DSpace: The Ukrainian theatre company bringing community to the fore

When Dara Klymenko arrived in Yorkshire after escaping the war in Ukraine she had no idea whether she'd have to give up her love for the theatre.The 26-year-old professional actress moved in with a host family in Malton in 2022 and began working at a nursery, but found she "couldn't live" without the creative arts.Now Ms Klymenko is the founder and director of DSpace, a Ukrainian theatre group which performed at this year's York International Shakespeare Festival."I was amazed at how many people were interested. The main goal is to create a safe and inspiring space for self-expression. I call it a space of inspiration," she said.
DSpace members span a wide range of ages - from primary school children to adults - and all are Ukrainians.Ms Klymenko had previously taught drama workshops to children, and decided to launch a similar venture in York, teaching classes in her native language.She said she was "amazed" by the uptake and by the amount of Ukrainian nationals living around her, but struggled to find a suitable venue to host the classes.Around the same time, she was invited to take part in Working Title, a project which united actors from national theatre companies in Ukraine with UK artistThrough this, she was introduced to David Richmond, senior lecturer of drama and theatre at York St John University, who offered a free space to rehearse at the city centre campus.Mr Richmond said: "The university has a policy of social justice and the creative arts have led on that for many years."We want to the support the Ukrainian community's creativity and expression and feeling of security and belonging."Dara is doing such good work in her community and in theatre so it seemed [providing space was] the ideal thing we could do to help, the ideal thing they need which is space and time to tell their stories in the way they want to tell them."
The group rehearses for three hours each Monday evening and members travel from York, Selby and the surrounding area to attend.While some members are beginners, others have previous acting experience, often from their life in Ukraine before the war.Sergi, 25, had completed his theatre degree at university and had started to secure some jobs before he moved to the UK. He explained that finding a theatre company that spoke his native language was important as it helped him find common interest in shared experiences."Because we are all people from one country, we have the same traditions, the same culture so it's easy to communicate so I'm happy to do this with Ukrainian people," he said."Sometimes it's difficult because of language. Most projects are looking for native speakers. But the York Shakespeare Festival was a new experience for me in theatre, and I was happy in the same way to act with Ukrainian and English people, and it was easy to connect."The play DSpace performed at the festival was called There's No Clock in The Forest, an original blend of Shakespeare texts and the Ukrainian play Mavka (the Forest Song).
"For us it was a huge success – we had lots of audience members, from Ukraine and also from England as well," Ms Klymenko explained."Some people from the audience told me they started crying during the performance. Not because of the show but because they heard Ukrainian language, Ukrainian songs and it was so sensitive for them."The theatre group will be tackling another deeply personal project next - a new play, partially inspired by the Hollywood film La La Land, written by Ms Klymenko herself.Her hope is that the theme can resonate, particularly with Ukrainian people, "to never give up" on their dreams."It was very important to me when I created [DSpace] that it was a safe space – it's about mental health as well, a place to express your feelings," she added."I realised I've got to keep doing this, because I need it, my team need it and the audience needs it."
Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Daily Mail​

11 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Fame Academy star is unrecognisable 22 years after show as he continues music career gigging around England

Fame Academy star Alistair Griffin is unrecognisable 22 years after he first appeared on the show - and he is still going with his music career. The musician, 47, rose to fame on the BBC talent show in 2003, where Alex Parker was crowned the winner. Now, Alistair - who was a student when he signed up for the show - can be found on TikTok, where he makes singing videos. Alistair is currently hosting a run of concerts by candlelight, titled The Greatest Shows, in York Minster. Following his debut on the show, he released a song called Bring It On. Alistair has been busy in recent years, with songwriting - and even wrote the song I Wish for You the World, for the Games Maker Choir, during the 2012 Summer Olympics. The artist recently gave insight into his life after Fame and his path into music after his success from the show. He said: 'I come from a little village in Yorkshire called Castleton. 'Where there's more sheep than people and there's definitely not many pop stars. 'I've always loved music and writing songs. 'So I left Yorkshire and I went to London to pursue my dream. 'And it wasn't long before I ended up on one of the first TV talent shows.' Alistair added: 'Fame Academy was a cross between X Factor and Big Brother. 'We all lived in a big house together, we all sang for survival. We all voted each other out at the end, it was brutal. 'Since then I have continued making music. Duetted with one of Girls Aloud, Kimberley Walsh, my song Just Drive was used as the theme tune to Formula 1. 'Played for some big crowds along the way. 'Met some great people along the way and I'm always up for an adventure. 'Hope you like my TikTok, stay tuned and follow me for for my latest adventure.' In September, musician Gary Phelan - who was on the show with Alistair - died at the age of 42. His passing was confirmed by friends on social media, and came as a huge shock to fans.

