Bandera’s discourse in Tetiana Kytsenko’s play «Green tomatoes»

Abstract

This article presents the first literary analysis of Tetiana Kytsenko's play “Green Tomatoes” (2024), written in Sweden during the Rikstolvan Residency under the TUA project and dedicated to the search for new artistic resources for working with the image of Stepan Bandera. The playwright has shown by her own example that it is possible to talk about Bandera through the medium of theater today: the play creates a situation of choice for Ukrainian refugees – whether to dare to do a theater project about Bandera in other European countries, in particular Germany and Poland, where the official attitude towards Bandera is extremely biased, or, on the contrary, to listen to local grantors and choose a neutral, less provocative topic for themselves. My goal is to interpret the play “Green Tomatoes” in terms of the author's vision of its key concept – Stepan Bandera – against the backdrop of the current stage of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. Methodologically, I will work with theatrical anthropology, ritual-mythological practices, interpretive shifts in artistic biographies, and post-classical theories of the actor/victim, and I will also take into account the model of “network theater.” Influenced by their acquaintance with contemporary visions of European theaters, which are constantly involved in public discussion of issues that are under-discussed or marginalized by political institutions, Ukrainian playwrights have scaled up their practices of creating vivid, sharply polemical dramatic texts. In particular, the conversation about Stepan Bandera as one of the trends in the dramaturgy of new Ukrainian refugees has already taken place in the plays “Green Corridors” by Natalka Vorozhbit and “Keep the Light” by Polina Polozhentseva. In her play “Green Tomatoes”, Tetiana Kitsenko successfully combines elements of Stepan Bandera's political biography, presented in a heuristic manner, with the theater-network model and techniques of contemporary screen arts, supplemented by network activities. This allows the female artists in her play to rethink their civic identity and their involvement in the present and future fate of Ukraine and Ukrainian identity.