Natalia Blok

Natalia Blok, born in Kherson in 1980, is a playwright, screenwriter and director. She studied theater directing at the Kherson School of Culture. She has won several awards for her writing, including at the Ukrainian festival Tizhden Actual Play. She has also repeatedly appeared on shortlists of prestigious national and international competitions, such as Week of Current Play, Batumi Monoplay Festival and Drama UA. In 2020, she was a finalist in the international competition of the Ukrayinsʹkyy instytut, which has been presenting Ukrainian language and culture to the world since 2017. Her plays have so far been translated into Polish, Georgian, German and Russian. Since 2019 she has been curating the short list "Tizhden Drib" of the Tizhden Actual Play competition. In 2021, she participated in the creation of teatr dramaturgiv in Kyiv. Blokis also a film director, such as most recently for the documentary «Wave Cutters», for which she also wrote the screenplay. As a screenwriter, she is a multiple winner of the Pitching State Cinema of Ukraine competition.

She lived in Kyiv from 2020 until March 2022, when she had to flee to Warsaw. In April 2022, she staged her play «Through the Skin» with Polish and Ukrainian actors at the Warsaw Drama Theater. In the meantime, she received «protection status S» in Switzerland. Since May 2022, she has been writing a weekly column for the national Swiss weekly WOZ, in which she describes her impressions and experiences as a refugee. Her texts are read as part of the «Feeling of War» project, in which 21 theaters from German-speaking countries, including the Residenztheater, are participating. In 2023, her play «Das Leben ist unaufhaltsam» (Life is unstoppable) premiered at the Basel Theatre in a production by Peter Kastenmüller. Further premieres took place at the Theatre of Playwrights in Ukraine, which she co-founded, and the Vaba Lava Theatre.