Before 24 February 2022, Assia Volochina lived in St Petersburg. After the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, she left her country for good. As a symbol of the extent of the catastrophe and the irreversibility of the upheaval, she changed her name to Esther Bol.
Around 50 productions based on her work have been staged in leading theatres in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Moldavia, Israel and Uruguay.
She continues to pursue her artistic activities. In 2023, her play Crime, about Russia's terrible war in Ukraine, was published by L'Espace d'un instant, in French translation by Gilles Morel.
Residence project :
The action of the play L'intensif is to take place during French lessons in a meta-contemporary era.
At the heart of the story are six characters whose pasts are marked by traumatic experiences. Their interactions reveal antagonisms, but also moments of connection and mutual understanding - attempts, all the same. The intention is to explore the unbridgeable gaps, the challenges of assimilation and the perverse torments of collective and individual consciousness: like the nightmare of losing one's homeland and the nightmare of discovering that one's homeland has become an executioner. The plot is fictional, but implicitly inspired by mutilating personal experience.