There are more than 400 theaters in Ukraine, a nation of 44 million people with its own language, history and culture — which is currently under attack by the Russian military.

The Odessa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater is the oldest existing theater building,  completed in 1887, but opera and ballet houses exist as well in Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro.  

According to the Ukrainian Institute, among the main modern theaters in Kyiv are Theatre on Podol, , Kyiv National Academic Molodyy Theatre and  Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre, which had planned a full calendar of Ukrainian plays (such as “Luckless” by Ivan Karpenko-Kary) as well as international plays, from A Streetcar Named Desire , All My Sons and Richard III to Lars Noren’s War, about a country ravaged by war and ethnic cleansing.