Actors' Reading Collective and Word for Word Will Host Reading Of Stories By Oksana Zabuzhko to Benefit Ukrainian Refugees

Two stunning stories written by Macarthur Grantee Oksana Zabuzhko from her award-winning collection, Your Ad Could Go Here, allow us all to hear the words of a brilliant Ukrainian artist, humanizing the unimaginable scale of loss occurring in her homeland right now. The event is free and audience will be asked to donate to their choice of charities benefitting Ukrainian refugees.

Directed by Amy Kossow and Patricia Silver, dozens of Bay Area actors are banding together to give their time to a reading of these beautiful stories. The Actors' Reading Collective and Word for Word Performing Arts Company present for this one night only a virtual performance on Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 7pm PST.

Reservations may be made at www.arcstream.org/showtime

Oksana Zabuzhko is one of Ukraine's most celebrated contemporary writers and the author of more than twenty books. She graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Kiev's Shevchenko University and obtained her PhD in philosophy of arts. Since publishing her influential novel Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (1996, published in 2011 in English translation by Halyna Hryn), she has been working as a freelance author.

Zabuzhko lives in Kiev, where she and her partner, artist Rostyslav Luzhetskyy, operate a small publishing house.

Zabuzhko's books have been translated into fifteen languages. Among her numerous acknowledgments are a MacArthur Grant (2002), the Antonovych International Foundation Prize (2008), the Order of Princess Olga (2009), and the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine (2019). Her magnum opus, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2010, published in 2012 in English translation by Nina Murray), won the Angelus Central European Literary Prize (2013) for the best novel of Eastern and Central Europe.

Donate to Charities Benefitting Ukrainian Refugees:

Americares is delivering medicine, medical supplies, and emergency funding to help families access essential health care services.

The International Rescue Committee is working to rush critical aid to displaced families.

World Central Kitchen, headed by chef and humanitarian Jos Andrs, is in Poland providing meals for the many refugees pouring into the country.

Razom for Ukraine: providing tactical medical and hospital supplies within the country of Ukraine. Their partners on the ground in western Ukraine are warehousing, sorting, and distributing their humanitarian aid to various hot spots across the country. The first shipment of tactical medicine is now arriving for the civilian territorial defenses in Kyiv and Zhytomyr

About WFW: Word for Word Performing Arts Company is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Founded in 1993 by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word believes in the power of the short story to provide solace, compassion, and insight into our daily lives. We bring stories from diverse cultures to our diverse communities, and develop future audiences' love for the printed and spoken word.

In its vibrant history, Word for Word has performed over 70 stories by some of the world's best writers. Many of these stories have been performed in front of the authors themselves. They perform regularly at Z Space and since 1996 have toured annually throughout California and France.

About ARC:The Actors? Reading Collective?s (ARC) mission is to share the artistic, spiritual, and emotional passion uniquely inherent to theater and storytelling. ARC is deeply committed to changing the way BIPOC members are cast, and practice gender and age inclusion to move our mutual humanity forward, to listen to what is needed and to what is lacking. We challenge ourselves to change. When the Pandemic began and theaters shuttered around the world, artists lost voices, identities, and jobs overnight with no hope of potential stage work for the foreseeable future. ARC was born out of a reaction to that sudden silencing and mutual need to tell stories through our mutual love of words, of Theatre and our need to gather and celebrate each other and the craft we love. ARC aims to distill performances down to the simplest, purest form of Theatre: the playwright's words to create a one-time, immediate, and visceral experience. In the deft hands of ARC actors, who hail from across the country, these stories have blossomed to life in unexpected ways, and have captivated those that experience them with their beauty and simplicity.

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