When does the soul die? Which souls are truly dead? Is it only those whose bodies have been killed or perished, or can souls die before the body? Is the death of the soul a one-time, irreversible event? If you harm or kill someone, does it wound your own soul? Can a person be born without a soul?

These are the questions that Nikolai Gogol grappled with more than a century and a half ago. And today, with the war in Ukraine—his homeland and the setting of Dead Souls—these questions demand to be asked again. Following Gogol’s tradition of capturing revealing details in human behavior, surroundings, and clothing, this performance explores the scars that war leaves on both body and soul.

It presents brief portraits of people from a single town—people of different ages, social statuses, and occupations. They pass by us, before us:

One rushes to school, another carries groceries.

One prepares to leave home, another lies sick in bed.

One is in love, eating ice cream.

Someone rides a bicycle; another walks their dog.

We see them all on the same day.
The day they all meet death.

The harrowing images from the war in Ukraine have shocked the world. This performance is built upon visual documentary materials from these events, translating them into movement and imagery on stage. It investigates the language of the body in wartime—attempting to understand what happens to the soul in such an extreme reality.