is their most intimate cry: a bodily map of a city under siege.
Kharkiv, the city that never sleeps
Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city, fifty kilometres from the Russian border. Since February 2022 it has been under constant bombardment. The Saltivka district3, where Nafta co-director Ertan Vucek grew up, has been razed to the ground. Statistics are cold: thousands of deaths, entire areas evacuated, infrastructure destroyed. But Khyzhna looks elsewhere:
«War is not a theme for us, it is part of our body. We cannot separate the two».
Making theatre here means challenging oneself every evening. «During the premiere we had soldiers in the audience», she recalls. «We had to make choices: soft lighting, black and white, no strobe effects that could trigger trauma. But people need culture, even — especially — here». On stage appears a scene taken from emergency Telegram groups, where residents warn each other about air raids in real time. «People write while running down corridors to reach shelters. There is no time to go to the basement. We could not show this scene to children, so we set an age limit».
The theatre becomes a space of silent resistance, where coffee tastes more intense, «Because you do not know if you will drink it again tomorrow».
The value of making art during war is not obvious, even to those who make it. «Some people say: you are living through trauma, you cannot create. As if we were too close, too involved to have a voice». Khyzhna rejects this infantilisation.
«If we do not write our own story, someone else will do it for us. The Russians have already made performances about this war. We must find our own language, now».
The political body: dancing trauma
Someone Like Me was born from months of interviews. Khyzhna spoke with wounded soldiers, with children who play civilians-and-snipers, with elderly people who remember the Great Famine of the 1930s. «Before starting, I consulted a psychologist: how do I talk to someone who has lost parts of their body?». The answer was simple: «Ask. Do not label. A soldier is first and foremost a person. You can always say: explain it to me, I have never lived this experience».
The collected material is a collage of dissonant voices united by terror. Playwright Lyuba Ilnytska4 structured it into a fictional narrative line — that of a disembodied creature travelling through organic matter, absorbing resilience and trauma. «We do not want to reawaken the audience’s trauma or turn them into passive accomplices. Theatre can speak through metaphors, on a gestural level that means more than a thousand words». This is where Khyzhna’s physicality comes into play, shaped by choreographer Anatolii Sachivko, now enlisted in the Ukrainian army. Before that, he transformed Kharkiv’s geographical maps into movement scores and portraits of real people into kinetic inspiration.
«He showed me portraits of people he had worked with during physical training. When I had to interpret a soldier, I was defensive, heroic. He stopped me: “Wait, this is my home”. Then everything changed». The movement does not seek formal beauty, but hidden truth: the nervous tremor of those who live on alert, the muscular fury of those who fight, the rigidity of those who must remain immobile for twelve hours on watch.
The body becomes political out of necessity. «When you live under bombs, your body integrates survival technologies: prosthetics, emergency apps, improvised shelters. You become a cyborg», Khyzhna explains, citing Donna Haraway. In one of their previous performances, Unnamed, Nafta explored this cyborg logic: bodies merging with devastated land, becoming resources, weapons and shields, protecting the world from horror. «But we lose subjectivity», she explains. «We are too close to the ground to make decisions, so someone else makes them for us».
Someone Like Me is also an act of implicit ecofeminism. «Every missile pollutes the ecosystem: chemicals enter the soil, the water and us. Ukraine is known as “the breadbasket of Europe” — a blessing and a curse. Everyone wants this fertile land. We become resources, not subjects». The parallel is clear: exploited land, colonised female bodies, the Ukrainian people reduced to a geopolitical chessboard.
Theatre: resistance is collective
Making theatre in Kharkiv is not just an artistic gesture, it is a political act. «Movement is a necessity for human beings», the performance states. And theatre is movement: physical, emotional, social.
«When we perform, we create a space where trauma can be experienced step by step, integrated and transformed into collective memory».
Nik Akorn’s music snaps and creaks, the audience breathes together in the dark, Khyzhna traces Kharkiv’s streets with her feet. «This helps us stay alive and take care of our vulnerable side».
Technology plays a crucial role. Not only in Telegram chats that save lives, but also in how Nafta documents and shares its work. «We have travelled to Italy, Germany and Austria. We do not change anything in the performance: some parts remain in Ukrainian because we want the language to be heard. It is very moving». Abroad, however, Khyzhna encounters a paradox: «People are worried. It is not easy to sell projects about war. We must find ways to give volume and depth to stories, so that people keep reading, watching and listening».
Here theatre shows its unique strength.
«The media broadcast information: news, interviews, documentaries. Theatre invites something more vital. It accesses the subconscious, speaks through metaphors, through gestures».
«It is impossible to convey the experience of war — no one needs that. But theatre can make you feel proximity to death and, paradoxically, the fierce desire to live».
The Nafta community is a microcosm of resilience. The director Artem Vusyk founded a theatre for displaced artists in Lviv before returning to Kharkiv. Actors Dimitro Tretiak and Yaroslav Kuchelov enlisted. Director Tatjana Holubova organised the volunteer association “Cultural Shock”. «We were forty before the invasion. We came back in four. Now we are twenty». Every performance is a logistical miracle: rehearsals interrupted by sirens, international tours to fundraise, collaborations with soldiers on leave. «Our latest work, The Garden, was about care and sign language».
«This is what we need now: to learn how to take care of ourselves, of others, of the country and of our gardens. The idea of the garden gives us the conviction that there will be a tomorrow».
A future to nurture
Khyzhna concludes with an image: «Maybe we will not see our trees bloom. But we know our children will. This country will be free». It is a radical hope, that of the Nafta Theatre. Not naive: no one forgets the dismembered bodies, the sleepless nights, the endless grief. But stubborn.
Someone Like Me is not a performance about war. It is a performance about those who remain human despite war. About those who run to shelters and then return to the stage. About those who lose a leg and start dancing again. About those who, interviewed for the first time with their new prosthesis, say: «Sun is shining today, it is beautiful and I want to go out». And about an actor who, hearing that sentence, thinks: «I want to learn something from you». Khyzhna’s body keeps moving, precise and fractured, mapping Kharkiv down to the last street. The soundtrack crackles. Voices overlap: a child, an elderly person, a mother, a soldier. They all say the same thing, without saying it: we are still here.
- Someone Like Me has toured international festivals (Santarcangelo, SPRING Utrecht, Edinburgh Fringe 2025), bringing the voice of the Ukrainian frontline to the world. https://nafta.theater/en/home/projects/plays/khtos-taki-yak-ya ↩︎
- Learn more on the official website of Nafta Theatre https://nafta.theater/en ↩︎
- The Saltivka neighbourhood: Meduza. (2025, October 24). Saltivka will never get back what it lost. Meduza. https://meduza.io/amp/en/feature/2025/10/24/saltivka-will-never-get-back-what-it-lost ↩︎
- The vision of playwright Lyuba Ilnytska: Vonnák, D. (2024, February 14). Can we laugh? on the ground with Ukrainian artists. New Lines Magazine. https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/can-we-laugh-on-the-ground-with-ukrainian-artists/ ↩︎
