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Draft:Natalia Blok

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Comment: The source for the date of birth gives the year, not the date. Where are you getting this information from? See WP:BLP. Statements need to be sourced or removed. Greenman (talk) 21:47, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: Please add reliable sources to verify things other than just the "Art" section, or perhaps put analyses of her pieces on the page. Right now, only the Art section has sources. Also keep in mind all sources on Wikipedia have to be independent 🇪🇭🇵🇸🇸🇩 Easternsahara 🇪🇭🇵🇸🇸🇩 13:33, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: See WP:BLP. Statements, starting with the date of birth, need to be sourced or removed. Greenman (talk) 12:32, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Natalia Blok
Наталія Ігорівна Блок
Blok in 2023
Born1980 (age 45–46)
Kherson, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
EducationKherson School of Culture
OccupationsPlaywright, screenwriter, theatre director
Writing career
Notable worksOur Children; Bomb

Natalia Ihorivna Blok is a Ukrainian playwright, screenwriter and theatre director from Kherson.[1] Her plays have been staged in Ukraine, in several other European countries and in Canada, and have been published in English- and Norwegian-language anthologies of Ukrainian drama.[2][3][4] She is a co-founder of the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv.[5]

Early life and education

[edit]

Blok was born in 1980 in Kherson.[1] She studied theatre directing at the Kherson School of Culture, graduating in 2000.[6]

Career

[edit]

Early work

[edit]

In the 2000s and 2010s Blok presented plays, video art and installations at Ukrainian contemporary art and theatre festivals, including the Terra Futura festival, where she received an award in 2007.[7] She won the gender media contest Krona in 2014 and the Ukrainian playwriting competition Week of Current Play in 2018.[8]

Her play Kaidash & Sons, a contemporary reworking of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky's novel The Kaidash Family set in the resort town of Zaliznyi Port, was staged by the Mykola Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre under its chief director Serhiy Pavliuk, and was performed on tour at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv.[9] In 2018 the Wild Theatre in Kyiv staged her play Woman, Sit Down!, directed by Maksym Holenko,[10] and in 2019 her play The Stranger (Prybulets) premiered in Cherkasy.[11] In 2020 she was a finalist in a drama competition organised by the Ukrainian Institute,[6] and the same year she co-founded the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv.[5]

Work since 2022

[edit]

After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much of Blok's writing has addressed the war and the occupation of Kherson. Her one-act play Our Children was presented in 2022 in "Ukrainians Under Siege", an online reading series of new Ukrainian plays organised by Voices Festival Productions in Washington, D.C.[12][13]

In the 2023/24 season Theater Basel staged Das Leben ist unaufhaltsam – Szenen aus Cherson (Life Is Unstoppable – Scenes from Kherson), directed by Peter Kastenmüller.[2] Her texts have also been presented at the WELT/BÜHNE festival of the Residenz Theatre in Munich.[14]

Her play Choose the Best Version, developed with the Theatre of Playwrights, was performed in 2023 at the Vabaduse festival at Vaba Lava in Narva, Estonia, and at the Latvian National Theatre in Riga, and in 2024 at the Paris Globe festival.[15][16][17] In 2023 the Oko Theatre in Lviv staged a one-person production of her play Through the Skin,[18] and in 2024 she contributed to Stadion der Träume, a production in Munich directed by Hans Steinbichler.[8]

Blok's play Vybukhyvka was included in the anthology Ukrainian New Drama after the Euromaidan Revolution, published by Bloomsbury in 2023.[3] Her play City Behind the Wallpaper appeared in a 2023 Folio anthology of contemporary Ukrainian drama,[19] and her work was published in Norwegian in the collection Historier fra Ukraina (2024).[20]

Film

[edit]

Blok has also worked as a screenwriter and director for documentary and fiction film. She wrote and directed the short documentary 66%,[21] and co-wrote the short fiction film Water (Voda) with Daryna Volga.[22]

