The Grain Store (NHB Modern Plays)
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Ukraine 1929. As Stalin launches the first of his Five-Year Plans, a closeknit rural community stands unwittingly in the path of his drive to create a thriving socialist Soviet Union. The outcome is catastrophic.
What begins for the people of the village as an amusingly alien concept rapidly becomes an unstoppable force for change. Robbed first of their land, then their religion and independence, the whole country soon becomes engulfed by a tragedy that will scar a nation for generations.
Natal'ia Vorozhbit's play The Grain Store was first staged in this English translation by Nina Raine by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2009.
'A grim subject, but this extraordinary play by Natal'ya Vorozhbit tackles it, in Sasha Dugdale's translation, with passion, intelligence and cunning' - Guardian
'A disturbing vision of socialist dogma degenerating into corrosive megalomania' - Evening Standard
Natal'ya Vorozhbit
Natal'ya Vorozhbit (aka Natal'ia Vorozhbyt) is a Ukrainian playwright and a leader in the resurgence of Ukrainian national drama in the 21st century. She writes in both Ukrainian and Russian.
Her first major play, Galka Motalko, had success shortly after she graduated from the Gorky Literature Institute (Moscow) in 2000. The Grain Store, a historical work about the Holodomor, the state-induced famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 2009.
Vorozhbit took part in the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2013 and 2014, and the theme of the ensuing war with Russia has coloured her work since. In 2015 she co-founded the Theater of Displaced People with Georg Genoux, offering an opportunity for refugees from the Donbass region to tell their stories in a formal, theatrical context.
Her other plays include Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha, which received its UK premiere as part of A Play, A Pie and A Pint: International Plays from Ukraine and Russia at Òran Mór, Glasgow, and the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 2015; and Bad Roads (Royal Court Theatre, London, 2017).
Bad Roads was made into a film directed by the author, which was Ukraine's official Oscar selection in 2022. Vorozhbit also wrote the screenplay for Cyborgs (2017), a film about the defence of an airport in Donetsk where Ukrainian soldiers fought separatists for 242 days.
More by Natal'ya Vorozhbit
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