War, Women, Whimsy: Lucky Breaks Examines Ukraine’s Wartime Trauma
The Brick presents Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, adapted by Jaclyn Biskup and Sara Farrington. Photo courtesy of The Brick.
“What can’t be given up?” says a performer amongst four other women, standing before a sparse background of sheer white sheets strung up on rods, before a siren goes off. This is the start of Lucky Breaks at Williamsburg’s The Brick Theater; originally a story collection by Yevgenia Belorusets, the 2022 book (published only a month apart from Russia’s escalation of the conflict that same year) has been adapted for the stage by Jaclyn Biskup and Sara Farrington. The play is a series of moments in the lives of Ukrainian women during Russia’s 2014 invasion—a surrealistic take on women’s wartime experiences.
Lucky Breaks portrays trauma through a dreamlike lens. A woman leaves a needle in a shirt that ends up puncturing her heart. Another loses the ability to walk all of a sudden, staying still as a living statue on a bench. All of these bizarre, seemingly disparate tales connect back to how war affects the average Ukrainian woman. The frozen woman stays still “because she knows a secret about the war,” while one woman with the umbrella she can’t let go of returns for it out of “wartime habits.” The strength of these stories lies in their discussion of trauma as a sweeping, generational concern in post-Soviet nations.
The Brick presents Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, adapted by Jaclyn Biskup and Sara Farrington. Photo courtesy of The Brick.
In one story, a woman’s sister returns after getting kidnapped. She does not tell anyone what happened to her, and her sister says, “I forbade myself from wondering.” The friends of the woman who left the needle in her shirt explain the occurrence, saying, “There was a rupture in her body in which the needle easily found space.” Whether these stories are directly related to the invasion or not, they portray the haunting aftermath of trauma as indescribable, unspoken of, and too harrowing to take apart. The translation and the performers are able to elevate these simple sentiments to acts of mourning, their grief over normal life (or the semblance of a normal life) permeating throughout the play.
The simplicity of the production extends beyond the writing—five performers have to share minimal props on a stage shrouded by sheets. Yet, they make the most of the set through their performances; their bodies extend and go limp at a moment’s notice, and their delivery gives weight to their words. To aid the dreamy nature of these stories, shadows are animated against the backdrop of these white sheets: Toy castles portray a fairy tale, and mere hands can turn into birds and bear claws.
The Brick presents Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, adapted by Jaclyn Biskup and Sara Farrington. Photo courtesy of The Brick.
While the translation is able to capture the more devastating aspects of the play, the more subtle areas (such as the humor) aren’t as emphasized. As a Ukrainian writer, Belorusets comes from a tradition of deadpan jokes, too dry for the American ear to pick up. Thus, there are lines that have humorous undertones but aren’t fully realized. In one story, the theater goes pitch black; two women are underground during wartime, only a lamp lighting the stage. They rely on the newspaper’s horoscope column for their wellbeing (Pisces will be fine from 3 pm to 5 pm), before another woman becomes paranoid that it’s actually Canada waging war against them. Though understated, the black humor allows for dark reprieve. Other comedic moments are picked up on, such as a journalist snapping out of a dread-inducing story about a soldier after a church newscast announces, “You’re destined for happiness, girl!” However, because most of the lines are taken more seriously, the humor becomes lost.
Regarding tone, another missed chance is the exploration of the mundanity of everyday living through war. The play centering on women can be considered intentional in a bid to empower women’s stories, but it can also be interpreted as incidental. By focusing on men, the play would have to balance stories on both the war front and back home. Narrowing the stories on just women allows the author, and thereby the adapters, to fully explore what it means to have to continue your “normal” life amid conflict—an overlooked perspective in war stories.
However, positioning the narrators as friends, relatives, or acquaintances of the subjects of these stories provides an opportunity to explore this mundanity that is not entirely explored. While the drama in their delivery adds to the atmosphere, playing these stories as if the women are gossiping about everyday occurrences over tea and varenya could also add to the nuance of what is ultimately an atypical war narrative.
The Brick presents Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, adapted by Jaclyn Biskup and Sara Farrington. Photo courtesy of The Brick.
Amid Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, Lucky Breaks has taken on new relevance. The play’s director Jaclyn Biskup, who currently serves as The Brick’s Interim Managing Artistic Director, strived to steer away from how the West typically portrays international war stories. She wanted “something other than the sanitized war coverage we get, something more nuanced,” with an emphasis on “humanizing Ukraine and Ukrainians.” While the play misses certain opportunities in the way it tells its stories, Lucky Breaks is a memorable piece of theater that provides a poignant perspective on the everyday lives of Ukrainian women during times of war.
Lucky Breaks is on view at The Brick Theater from October 11 to October 27, 2024.
