CINDY MARIE JENKINS (Playwright & Original Director) CINDY MARIE JENKINS is a Freelance Director, Playwright & Educator based in Los Angeles. She acts as Artistic Associate for The Antaeus Company, where she teaches classical theater. Her adaptation of VOICES FROM CHORNOBYL has been produced in different venues around Los Angeles and productions are planned worldwide in April of 2009 to commemorate and raise awareness of the accident. She was invited to be a Key Note Speaker at "Remember Chernobyl," an Annual Networking Conference for UK & Irish Chernobyl Charities, where the Demo premiered and the VFC Anniversary Readings launched.

Recent directing credits include: THE UMBRELLA PROJECT at The Indy Convergence 2009 (co-directed with Robert Negron, Artistic Director), STAGE DOOR (a staged reading at The Antaeus Academy), MONSTERS IN THE CLOSET (a reading at East West Players), VOICES FROM CHORNOBYL: CHRONICLE OF THE FUTURE (various in L.A., Indianapolis), BOY GETS GIRL by Rebecca Gilman at the Attic Theatre, Stephen Sondheim's ASSASSINS with Sight Unseen, JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR by Kitty Felde for Towne Street Theatre, FOE PA:EPISODE 6 performed at the Fountain Theatre, & PHILOKTETES at the Open Fist Theatre. Cindy graduated from NYU's Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and directed many works in New York, including MISSING SOMETHING by Stephen A. Fulchino, ANTIGONE & THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE by Brecht, and THE LAST HOUR by Donald Breckenridge.

Upcoming projects include: The flagship reading of VOICES FROM CHORNOBYL, a special adaptation for DeafWest Theatre and THE TEMPEST with The Menander Theatre Company. She runs an ongoing workshop of MACBETH in Los Angeles, called RE-EX for the re-exploration they do at every meeting.

She was the Dramaturge for TROILUS & CRESSIDA & also assistant ROVER & MEDEA at the Antaeus Company Classics Fest 08. Other dramaturgy includes NATURAL SELECTION with needtheater, JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Karesa McElheny at Knightsbridge Theatre, ANTONY & CLEOPATRA with Odyssey Theatre in Brooklyn, CAFE CANTANTES: LORCA'S POET IN NEW YORK and HAMLET, both directed by Karin Coonrod. New play development includes VENICE: the Musical by G.F. Mlely about the displacement of the homeless in our society, plus NEOPTOLEMUS, MISSING
SOMETHING & EVERYTHING & NOTHING by Stephen A. Fulchino.

She has adapted many stories to the stage, including KING ARTHUR for children. Other playwrighting includes: SAFE HAVEN, THE GREEK CYCLE: ONE TRUE GODS, as well as a collection of short stories and poetry devoted to the tricks that memory plays on us. Cindy is collaborating with musician Stephen GC on THE SONG OF ISADORA, (former title: TEN), a musical challenging one's individual worth in times of war; a workshop production was presented in March 2008, and segments of the play were performed among the Arlington West Vets For Peace Iraq war memorial. She was invited by E.M. Lewis to speak on a panel, the first installment of the War
Plays Project.

Svetlana Alexievich

I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that and finally I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire. Together they record verbally the history of the country, their common history, while each person puts into words the story of his/her own life. Today when man and the world have become so multifaceted and diversified the document in art is becoming increasingly interesting while art as such often proves impotent. The document brings us closer to reality as it captures and preserves the originals. After 20 years of work with documentary material and having written five books on their basis I declare that art has failed to understand many things about people.

But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts, I'm writing a history of human feelings. What people thought, understood and remembered during the event. What they believed in or mistrusted, what illusions, hopes and fears they experienced. This is impossible to imagine or invent, at any rate in such multitude of real details. We quickly forget what we were like ten or twenty or fifty years ago. Sometimes we are ashamed of our past and refuse to believe in what happened to us in actual fact. Art may lie but document never does. Although the document is also a product of someone's will and passion. I compose my books out of thousands of voices, destinies, fragments of our life and being. It took me three-four years to write each of my books. I meet and record my conversations with 500-700 persons for each book. My chronicle embraces several generations. It starts with the memories of people who witnessed the 1917 Revolution, through the wars and Stalinist gulags, and reaches the present times. This is a story of one Soviet-Russian soul.

The Chernobyl Prayer: Chronicles of the Future

After the Chernobyl disaster we are living in a different world. In fact two catastrophes happened at almost the same time - one of cosmic dimension in Chernobyl and the social catastrophe when the huge socialist mainland went under. The second crash overshadowed the first one because it was of more immediate concern to us and more understandable. What happened in Chernobyl was the first such catastrophe and we are the first to experience it. We are now living with it, something is happening to us: the blood formula and the genetic codes change, familiar landscapes disappear. But to fully comprehend what is happening we would need different human experience and a different inner instrument, which does not exist yet.

Our vision and nose do not yet sense the new enemy, one that is coming from the future - radiation. Even our words and feelings are not adjusted to what had happened and our whole experience of suffering, underlying our history, is of little use to us now. Our measure of horror is the same - war. Our consciousness does not move deeper than that, it stands still at the threshold. What happened in Chernobyl is much worse than the gulags and the Holocaust.

It is hard to defend ourselves from the unknown, from what is yet unfamiliar to the humankind. Chernobyl changed our relationship with time. The words "forever" and "never" filled with a different meaning and assumed material form. All our previous notions about large and small catastrophes turned out to be insufficient - man peered into the chasm of the cosmos. We were deprived of immortality at once. Time stopped still on the dead territory and became what it is has always been - eternity.

Some day, our days, the Chernobyl days, will become a myth. New generations will be looking back at us and wonder how it all happened, what sort of people lived then, what they felt and thought, how they related it all and what they remembered.

Man and event - could they be equal? Events related by one person make up his/her own life, but events related by many people make up history.

The history of Chernobyl is still being written. This is a riddle for the 21st century and a challenge to it.