Join the third edition of Script Secrets, ETC’s online talk series offering a window into the minds of some of today’s most exciting European playwrights.

This special session will feature playwrights Andrii Bondarenko (Lesia Ukrainka Theatre) and Tomáš Ráliš (National Theatre Prague), who are the recipients of the ETC Drama Committee 2026 selection, with the following plays:

• ‘The Apparitions of Brody’ (2024) by Andrii Bondarenko – Lesia Ukrainka Theatre (Ukraine/Lviv)
• ‘Ophelia OnlyFans’ (2025) by Tomáš Ráliš - National Theatre Prague (Czech Republic/Prague)

In this online session, open to everyone, they will present their plays and reflect on the driving themes, questions and creative process behind their work.

The session will feature:

• How playwrights build worlds and characters on the page
• The inspirations, histories, and contemporary contexts informing their work
• The thematic links between individual and collective experience in their plays
• The journey from local story to European stage

The Apparitions of Brody (2024)

Andrii Bondarenko
Lesia Ukrainka Theatre (Ukraine/Lviv)

In the Demchynskyi family —consisting of father, mother, daughter, and son — a ghost appears. The devout and proper family is convinced that the ghost is their son Vasylko, who died of illness and has now returned from another world to visit his loved ones. They consider him part of the family and do everything they can to protect him.

This unusual event — the appearance of a ghost — attracts a commission of exorcists from Lviv: Dr. Kostelnyk and Dr. Dorozhynskyi. These are respectable gentlemen who try to fit the ghost Vasylko into their own understanding of mystical phenomena, and even hope to profit from it, disregarding the family’s desire to keep the ghost, so to speak, for their private use.

For the story, the author draws on a real event that took place in the small town of Brody in Galicia, modern-day western Ukraine. The play captures the warmth of family life, the taste of homemade dishes, and the quiet rhythm of daily routines. Threaded through this local authenticity is a gentle, luminous sorrow, as the family lives through the tragic loss of their eldest son.

"A poetic touching portrayal of events that one can associate well with a social and psychological struggle many families in Ukraine and beyond have to face."

The ETC Drama Committee appreciated how the play resonates far beyond its immediate setting, where the confined space becomes a microcosm through which broader social, political, and temporal tensions are reflected. By blending elements of magical motifs with techniques of documentary theatre, the play creates a layered reality. 

Ophelia OnlyFans (2025)

Tomáš Ráliš
National Theatre Prague (Czech Republic/Prague)

This family is finished. Ophelia is not a daddy’s girl anymore. The name’s Philly. She doesn’t have time for this shit. Stop grieving. Start living. Grow up. This is one big psychoanalytical horror, I’m telling you. This family should be destroyed. Philly needs to hear the truth about what happened. But all she can hear is deafening silence. Because we don’t talk about these things at home. The only thing that breaks the deadly silence is the beats from Denmark’s best night club, ELSE I SNORE. That’s where DJ Philly plays her final set. What is the correct BPM of sorrow? Who will stay by her side until the bitter end? Ophelia for fans only. Parental advisory: explicit content.

Ophelia OnlyFans, darkly satirical reimagining of Hamlet’s world, set against the pulsing beats of Denmark’s hottest nightclub. When Philly’s mother Ophelia dies under suspicious circumstances, Philly, a visionary DJ, suspects foul play. Her father, Polonius (Pols), a high- ranking politician, harbours secrets that the relentless Moles Brothers are determined to unearth. They won’t stop digging for kompromat that could topple the elite.

Ophelia OnlyFans is a tale of power, voyeurism, and the cost of reinvention—and all this may just end in tears.

The ETC Drama Committee highlighted the humorous approach to an original rewriting of Hamlet for or about youngsters of now, adding that "the language, topics of conversation, and background stories of the characters fully convince that this work could inspire throughout Europe".

Learn more about the ETC Drama Committee

^{Cover photo: Ophelia OnlyFans, Patrik Borecký}