Theatre Keeps Us Warm - a Diary of Making Theatre during a Cold Winter in Kyiv, 2026

In January 2026, American playwright and director Richard Nelson returned to Kyiv for a third winter of making theatre at the Theater on Podil. As Russian attacks left the city facing blackouts, freezing temperatures, air raids, and uncertainty, Nelson rehearsed More Beauty Than Sorrow, his new play about Lesya Ukrainka and the Kosach family, written specially for Ukrainian actors. Theatre Keeps Us Warm is a diary of rehearsal rooms, shelters, icy streets, shared meals, exhaustion, courage, and artistic trust. Intimate, humane, and powerful, it captures theatre as an act of warmth, witness, and resistance in a city at war. “If there is theatre, it means that life goes on. And as long as there is theatre, people’s hearts will be warm.” —from foreword by Larissa Volokhonsky