The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 irrevocably transformed Russia’s cultural landscape. Within hours of the military assault, the nation’s artistic community — long a site of critical reflection, social engagement, vibrant developments and creative experimentation — found itself thrust into a state of moral and existential crisis. This paper contextualises the impact of the 2022 war on Russian theatre makers and looks into the strategies that were adopted by the artists in exile. Detached from familiar institutional structures, artists have embraced new modes of collaboration — intercultural, digital, and transdisciplinary. Initiated in 1990 by Jane Ellis, the Education Officer at the Traverse Theatre, and Jenny Wilson, a Drama teacher at Leith Academy, and received its current name in 1993, the ‘Class Act’ is an innovative drama project aimed to engage high school students in Edinburgh (Cooper, 2010). Professional playwrights commissioned by the Traverse Theatre collaborate with teenagers, guiding them in the creation of their first short plays. Subsequently, these young writers collaborate with directors and actors, culminating in the performance of their completed works on the Traverse Theatre's stage, before an audience comprised of their peers, friends, family, and community members. Over the past thirty-five years, this project has served as a cornerstone of “the Traverse Learning and Participation programme… designed to reflect the theatre`s commitment to new writing” (Dow, 2008). It has evolved into an annual educational and socially engaged theatre project with a Scotland-wide reach, while also, since 2004, acquiring an international dimension, extending its influence and artistic expertise to countries such as Russia, Ukraine, India, Estonia, and Finland. After February 2022, when some Russian playwrights who had emigrated and some who remained in Russia were undergoing the shock of the war that had begun, it was 'Class Act' that proved to be the format and technology that was both lifesaving and necessary. Several cases are to be reviewed in terms of assembling and reassembling the creative networks, including international communication, local theatre and diverse humanitarian bodies’ cooperation, actors involved, and outcomes and effects generated. Thus, the so-called ‘theatre of the emergency’ is not solely a response to crisis but an aesthetic paradigm — one that reframes theatre as a space of witness, documentation, survival, re-imagination, reinvention, adaptation, healing and solidarity. 

Cooper, N. (2010) ‘Class Act 21’, The Herald, 4 January. URL: https://coffeetablenotes.blogspot.com/2011/03/class-act-21.html (Accessed 14 October 2025).