Artistic Director Josephine Burton writes about the importance of integrating spoken Ukrainian dialogue, alongside English, into our Reckoning production, and the process of exploring how simultaneous use of both languages can feel innovative and accessible for audiences.

I’ve just been back in the rehearsal room for The Reckoning, exploring the different ways we might share the original Ukrainian verbatim text as part of our performance.

Anastasiia and I read so many extraordinary testimonies over the course of our research. Whilst our play focuses on one interview between a survivor and journalist that we read whilst immersed in the Reckoning project, we were moved and inspired by many others. We’ve woven some of these stories and the individuals who gave them into our drama - as people whom our Journalist has met and interviewed previously. Reckoning’s journalist is haunted by the memories of these past interviewees, including a widow from the Kramatorsk train station bombing and a mother fleeing shelling with her children.

While the main narrative unfolds in English, the powerful voices of those she’s met before, speak directly to the journalist in Ukrainian, at key emotional moments. It felt important for Nastia and I to keep some Ukrainian in the show to help us stay connected and to differentiate these sub stories from the main story. Initially, I'd imagined projection mapping English translations of the Ukrainian monologues onto the actors and set. BUT not only is good quality captioning expensive and sometimes hard to stage in non end-on theatre settings, but also… sometimes quite a distancing device. Often when I’m watching theatre in a language I don’t understand well enough, I catch myself reading surtitles, high above the heads of the actors; lost to their physical and emotional interactions and the nuances of theatre. I don’t particularly want to alienate our audiences during these moments, providing even further distance than already exists between these survivors of tragedy on the other side of Europe and audiences in the UK, sitting in comfortable seats in the theatre. So pushed by budget and encouraged by our Senior Producer, Cristina, Cristina, who is also a wonderful actor and explorer, Sam Kyslyi and I returned to the rehearsal room to look at innovative present ways of integrating live translation and bilingual staging into the performance.

Through a great deal of experimentation and some playful improv games, we landed on an approach where the audience experiences both languages as the journalist ‘translates’ in real-time, her interpretation becoming an essential part of the drama.

In the room, through our play, presenting the text this way became more than just a translation—it became a dramatic layering, where the journalist's absorption and retelling of the stories adds depth and tension, blurring the lines between past and present, memory and reality. The audience can absorb both the interviewee’s telling of their story and its impact on the journalist as they hear it. I hope this bilingual staging adds to Reckoning’s theatrical experience, intertwining language, history, and trauma and making the unseen vividly present.

It was a wonderful day of exploration. We’re all looking forward to getting back into the rehearsal room again soon.

The Reckoning is currently in development towards production in 2025.