With Men at the Front, Ukrainian Theater’s Actresses Are Stepping into Every Role

In the dressing room of the Chernihiv Youth Theater, Ruslana Ostapko draws on a dark mustache and wears a man’s suit. She’s about to perform Hetman, a historical drama, one of many productions she has taken part in over her 25-year career at the theater.

“This isn’t my first male role,” Ruslana told me. “I’ve played a Georgian character, even a demon. But back then, it was usually meant to be funny.”

Now, her roles are more serious. In Hetman, she’s joined by eight other women — all playing male characters.

“It feels completely different now,” she says. “We’re not mimicking or mocking men. We’re trying to embody them with honesty. We’re still women, but it’s like each of us has developed a kind of masculine core.”

Many of the theater’s male actors are currently serving in the military, so women have taken on their roles. For Ruslana, this shift carries a larger meaning:

“Since 2022, women have been stepping into traditionally male roles everywhere, not just in the theater. So many men have gone to war. That’s the reality we live in.”

Chernihiv was one of the first Ukrainian cities to experience Russia’s full-scale occupation in 2022. The city was surrounded and shelled heavily in the early weeks of the invasion. “We were all here,” Ruslana remembers.

More than a year later, in August 2023, the city was hit again. On August 19, a Russian Iskander missile struck the Chernihiv Drama Theater during preparations for the 98th season. The missile tore through the roof, shattered windows, and damaged the theater’s grand chandelier.

Despite the destruction, rehearsals resumed just two days later, theater's general director Serhiy Moisienko told Suspilne Chernihiv.

The Chernihiv Youth Theater, where Ruslana works, has never stopped either.

“We help however we’re able,” Ruslana told me. “We raise money, we weave camouflage nets, we visit soldiers in hospitals to lift their spirits at least for a moment.”

When she becomes him

The play Hetman centers on Ivan Mazepa, a military leader in 18th-century Ukraine, who famously broke with Russia and allied with Sweden in the hope of securing Ukrainian sovereignty. 

“This plot resonates deeply with what we’re living through,” Ruslana says. “It’s not just about history anymore. It’s about now.”

Portraying a male character requires more than just putting on a costume. Ruslana says that one of the biggest challenges is adjusting her physicality.

“I focus on body movement more than voice,” she explains. “My voice is already quite low; I’ve had a deep alto since childhood. But the way a man moves… That’s harder to get right.”

She describes the complexity of stepping out of her own femininity: 

“You can’t erase your womanhood. It stays with you. Understanding masculine energy… it takes real attention. They say women observe men more than men observe women, but still, it's delicate. You don’t want it to be mannered.”

The play’s director, Roman Pokrovsky, has guided the cast closely in this transformation. 

“He rehearses with us, shows us how to move,” Ruslana says. “You take in what he shows, then make it your own.”

When he becomes her — and then goes to war

In most wartime productions, women step into male roles out of necessity. But what happens when the transformation must go the other way, when a male actor becomes a woman, and then is mobilized?

This is the question faced by director and actress Olena Krylova from the First Theater in Lviv — a city in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border, once thought to be relatively shielded from the frontlines. Yet the war reaches every city and village.

Her production, The Angel’s Wings, was a delicate piece inspired by Japanese kabuki and based on Yasunari Kawabata’s Elegy, a poetic meditation on betrayal, forgiveness, and feminine grief.

“Dmytro Bratkov, a wonderful actor with a truly gentle soul, was the heart of the show,” Olena told me. “He played a geisha, a woman who helps the main heroine come to terms with betrayal. He helped her forgive and let go.”

But when Dmytro was called to serve, The Angel’s Wings was put on hold. “It’s a beautiful play, but we can’t do it without him. It simply doesn’t work,” Olena says with quiet sorrow. 

“There are so many shows we’ve had to pause, simply because the actors are now at war.”

Once, when a local philosophy school requested a lecture on Japanese theater, Olena decided to perform the piece herself.

“But it wasn’t the same,” she says. “The essence of the play lies in watching a man explore womanhood. There’s something special that happens when a man tempers his masculinity to embody softness. It’s hard to recreate from the other side.”

Not just on stage

Theaters don’t just reflect culture. They become mirrors of social change.

“Right now,” says Olena, “there’s less division between what is considered masculine or feminine. I believe that will continue even after the war. Performances will focus less on gender and more on essence.”

The transformation reaches far beyond the stage. With large numbers of men having been mobilized, women have taken on roles once seen as exclusively male. 

Women made up 38% of new hires in construction in 2023, nearly doubling the rate from 2021, and 49% in extractive industries, up 22%, according to the State Employment Service and reporting by Ekonomichna Pravda. More than 25,000 women retrained for technical jobs such as welding, tram driving, or machinery operation. Overall, 66% of newly employed Ukrainians last year were women.

The military also reflects this transformation: as of 2024, more than 67,000 women serve in Ukraine’s Armed Forces, with over 10,000 deployed in combat roles, Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported.

These changes are gradually reshaping gender roles across the country. 

“Women are at the forefront of this war. Courage has no gender,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during her acceptance speech in Oslo in 2022. “In the Russian world, women are confined to certain roles. We are showing something different. Our daughters should never have to prove they are human.”

Donate to Demine Schools, Forests and Hospitals in Ukraine

Help clear 3 Ukrainian regions from Russian explosive ordnance.

Completed