REMINDER: Bette’s ‘Speakeasy’ with Ukrainian Playwright Sasha Denisova

Bette members — please register for Sunday’s Speakeasy zoom salon with Sasha Denisova, whose recent plays include Putin on trial in The Hague — as played by a woman — and a play about her mom in Kyiv

****Registration link for Sunday’s Speakeasy zoom salon is below the paywall. Join us by taking out a paid membership and help support me as I do this work.***

“Putin must be laughed at without mercy.”—Sasha Denisova

I spent the morning sobbing while watching Sasha Denisova’s plays. Particularly moving is the play about her mom, unwilling to leave Kyiv after surviving other wars. The play opens with her mom, sitting in her darkened apartment, cigarette in one hand, shotgun in the other.

81 years old. Fighting another gaddam war.

Photo courtesy Sasha Denisova

I am honored and excited to introduce Bette members to Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova, who will be joining us on Sunday at 1:30 pm PT to discuss two of her recent plays.

Among them, The Hague, a satire that has Putin and his allies facing a war crime tribunal, that’s been staged in Poland, Bulgaria and the US.

The play narrates the story of an orphaned teenager from Mariupol who envisions Russia’s leaders held to account for their war of annihilation in Ukraine. In the EuroNews clip below, you will see the role of Putin played brilliantly, wickedly, by a woman.

In the same way Charlie Chaplin belittled Hitler in the Great Dictator, Denisova says: "Putin must be laughed at without mercy.”

We will also be discussing her work, My Mom and the Full-Scale Invasion, a personal play about her mother’s refusal to leave Ukraine.

More on Denisova here from Sylvie Lass of Woolly Mammoth:

Sasha Denisova is a playwright, a director, a writer, and a Ukrainian. Sasha was born in Kiev. She graduated from the Philology Department of Kiev Taras Shevchenko University. Sasha subsequently studied theater and worked at various theatre companies in Russia. While residing in Russia she studied documentary theater at the Theater Doc company in Moscow, trained at Royal Court in London and graduated from the School of a Theater Leader, a program run by the Moscow Art Theatre School. She served as a deputy artistic director at the Mayakovsky Theater and as the chief dramaturg at the Meyerhold Center in Moscow, and she also taught documentary theater and screenwriting at the Moscow School of New Cinema.

Sasha’s play Light My Fire was awarded Russia’s highest theatre prize, The Golden Mask, in 2012. As a playwright and director Sasha has produced more than 25 performances at Moscow stages, including The Dusty Day, Alice and the State, Sforza, Hotel California, Sea Pines, Batman vs. Brezhnev, and Hermione. Sasha makes sharply social, political theater in which documentary material merges with magical and fantastical.

She fled Moscow for Poland immediately after the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine. At the same time, all of Sasha’s productions in Russia were shut down. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion she has written and staged 4 plays, all of them about the war: Six Ribs of Anger, about the fate of Ukrainian refugees in Europe (first presented at Kommuna Warszawa in Poland); My Mom and the Full-Scale Invasion (first staged reading: Barcelona, CCCV Museum of Contemporary Art with the support from the Artists at Risk initiative); The Hague, an account of a tribunal against Putin and his gang that takes place in the imagination of a Ukrainian girl from Mariupol, which Sasha also directed at the Polish Theater in Poznan (February 2023) and at the Arlekin Players Theater in Boston (June 2023); and Bakhmut, a story of two women who mourn the same man, an intellectual whom they had loved and who gave his life for his country.

Looking forward to seeing many of you on Sunday, and welcome to all the new members!

If you would like to join us, please do so by subscribing here:

And if you would like to contribute to the cost of paying a Ukrainian translator to assist us with this event as well as RadPod’s interview with Denisova, I would be very grateful:

Thank you to everyone who supports this work.

(Video clip from The Hague, courtesy EuroNews)

REGISTRATION LINK BELOW PAYWALL…

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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated.

Members access all content and receive invites to our weekly Happy Hour, and our Speakeasy guest events.

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‘Hold Your Nerve’ — A Q & A with War Photojournalist Paul Conroy

Also, a private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous@gmail.com. 🥹

More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.

Begin each day with a grateful heart.

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