A world of ‘hope and pain’ in refugee’s script
A TEENAGE refugee has used his experience escaping war-torn Ukraine as inspiration for a play.
Alan Tarkil was on the brink of achieving his dreams of becoming an actor at just 16 when war broke out in his homeland.
He had secured a small part in one of the country’s most popular romantic dramas and was just days away from the biggest audition of his life when the first bombs hit Ukraine.
The teen, who had been a regular cast member on a children’s YouTube show, was forced to flee his home near Kyiv. Now settled in Yarm, he has been inspired by his challenging plight, considering himself ‘one of the lucky ones.’
He said the days and weeks after that first bomb were spent mostly in fear. Alan, now 18, described a particular frightening situation just hours after fleeing to a nearby village, when Russian tanks began to roll through the streets.
“I was so close to everything I had been working for, when everything changed in a moment,” he said. “It felt like the beginning and the end of everything.”
Today, he is living with a sponsor family in Yarm, with his mum, sister, and grandfather. He is also studying acting at Stockton Riverside College.
Every day he hears news of family, friends and loved ones back in Ukraine.
He said: “I don’t think that anyone can understand what it is to wake up on a morning waiting for that message to come and to hear the worst.”
Now he has put those experiences, and those of people around him, into a script that is among nine selected from 468 submissions to be read on stage as part of the National Theatre’s New Views Festival. He is hoping his work will honour those lost in the war.
“It feels like a story that needs to be told,” he said. “I used my story as inspiration, but it includes the experiences of lots of other people, those that I have seen and heard from relatives and friends.”
To have the script professionally read on stage, he added: “It feels like the right way to honour all those who have lost their lives.”
Alan was five days away from his biggest audition yet, for a production by the same makers of the series he starred in, Love in Chains, which he described as Ukraine’s answer to Bridgerton, when war broke out.
He explained how days and nights were spent hiding in a bunker, “just an underground fridge really, where you would store potatoes”, with no electricity, light or warm water.
A window of just seven hours ceasefire gave them the opportunity to escape. He recalled up to 20 people, pregnant women, children, and new-born babies, all crammed in one vehicle. When they got to a destroyed bridge, he carried children through the water.
Their journey over the following weeks took the family from Lviv to Poland, Germany, Paris and Spain, before they finally got chance to join a sponsor family in the UK.
“So many people have helped us, and we are so grateful,” he said. “Our sponsors are incredible people.”
Alan said starting college has offered some normality. While he knows it might be better to try to protect himself from the news back home, he can’t help but check his phone.
He said: “People say, now you can live your new life, and at first I thought, yes!
“But now I know you can never forget what happened, I have lost too much to forget, and there are so many people who have lost so much more.
“I hope the war will end soon, and everything will be fine. My script, ‘Snowdrop,’ is my hope and my pain, and the pain of millions of Ukrainians who have lost so much. I feel honoured for that story to be told.”