Crimea, 5am

Crimea 5am brings together voices from an extraordinary community of women, bound together as a result of human rights violations against Crimean Tatars since 2014. Through personal stories and testimonies of love and struggle in Crimea today, and combining victim and activist interviews, it highlights the stories of 10 political prisoners and their families. 

Since  2014, civil activists and in particular representatives of the  indigenous people of the Crimean peninsula, Crimean Tatars, have been persecuted by Russian occupying forces. Obscured by a news blackout, we know little of these events, little of the prisoners themselves, their families  and life in Crimea under occupation. 

This moving verbatim play, drawn from interviews and testimony, tells this story largely through a female  perspective. We hear from the wives of the political prisoners, of their lives, friendships and love affairs, and particularly the  extraordinary way that they have kept their households together, drawing comfort and support from their tight-knit female community and how they have been empowered and changed through the experience.  

Crimea 5am celebrates the sheer determination and activism within this oppressed  community, the bravery of the prisoners in documenting abuses, and its  defiant women holding the ravaged community together.A cast of actors, activists and journalists will stage a reading of Crimea 5am in the Cinema, followed by a post-show chat co-hosted by Index on Censorship.  

This one-night-only performance is part of the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute UK/Ukraine Season of Culture, is produced by Dash Arts and supported in kind by Kiln Theatre.