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

RICHARD NELSON has directed over 20 of his plays, as well as those by Chekhov and Turgenev. His plays include Springwood, The Michaels, Illyria, The Gabriels (Hungry, What Did You Expect? and Women of a Certain Age), The Apple Family Plays (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry and Regular Singing), Conversations in Tusculum, Nikolai and the Others, Farewell to the Theatre, An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award Best Play), Two Shakespearean Actors (Tony Nomination, Best Play), Some Americans Abroad (Olivier Nomination, Best Comedy), and others. His musicals include James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey, Tony Award Best Book of a Musical, Tony nomination for Best Musical); his screenplays include Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell, director). With Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he has co-translated plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, and Bulgakov. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels ‘Master Playwright’ Award. Since 2024, Richard has been working with Theater on Podil in Kyiv, where he directed a Ukrainian version of Conversations in Tusculum and wrote and directed two plays, When the Hurlyburly’s Done and More Beauty Than Sorrow. He lives in Upstate New York.