Artist in Exile: Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s “Signals of Being” (Ukraine)

It is the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Tensions rise as the residents of a small co-op community outside of Kyiv find themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances, surrounded by occupying Russian forces. Pinched between Bucha and Borodianka, cut off from aid, and unable to escape, their attempts at survival rely on connection: a cellphone signal in the forest, their bonds with each other, and, ultimately, new understandings of what it means to be Ukrainian.

These are the circumstances magical postmodernist Volodymyr Rafeyenko places us in as his latest work, Signals of Being: A Play in Three Acts, is brought to life this March on the Alphabet City stage. Volodymyr is one of Ukraine’s most notable novelists. Weaving Shakespeare with both Ukrainian literary classics and contemporary works, Signals of Being stages a captivating dramatic interpretation of a country at war. This program features a three-person staged reading of the play, as well as a conversation between Volodymyr and his literary translator, Mark Andryczyk. 

The performance will be followed by a public reception with complimentary wine and snacks for all attendees and artists. 

You can purchase a copy of Volodymyr’s book, Signals of Being, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

Featured Artists:

Clare Drobot: director

Martin Giles as Danylo

Joseph McGranaghan as Vasia

Kelsey Robinson as Mariia

About the Author:

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary and film critic from Kyiv, Ukraine. He graduated from Donetsk University with a degree in Russian philology and culture studies. From 1992 to 2018, he wrote his works in Russian, was mainly published in Russia, and was considered a representative of Russian literature. Following the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Volodymyr left Donetsk and moved to a town near Kyiv. There, he wrote Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, his first novel in the Ukrainian language, which was shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize—Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Volodymyr learned Ukrainian from scratch and has dedicated himself to speaking Ukrainian, rather than Russian, his mother tongue, as an act of resistance and perseverance. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book (1999) and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days (2017). Volodymyr’s prose is full of phantasmagorical images and storylines, as well as explicit and implicit allusions to well-known texts. He is sometimes called the “magical postmodernist” due to the intertextuality and richness of his prose. He is a Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and a Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum with his wife, Olesia Rafeyenko, since June 2023.

About the Translator:

Mark Andryczyk administers the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and teaches Ukrainian literature at its Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He has a PhD in Ukrainian Literature from the University of Toronto (2005). His monograph The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2012. Andryczyk is editor, compiler, and a translator of The White Chalk of Days, the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2017)—republished by Penguin in 2022 as Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965. He has translated eleven essays by Yuri Andrukhovych for the award-winning publication My Final Territory: Selected Essays (University of Toronto Press, 2018). He is the translator of Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2022) and the editor, compiler, and a translator of Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War (Penguin, 2023). His most recent translations are Taras Prokhasko’s Earth Gods: Writings from Before the War (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2025), for which he was one of three co-translators, and Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s Signals of Being or Berbum Caro Factum Est (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2025).

About the Featured Artists:

Clare Drobot is the Artistic Director at City Theatre Company and has been a member of the company’s artistic leadership since the fall of 2021. She joined the theater’s staff in 2015, serving as the Director of New Play Development, then as Associate Artistic Director, and later as Co-Artistic Director. A dramaturg, playwright, and producer, Clare has worked in various capacities at Premiere Stages at Kean University, Laura Stanczyk Casting, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The McCarter Theatre, The BE Company, Play Penn, and New Dramatists. Her credits as a playwright include work showcased in Ars Nova’s ANT FEST and through the New Hazlett Theatre’s CSA Series, among others. She has dramaturged and developed work with Stephen Belber, Liza Birkenmeier, Jill Sobule, Chisa Hutchinson, Matt Schatz, Anna Ziegler, and many more writers and directors. She serves on the boards of the National New Play Network and Brew House Arts and is a member of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s Generations Speakers program. She was a member of the inaugural Global Fellows Cohort through the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh (LP XXXVIII). BA/BFA Carnegie Mellon University, member of LMDA.

Martin Giles is a Pittsburgh-based actor of long and various experience.  His most recent work includes An Enemy of the People,  Trouble in Mind, and Murder on the Orient Express at Pittsburgh Public Theater;  Scenes From an Execution at Quantum  Theatre; Endgame at PICT; and his own one-man comedy, Bar Joke Tales, which began at City Theatre’s Momentum Festival, and which he’s performed for the past two seasons at the Rochester Fringe Festival.  He has also taught acting and directing at Carnegie Mellon University, Point Park University, and Ohio University.

Joseph McGranaghan is a Pittsburgh-based artist and educator. Recent acting credits include A Sherlock Carol with Kinetic Theatre, Enron (Quantum Theatre), Art of Wise (Pittsburgh Playwrights), and Trouble in Mind (Pittsburgh Public Theatre). Education: University of Pittsburgh and FSU/ Asolo Conservatory. Joseph teaches at Point Park University and The Center for Theatre Arts.

Kelsey Jumper Robinson is a Brooklyn-Pittsburgh hybrid. She studied musical theater at Point Park University before a decade in NYC collaborating on new musical development and nationally touring puppet theater. Since her 2017 return to Pittsburgh, Kelsey has joined ensembles with Pittsburgh Public Theater, Bricolage Production Company, Quantum Theatre, Pittsburgh CLO, PICT, Carnegie Mellon Drama, Barebones Productions, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She has been fortunate to hold residencies with the Kelly Strayhorn Theater and Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, as well as a commission by/and events curation for the Carnegie Museum of Art.  She plays regularly with André Costello, Timbeleza, Colter Harper, Pittsburgh Honky Tonk, and studio project: Watererer. Kelsey has played on internationally acclaimed stages, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, The Studio Museum of Harlem, MOMA, and The Shed. And she is always elated to return to City of Asylum, where she’s worked with Oliver Lake and Attack Theater on Stoop Is a Verb, and played in concert with global fusion artists including AfroYaqui Music Collective and Samuel Boateng. 

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is closed on Tuesdays.