The Scattering Ravens is a surreal, darkly comic and poetic piece of memory-theatre dedicated to Moyshe Kulbak, the Belarusian-Jewish Yiddish writer, poet and dramatist who was executed during Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937. Kulbak was one of the major voices of modern Yiddish literature, born in present-day Belarus and deeply connected to the cultural worlds of Minsk, Vilna and Eastern European Jewish life.
The Scattering Ravens was written by Olga Prusak, one of the finest contemporary Belarusian playwrights and winner of the Tom Stoppard Award for an outstanding debut. The play recounts the final days of Moyshe and his colleagues at the Yiddish literary magazine Stern (The Star).
Set between Soviet Minsk, a metaphysical chessboard and a chorus of talking birds, the piece explores how language, fear, humour and imagination survive under political terror. Writers, prisoners, birds and executioners move through a fragmented world where memory becomes unstable, truth is dangerous, and art itself is placed on trial.
Blending absurdity, tragedy and sharp political imagination, The Scattering Ravens asks what remains of a person after their voice has been erased — and how theatre can gather the scattered pieces of a silenced culture.
The award-winning Belarusian-British director, Vladimir Shcherban, has brought together an international cast of actors to revisit a lost chapter of Jewish and Belarusian literary history, and to reflect on censorship, exile, cultural memory and artistic resistance today.
Read in Russian with English subtitles. Poetry performed in Yiddish.
The reading will be followed by a post show discussion.
Olga Prusak — Playwright
Olga Prusak was born on 4 June 1987 in Vitebsk, Belarus. She graduated from Belarusian State University, Department of International Relations, with a degree in Cultural Studies.
Her career as a playwright began in 2016, when she received the Tom Stoppard Prize for the brightest debut in playwriting at the International Biennale Free Theatre. She has written more than ten plays. Some of her works have been staged independently by Vladimir Shcherban through Belarus Free Theatre and HUNCHtheatre, while others have been performed in Belarusian state theatres.
Olga’s plays have been translated into English, German and Czech, and have been performed at international festivals.
Vladimir Shcherban — Director
Vladimir Shcherban was born on 7 July 1975 in Donetsk, Ukraine. After graduating from the Belarusian Academy of Arts, he worked at the Yanka Kupala National Academic Theatre in Minsk.
In 2005, he became one of the founders of Belarus Free Theatre. Vladimir has lived in London since 2011. In 2018, he co-founded the London-based international company HUNCHtheatre. His productions has toured internationally to critical acclaim, won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival and an Obie Award, and has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award in New York City.
