How does a literary text travel across borders, and what happens when it turns into performance? Beyond Borders is a performance research event that brings together artists, researchers, and community members to explore how Ukrainian stories transform into embodied experience and shared emotional knowledge through theatre.
At the heart of the event is Cappy and the Whale, a children’s theatre adaptation of Kateryna Babkina’s acclaimed book. Through a reading by the author and a panel discussion with the creative team and researchers, we will explore how narratives of illness, childhood, care, and family dynamics are recontextualised through collaborative, participatory forms.
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Programme includes
- Reading by Kateryna Babkina from Cappy and the Whale
- Panel discussion with artist, prodicers and and researchers
- Q&A session
- Light refreshments
Speakers / artists
- Kateryna Babkina, award-winning Ukrainian writer, screenwriter, and playwright
- Mariia Shub, production designer and art director (film, television, theatre)
- Antonina Smyrnova, producer of international audio dramas and cultural projects
Biographies
Kateryna Babkina is an award-winning writer, screenwriter, and playwright from Ukraine. She was the first Ukrainian author invited to read at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Her writings have been translated into English, Swedish, Polish, German, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Romanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Czech, Serbian, and Greek. Her plays have been staged in Kyiv, Vienna, and Geneva. In 2013, she wrote and co-staged the play Hamlet. Babylon. In 2021, she won the Angelus Central European Literature Award for My Grandfather Danced Better Than Anyone Else. Her stories have inspired multiple short films, including one screened at the Cannes Film Festival and another awarded Best Film and Best Script at the Open Night Festival.
Mariia Shub is a production designer and art director with an international portfolio in film, television, and theatre. Her projects include the award-winning Blindfold and Lucky Girl. She has also worked on documentaries and animations such as Tales of a Toy Horse and Little Wings. A Story of Hope, while leading educational programmes and charitable initiatives supporting children affected by cancer. In London, she staged the theatrical production Veshchi in collaboration with Playground Theatre and ArbuZ.
Antonina Smyrnova is a producer of international audio dramas, including Hotel Freedom and Lost Island, created with Synchromesh and international arts organisations. She also produced the Living Life photo exhibition featuring prominent Ukrainian and British photographers, and has organised workshops, conferences, and cultural events.
The event is organised by Daria Nepochatova within her DPhil project at the University of Oxford and is funded by the TORCH Performance Research Hub. Daria’s work examines nineteenth-century Ukrainian feminist literary history, asking how women’s writing shaped feminist political subjectivity under imperial conditions and why these voices were later marginalised in literary canons. She is also a co-founder of Ukraine’s first feminist publishing house, Creative Women Publishing.
Performance Research Hub
