A Suitcase Full of Memories
In their current History Competition framework, "Soviet Past: Rethinking History", the Ukrainian project team conducted several workshops for teachers. Apart from classical workshop elements, the organisers, for the very first time, used a special, creative approach in order to allow the participants to step back into the different time of the Soviet era. Within the practise of immersive theatre methods, an old suitcase and several letters played an important part and triggered the debate.
The song "I still have a suitcase in Berlin," by a well-known German chanson singer, is about leaving something behind - not only things like her suitcase but also a certain part of herself, experiences and memories she will never forget. The participants of the teacher workshops in Kiev also dealt with a suitcase filled with mainly immaterial items – not from a person but from a bygone era, recalling both common and very individual memories.
Before gathering for the two-day workshop in Kiev, organised by the NGO “NOVA DOBA” and DVV International Ukraine, history teachers from all over the country had to fulfil a special task. They were to find a person in their neighbourhood, old enough to have witnessed the Soviet era, and to ask this person to write a short letter about their Soviet past – about happy and unhappy memories, things they miss and don't miss, about experiences inseparably linked to a time not that long ago, but irretrievably gone. In case the teachers themselves had memories of the Soviet past, they were asked to write the letters themselves. Each letter was to conclude with an easy task and to be accompanied by a small gift and brought to the workshop. There, on-site in a theatre, all letters were collected and put into an old suitcase. Afterwards the lights were turned off, and a spotlight came on. In this theatric, solemn atmosphere, each participant was asked to go to the suitcase in the centre, pick up a letter and a gift and step into the light to read the letter out loud.
“A whirlpool of emotions”
It was an exercise which was accompanied by a mixture of different intense feelings, as Natalia Dzhanova from the city of Melitopol reported afterwards: ”I kept worrying: Will I be able to decipher someone else's handwriting? Will I be able to convey the emotion of the letter's author correctly? (…) Gradually, worrying subsides and you begin to listen carefully to someone else's letter, begin to remember your own, find parallels, the bright moments, reminding you of some long-gone personal experiences, appear before you and the main thing now is to restrain yourself from shouting something out… You are completely immersed in that moment! The epoch appears before you from different angles, different regions. When other people read your letter – worrying and excitement again! And then a joint exercise and a whirlpool of emotions.”
Natalia Hrytsenko from Cherkasy had similar experiences and offered some insights into her thoughts and feelings after the task: “The cozy hall, the darkness, the spotlight rays snatching the actor from it, the stern voice of the host announcing the rules of the game – all exactly as in a theatre, when you are a spectator. But this time you are alone on the stage, living someone else's life, getting filled with other people's emotions, not noticing when they become your own, because these emotions are about your life, too, about your childhood or youth. (…) The immersive theatre we participated in allowed us to return to the past, to remember the happy and miserable Soviet everyday life, to exchange emotions with others, to see this time from a different angle, and finally to discuss its controversies.”
Oksana Saviak from Zbarazh added that she already plans to use the immersive theatre method in school with her pupils: “Immersive theatre is an opportunity not only to immerse oneself in a historical event to better understand its meaning, but also to feel like you are actually in the historical epoch in question. I am a very emotional person, my students always understand better all the features of a historical phenomenon when I not only explain the material, but also give some examples close to them. (…) I think such a tool is absolutely necessary in history teaching.”
“The past is complicated and different people commemorate it in different ways”
Andrii Fert, project manager of DVV International Ukraine, appreciates this initiative although it was not the main goal the organisers had in mind when coming up with the immersive theatre idea: “We encourage the teachers to use this approach with their pupils in their history lessons. We will collect all those letters that participants read in the theatre and forward them to the teachers as a sort of casebook to organise such “immersive theatres” in their schools if they wish. But the goal was not this, the goal was to use this creative method during the workshop to convey the idea that the past, especially the Soviet past, is complicated and different people commemorate it in different ways – this idea, as we believe, is essential for the successful research and preparation of the competition’s entries.”
Having discovered a new access to their own past and being sensitised to history's multi-perspectivity, the teachers are now prepared to work with their pupils on the Soviet era and support their research and participation in the history competition. By 1 March 2022, all contributions must be submitted. In Ukraine, all pupils between the ages of 14 and 18 are allowed and encouraged to participate in the competition.