Cassandra, or Midnight is Where the Day Begins

Please join us for an evening of geopolitics and theater.

As part of Delphi Global’s two-week-long visiting fellowship program for emerging Ukrainian leaders, we have organized a play, which will take place on Thursday, August 13, at 4pm. The event will be hosted by the Barrett and O’Connor Center in Washington, DC. 1800 I St, NW.

Play summary by Sean Murray:

Cassandra is a deeply compelling figure from antiquity reinterpreted brilliantly by Lesia Ukrainka in 1906 as a woman riven by doubts about her own gifts. In 2026, however, precisely because women continue to be discouraged from trusting themselves, I was interested in putting on stage a Cassandra who has the courage of her convictions, who knows she can run intellectual and emotional laps around everyone in the room, and who is, in short, a serious badass. Further, having worked in the national security and intelligence disciplines, I was fascinated by the epistemological questions Ukrainka’s play raises. How do strategic analysts navigate between intuition, imagination, fact, knowledge, vision, belief? These two primary drivers of the play – a fiercely intelligent Cassandra and a crisis of epistemology – coalesced in the national security environment of an Eastern European country facing aggression from a neighbor. Once that setting was established, there emerged very quickly a deeply spiritual inquiry into the sacred nature of human freedom that I hope will resonate for all, but particularly for Ukrainian audiences familiar with Ukrainka’s original.

Registration is required.