Ukrainian Theatre Festival Hamburg (ukr.theater.fest)

Theatre as a Contemporary Statement

Four years after the start of the large-scale war in Ukraine, contemporary Ukrainian theatre is one of Europe's most vibrant and politically dense theatre scenes. Artists work under extreme conditions – some in exile, some in Kharkiv or Mariupol, some in Hamburg, Lübeck, Hanover. The ukr.theater.fest brings them together for three days on Bramfelder Straße.

Programme: Comedy, Poetry, Drama, Documentation

Four productions form the core of the programme. From DІЙ-Theater in Kharkiv comes both "Der dritte Tisch" (Friday) and "Die Schönheitskönigin" (Sunday) – both plays use absurd-comedic means to frame everyday life under war conditions. Theater LUFT from Lübeck presents "Das ersehnte Land" as a poetic-musical journey. POLE Theater from Hamburg creates a playback performance. Teatromania 2.0 from Hanover (with Mariupol roots) complements the spectrum in a documentary-metaphorical way.

Surtitles Instead of Translation Loss

All performances are in Ukrainian original language with German surtitles. This allows the Ukrainian diaspora in Hamburg to experience the theatre in the original, and the German-speaking audience to follow without a language barrier. A format that is increasingly becoming standard in the independent Hamburg theatre scene and clearly distinguishes the festival from a pure diaspora format.

City Tour in Ukrainian

A special feature on Saturday: An author leads a tour through Barmbek in Ukrainian – a district that has been home to a growing Ukrainian community since the 2010s. The tour is part of the accompanying cultural programme and connects the festival with the Hamburg urban space beyond the theatre stage.

In the District of Hamburg-Nord, Borough of Barmbek

Flachsland – Hamburger Puppentheater at Bramfelder Straße 9 is located in the Barmbek-Süd borough, Hamburg-Nord district. For years, the venue has been an important address for puppet and performance theatre in Hamburg, with a small auditorium and adjacent rooms suitable for intimate festival formats. The ukr.theater.fest thus continues the tradition of Hamburg's independent theatre scene – political, multilingual, highly concentrated. In the state of Hamburg, it is one of the most prominent diaspora festivals of recent years.