A premiere performance of the one-man show The Chaplain’s Tango has taken place in Lviv. The first audience members were service personnel and their families, as well as chaplains serving Ukrainian troops.
As the play’s author and journalist Roman Onyshkevych explained, the chaplain is played by the well-known singer Yaroslav Nudyk, a member of the Ukrainian a cappella group Pikkardiyska Tertsiya.
The production was staged by Honoured Artist of Ukraine Andriy Snitsarchuk, who is currently serving in the 103rd Separate Territorial Defence Brigade named after Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytskyy. The soundtrack was created by composer Taras Terletskyy, and the set design by Oksana Radkevych. The project was delivered with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
The action unfolds in a notional dugout, where the protagonist is left alone with his thoughts, fears, feelings and choices. The chaplain blesses soldiers before they head out to their positions, supports them in the hardest moments, yet at the same time faces his own doubts and inner struggle every day. A recurring question runs through it: "Why can’t a chaplain take up a weapon"?
The show’s protagonist does not have a single real-life prototype. He is a composite figure, constructed from conversations with several priests, but the impetus for creating the production was the acquaintance of Yaroslav Nudyk and Roman Onyshkevych with Father Dominik, who did the most to immerse the creative team in the subject of chaplaincy.
“What we see is quite an unusual portrayal of chaplains. In Tango he is in no way a hero, but simply a person at war. A person with his own thoughts, doubts and fears. There is no romance — there is harsh truth and a little black humour, without which war is never without,” says Father Dominik Nalyznyk.
Yaroslav Nudyk said he wanted not merely to perform this story, but to pass it through himself — through his own fears and experiences.
“A chaplain at the front does more than hear confessions or offer comfort. He helps soldiers find inner balance where hell reigns. Every day he sees fighters off to their positions, blesses them, but cannot go with them. Some return, and some do not. He sees death and constantly asks himself: was I in the right place, did I do everything I could. For him it is a great inner torment,” the actor noted.
Andriy Snitsarchuk remarked that he did not immediately agree to take on the project, but later realised he would stage the show even if the work had to be finished by phone from the deployment area of his unit.
“It was important for me to make a show precisely about a person who is alongside the soldiers. Not somewhere over there, at a comfortable distance, but right beside them. Inside their fear, anger, exhaustion and, especially, humour. In war, humour often sounds exactly where, in ordinary life, there ought to be silence. And that is precisely why it hits the mark,” the director says.
After the special screening, several more performances of The Chaplain’s Tango are planned for service personnel, as well as ‘civilian’ premieres in Lviv and Kyiv.