Critical reception

[edit]

In a 2023 essay for World Literature Today, Oleksandra Wallo and Anna Halas discussed Our Children as part of a body of Ukrainian testimonial plays written in response to the full-scale invasion. They argued that such plays ask audiences "not to watch but to witness", and read the ending of Our Children, in which the narrator reflects on her separation from her sons in occupied Kherson, as an example of drama that conveys ongoing trauma rather than offering closure.[23]

The Canadian premiere of Blok's play Bomb, produced by Pyretic Productions at the 2025 Edmonton International Fringe Festival, received several reviews.[24] In a preview for 12thNight, critic Liz Nicholls described the play as a dark absurdist comedy whose protagonist, a journalist with a literal bomb in her stomach, embodies "the cost of caring".[25] Reviewers praised the production's humour and pacing, while one noted that some expository passages slowed the play's momentum.[4][26]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 "It is getting out of the matrix: first scary, and then very comfortable". The Day.
  2. 1 2 "Peter Kastenmüller inszeniert "Das Leben ist unaufhaltsam – Szenen aus Cherson" am Theater Basel". SWR Kultur (in German). Archived from the original on 3 October 2024. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Ukrainian New Drama after the Euromaidan Revolution". Bloomsbury Publishing.
  4. 1 2 "Edmonton Fringe: Bomb review". Edmonton Scene. 18 August 2025. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  5. 1 2 "About". Theatre of Playwrights.
  6. 1 2 "Natalia Blok". Residenztheater.
  7. ↑ "Natalia Blok". Biruchiy Contemporary Art Project.
  8. 1 2 "Natalia Blok". Stadion der Träume (in German).
  9. ↑ "Гастролі Херсонського театру імені Миколи Куліша у Києві" [Tour of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Theatre in Kyiv] (in Ukrainian). Mykola Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  10. ↑ "Жінко, сядь" [Woman, Sit Down] (in Ukrainian). Wild Theatre.
  11. ↑ "Вистава «Прибулець»" [The play "The Stranger"]. in.ck.ua (in Ukrainian). 19 March 2019.
  12. ↑ "Virtual reading of one-acts by Ukrainian playwrights under siege". DC Theater Arts. 20 April 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  13. ↑ "Ukrainians Under Siege II". Voices Festival Productions. 23 May 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  14. ↑ "Natalia Blok" (in German). Residenztheater.
  15. ↑ "(elu) sunnitud valikud (Eesti/Ukraina)". Vabaduse festival (in Estonian).
  16. ↑ "Izvēlies labāku versiju (Igaunija/Ukraina)" (in Latvian). Latvian National Theatre.
  17. ↑ "Choose the Best Version". Paris Globe.
  18. ↑ "Крізь шкіру" [Through the Skin] (in Ukrainian). Oko Theatre.
  19. ↑ Покидьки та інші п'єси. Сучасна українська драматургія [Pokydky and Other Plays: Contemporary Ukrainian Drama] (in Ukrainian). Folio. 2023. ISBN 978-617-551-413-9.
  20. ↑ "Historier fra Ukraina" (in Norwegian). Solum Bokvennen.
  21. ↑ "Краткометражный документальный фильм «66%»" [Short documentary film "66%"] (in Russian).
  22. ↑ "Вода" [Water] (in Ukrainian). Molodist International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 21 January 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
  23. ↑ Wallo, Oleksandra; Halas, Anna (7 March 2023). "Warsick: Testimonial Plays Share Ukrainians' Experience of War". World Literature Today. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  24. ↑ "Bomb". Pyretic Productions. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  25. ↑ Nicholls, Liz (11 August 2025). "A dark absurdist comedy introduces us to contemporary Ukrainian theatre: Bomb. A Fringe preview". 12thNight.ca. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  26. ↑ "The ticking explosive within! Bomb, a Fringe review". 12thNight.ca. 14 August 2025. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
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