Neda Nezhdana

Neda Nezhdana is one of Ukraine's leading playwrights, theatremakers, poets and translators. She is the author of more than two dozen original plays, including The Suicide of Loneliness and When the Rain Returns, as well as severl adaptations and two collections of poetry.

Born in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, she lives in Kyiv. She has led the department of dramatic projects in Les Kurbas National Centre for Theatre Arts for fifteen years, founded the Kyiv independent theatre MIST and is Chairman of the Confederation of Playwrights of Ukraine.

Her plays such as Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, He Opens the Door, and Lost In the Fog have become potent symbols of Ukraine's battle for independent existence. One of her most celebrated plays is the culture-defining semi-documentary drama Maidan Inferno about the pivotal events of the Maidan of 2014. It has been performed in France as well as across Ukraine. Her work has been seen in most cities in Ukraine, and in Belarus, Poland, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, Estonia, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, France, Turkey, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Romania, Australia and Iraq. Her play Ovetka@ua received its wartime premieres in Uzhhorod and Poltava in 2022, while The Closed Sky is an epic drama based on four women's true stories from the Russian attacks on Mariupol in spring 2022.