Theatre Keeps Us Warm
Making Theatre During a Cold Winter in Kyiv, 2026
by
Richard Nelson
 
Foreword by Larissa Volokhonsky
 
In January 2026, American playwright and director Richard Nelson returned to Kyiv for a third winter working with the Theater on Podil. As Russian attacks left the city facing blackouts, freezing temperatures, air raids and uncertainty, Nelson rehearsed More Beauty Than Sorrow, a new play about Lesya Ukrainka and the Kosach family, written specially for Ukrainian actors.
 
Theatre Keeps Us Warm is Nelson’s diary of those weeks: a vivid, intimate account of rehearsals, shelters, icy streets, shared meals, exhaustion, courage and artistic trust. It captures the daily reality of making theatre in a city under attack, and the extraordinary resilience of artists continuing to work, gather, perform and create in the midst of war.
 
With clarity, humility and warmth, Nelson records the practical and emotional labour of staging a play in Ukrainian, a language he does not speak, while reflecting on history, culture, family, theatre and the fragile, stubborn hope that art can sustain.
 
A moving companion to A Diary of War & Theatre and Six Young Women Putting on a Play, this third Kyiv diary is a testament to theatre as an act of witness, resistance and human connection.
 
“If there is theater, it means that life goes on. And as long as there is theater, people’s hearts will be warm.”
— Larissa Volokhonsky, from the foreword
 
This is a book about Ukraine, theatre, cultural memory and the human spirit: about actors who keep rehearsing through air-raid alerts; audiences who keep coming; and a city that refuses to surrender its imagination.
 
Perfect for readers interested in:
Contemporary theatre, Ukraine, diaries of war, theatre-making, Richard Nelson, Lesya Ukrainka, Ukrainian culture, rehearsal process, theatre and resistance, and the role of art in times of crisis.