Maketank will host performances of The Shadow to raise funds for Devon Ukrainian Association and the Conversation Café on Tuesday 24 May.
Soviet playwright Evgengy Schwartz’ famous poetic and philosophical retelling of a Hans Christian Anderson tale is a subversive fable about choices we make for social and political gain and for love.
It centres on a naive young scholar who finds himself wandering through a mystical land where the corruption in the social order reflects the corruption of the government.
Both fear anything and anyone that threatens reform because it promises the end of privilege.
Written in 1940 at the height of Stalinist expansion of the USSR, when Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova were all annexed under military occupation, The Shadow dissects what happens when our desires carry us in one direction but others parts of our natures take us elsewhere.
This production grew out of a university student project mentored by Maketank’s Olya Petrakova but has taken on a life of its own, just as the shadow does in the play.
All proceeds will be donated to the Devon Ukrainian Association and the Conversation Café, a city centre support hub created in the first few weeks of the war to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support Ukrainians who are fleeing the Russian invasion to find new homes in the south west.
The Shadow is at 2pm and 7pm on Tuesday 24 May at Maketank, and is presented in collaboration with Arts & Culture University of Exeter.
Tickets via Eventbrite. Twenty free tickets are available for Ukrainian nationals.