The Guardian

15 hours ago

• The Guardian

Charles Dickens's ‘sliding doors' moment: how a cold turned an aspiring thespian into a writer

As a sliding doors moment, it leads to arguably one of the greatest 'what if?' questions in literary history. Passionate about the theatre, Charles Dickens, then just 20, wrote to the famous Covent Garden theatre actor-manager George Bartley seeking an audition, saying he believed he 'had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in others'. Bartley responded saying they were producing 'the Hunchback' and arranging an appointment. Dickens planned to take his sister, Fanny, to accompany him singing on the piano. Then Dickens fell ill 'with a terrible bad cold' and missed the audition. By the time the next season came around he had embarked on the parliamentary reporter job that would firmly set him on his path to novelist. Would the world have been deprived of his literary canon but for the timing of that cold? Yet Dickens never abandoned his love of theatre, which is examined in detail in a new exhibition, 'Showtime!', opening on 23 July at the Charles Dickens Museum in London, highlighting his fondness of drama and the dramatic impact of his works. It was evident in how he constructed stories, published as weekly serials with a cliffhanger. In public readings he would physically act out episodes on tours around Britain and America. His most famous one, of the gruesome murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist, was so intense it is said it contributed to his death, aged 58, in 1870. The dramatic quality of his stories has lent them easily to innumerable adaptations over two centuries, from those brazenly pirated by the Victorian dramatist Edward Stirling at the Adelphi in London during Dickens's lifetime to The Muppets Christmas Carol in 1992. The actor Simon Callow, who has played many Dickensian characters on stage and screen, said: 'Performing was central to Dickens's life from a very early age. His father used to take him as a five-year-old to the local pub where he would recite and sing. 'Perhaps the pivotal moment of his life was his cancellation because of illness of an audition with the greatest actor-manager of his day. Instead he took a job as a parliamentary reporter and then the course of his life was set.' But Dickens never stopped writing, directing and performing plays, said Callow, a patron of the museum. 'All this came to a head in the public readings, which he performed for massive and astounded audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.' One such astounded spectator was Mark Twain, who wrote of one Dickens reading of a 'spry, (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt-front and diamonds … the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage – that is rather too deliberate a word – he strode.' Emma Harper, the exhibition's curator, said: 'I don't think many are aware of the extent of Dickens's theatricality. And particularly that 'sliding doors' moment. I don't know had he gone into acting as his main career whether writing would have been that side hustle for him. It's a great 'what if?'.' Dickens wrote to his friend John Forster of the missed audition: 'See how near I may have been, to another sort of life.' He said he still thought of the theatre. 'I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended me for the Lessee of a National Theatre – and that pen ink and paper have spoiled a (Theatre) Manager.' Harper said: 'His drama comes through. We have his reading copies where he is taking his own work, he's editing it, he's striking through on the book, glueing pages together, highlighting, writing in his own stage directions to make it as dramatic as possible.' He said Dickens's daughter Mamie, telling of watching him work, 'describes how he jumps up from his desk, goes towards the nearest mirror and he acts out what he's just written; he does all the faces, the voices and then he rushes back to the desk to write it back down again, so to check that his description matches what he wants his audience to experience.' The exhibition, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, explores 200 years of performances of Dickens's stories, from his own edited reading copies to letters, posters, playbills, programmes, photographs and props. Yes, and even including from the Muppets. 'Can't do this without the Muppets!' said Harper. Showtime! is on 23 July 2025 – 18 January 2026 at the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, Holborn, London.

BBC News

15 hours ago

• BBC News

The medieval hospital hidden in York Theatre Royal

When you go to the theatre, you imagine being surrounded by red velvet curtains and golden gilded stages. What you might not expect are grand medieval pillars and roman walls, steeped in the history of a sinkhole suddenly opened on St Leonard's Place in May, people were astounded by the medieval ruins that lay under the busy city centre they are a small part of the vast 888-year-old St Leonard's Hospital which has been mostly hidden underground, with a floorplan stretching from the Museum Gardens to York tucked away in unassuming corners of York Theatre Royal are perfectly preserved examples of tall medieval pillars and original groin vaulting. John Soper, tour guide at the theatre, said: "In a way we've got to thank Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540, because not only does he knock down all the abbeys, he knocks down the hospitals."In the 18th Century, [Elizabeth] Keregan who starts to build her theatre looks about for a place to buy, and there is a chunk of the hospital left standing."She starts to build her theatre on this site, on top of the old hospital and around it."This is why we've got so much of it in the theatre itself."It's incredible to think that you can just pop in and see so much history." As well as ruins of the medieval hospital, there is also a Tudor fireplace backstage, and a Roman well directly underneath the the box office are the remains of an original hospital gate, where the builder has carved their initials. Much of the new theatre reflects its history the cafe area was built in 1967, architect Patrick Gwynne designed the shuttered concrete pillars to reflect the medieval pattern on the flooring also mirrors the original layout of the hospital. St Leonard's Hospital had little in common with a modern facility, with Mr Soper describing it as "more like a stopping-off point"."If you were on a pilgrimage and you were going up to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, or you might be coming to see the newly built York Minster, you would have appeared at the gateway to this hospital which is in the Museum Gardens."Try and imagine it as a little village sat inside the city of York."There would be cattle and sheep, and they would be growing hops for beer."They had vineyards in there, they would be making their own wine."If you were considered to be very old, something like 47, if you paid a few coins to the monks then you would go and live in there and they would look after you." Mr Soper wants to encourage more people to re-engage with their local history."What I would say to you is just keep your eyes open, use your imagination, and rediscover your city of York," he said. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.