The Lift Manager — a tragicomedy based on the real-life stories of servicemen undergoing rehabilitation at the UNBROKEN Centre — took place on stage at the First Theatre in Lviv.

The plot depicts everyday life at the rehabilitation centre, its rhythm and the warmth of the relationships between the people who are recovering and working there. All chance and non-chance encounters take place in the lift. It travels between floors alongside the Manager, who has turned the space into his own business venture and charges for the ride. Although there is one exception, which the audience will discover during the premiere.

The play features soldiers recovering at UNBROKEN, alongside their families and the Centre’s social workers. Among them is soldier Denys Monastyrskyi, who takes on more than three roles in the production. During his rehabilitation, he discovered theatre — not merely as a leisure activity, but as a tool for self-expression and recovery.

“Theatre helps me return to society without fear of expressing my emotions, without withdrawing into myself, and to live life even within the walls of the rehabilitation centre,” says Denys.

The play tackles important and complex themes with humour: human relationships, the path to recovery, and the search for one’s identity in the wake of the war experience. Director Svitlana Fedeshova is working to ensure that its messages are heard.

“The overarching theme of the play is the reintegration of veterans. To me, it looks like a sort of ‘corridor between carriages’: to move on, you need to make a series of decisions, go through additional trials and find a new home. The war has brought about changes, and no one will ever be the same again — everything is changing, and these changes are palpable,” the artist shares.

The work was written as part of the ‘Theatre of the Unbreakable’ artistic initiative, which operates at the UNBROKEN Centre. Its authors are playwright Iryna Harets and the defenders Philip Khvorostyankin, Ruslan Pryhoda and Roman Onuchko, whose story formed the basis of the plot. The play eventually evolved into a full-scale production, as the theatre offers servicemen more opportunities for self-expression: acting, composing and performing music, and exploring artistic solutions.

“If my colleagues and I have given people undergoing rehabilitation the chance to feel like an actor or a playwright and to spend their free time in a meaningful way, that in itself is a success. If this helps even one person to step back from their trauma, come to terms with it and start working through it, that’s a good thing, because it’s the path to recovery,” says the playwright.

The project was implemented in partnership with the Yabko network.

UNBROKEN Theatre is an artistic theatre initiative in Lviv at the UNBROKEN Centre, which helps veterans and military personnel to recover through drama and acting.