Theatre Women in War: Ukraine’s 20-21st Centuries

Name: Theatre Women in War: Ukraine’s 20-21st Centuries
Start: 2025-04-03T16:00:00-05:00
Location: KU School Of Architecture - Marvin Hall

Schedule

Thu, 03 Apr, 2025 at 04:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

KU School Of Architecture - Marvin Hall | Lawrence, KS

CREES invites you to the annual Palij lecture which will be delivered by Dr. Mayhill C. Fowler (Stetson University) on April 3 at 4pm in the Forum of Marvin Hall. Dr. Fowler's talk is titled "Theatre Women in War: Ukraine’s 20-21st Centuries."
Theatre in Ukraine is booming, even in the midst of full-scale war. Audiences flock to performances, and theatre-makers persist in creating new work. While media reports frame this as an unexpected phenomenon, Ukraine has a long history of theatrical innovation during wartime. In this history, women have played a central—though often overlooked—role in shaping the stage as a space of resilience. This talk explores the deep entanglement of art and war in Ukraine through the lens of women theatre-makers, both Ukrainian and Jewish, across the 20th and 21st centuries. From the actresses of the avant-garde Berezil Theatre in the aftermath of World War I, to those who endured occupation in World War II, to contemporary playwrights, directors, and managers shaping narratives of war today—women in Ukraine have transformed theatre in times of crisis. By foregrounding their contributions, this talk reveals how theatre has not only reflected but also actively responded to war, offering a vital, if often precarious, space for creativity and survival.

Dr. Mayhill C. Fowler is associate professor in the Department of History at Stetson University, affiliated faculty in the Program in Theatre Studies at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, and an affiliated researcher with the Center for Urban History in Lviv. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has held fellowships at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the University of Toronto, and was a Fulbright scholar to Ukraine 2019-2020. She has published widely on culture in Ukraine, including her book Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto, 2017), which is forthcoming in Ukrainian translation. She is currently working on two projects: a book on women in theatre in Ukraine across the long 20th century, Theatre Women: Place and Performance in 20th Century Ukraine, and a biography of the former Soviet Army Theater in Lviv, A Theatre of Silence: War and Memory in Ukraine. She is the editor of Krzysztof Czyżewski’s Toward Xenopolis: Visions from the Borderland (Rochester, 2022). She is a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York and on the academic organizing committee of the Danyliw Seminar in Ukrainian Studies. She also holds an MFA in Acting from the National Theater Conservatory and is a former actress