Italian performer and writer Elena Arvigo brings her show Atomic Tales (adapted from Voices from Chernobyl) back to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.
“A hymn to life in the darkest moments – 26 April 1986: Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes in Ukraine. This intimate performance explores the deeply human side of the tragedy – not a reconstruction of events, but of emotions through the memories of Lyudmila, the wife of a firefighter. Her words are drawn from Prayer for Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. Performed by one of Italy’s most intense stage actresses, Elena Arvigo.”
Where: Playground 1 at ZOO Playground
When: 7-30 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/atomic-tales
What can you tell us about your show? What is it about and where did the idea come from?
Atomic Tales is based on Voices from Chernobyl by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. It is a vast archive of testimonies, a polyphony of voices collected in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986. It is a choral work in which History emerges through the small, personal stories of those who lived through it.
In many ways, its structure has always reminded me of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. There is no single protagonist; instead, a multitude of people gradually come together to form the portrait of a community. If Spoon River gives voice to a community after death, Alexievich gathers the voices of men and women who survived one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century and are still searching for a language with which to tell it.
For this Edinburgh Fringe production, my dramaturgical choice was to focus on just one of those voices: Lyudmila Ignatenko, the wife of one of the firefighters who responded to the explosion on the very first night. Her testimony alone became a fifty-five-minute performance. Among all the voices collected by Alexievich, I chose Lyudmila’s because I felt that her story alone contained all the tenderness, the pain, and the complexity of that tragedy.
But this is not really a play about Chernobyl. It is not intended as a documentary or an historical reconstruction. Nor is it a play about war or nuclear disaster. It is a play about love. Alexievich’s book opens with the words:”I don’t know whether to tell you about love or about death. Perhaps they are the same thing.” Lyudmila’s story begins with that sentence. To me, those words contain the deepest meaning of the entire work.
What interested me was not the historical event itself, but seeing it through the eyes of one woman. I wanted to understand what happens to human feeling when History suddenly erupts into everyday life. What remains of our humanity when everything else collapses? That question has accompanied me for many years, and it is, in many ways, the question from which this performance was born.
I wouldn’t describe it as an idea in the traditional sense, or as an isolated moment of inspiration. It was the result of a much longer artistic journey. The need to bring Voices from Chernobyl to the stage grew out of an earlier production, Woman Not Re-educated by Stefano Massini, based on the writings of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. That production marked the beginning of a wider project, The Unforgivable Women: Women and War, which has gradually grown into a cycle of seven performances. Among them are The War: A Memoir by Marguerite Duras, Helen and Ismene by Yannis Ritsos, and, more recently, Notes for the Future.
Although they are set in very different historical and cultural contexts, they all explore the relationship between the violence of History and human experience through women’s perspectives. During the 2016 run of Woman Not Re-educated, marking the tenth anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s assassination, we organised a series of events alongside the performances: short films, discussions and an open mic where audiences and artists read texts by other writers.
It was there that I first encountered the writing of Svetlana Alexievich, who had recently been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among the books I discovered was The Unwomanly Face of War, which many years later would inspire my latest production, Notes for the Future, premiered in 2025. What struck me immediately—and what I recognised as deeply connected to
Anna Politkovskaya’s work—was her way of telling History: not through major events, politics, or questions of right and wrong, but through the voices of ordinary people.
When I finally read Voices from Chernobyl, it felt like the natural continuation of a journey I had already begun.
How would you sell it to audiences in one paragraph?
Rather than inviting people to see a show, I’d like to invite them to spend an hour with Lyudmila. To listen to the story of an ordinary woman whose life was suddenly transformed by one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century. Perhaps, by listening to her, we can realise that History is never something that happens only to other people. Theatre gives us the chance to pause, to listen, and to reflect. And reflection doesn’t mean sadness or heaviness; it means discovering the poetry of reality, and recognising ourselves in the lives of others.
Do you enjoy participating in the Fringe, and do you have any moments you particularly remember?
The Edinburgh Fringe is a unique experience. For better or for worse. There really isn’t anything quite like it. I’d wanted to come for many years. I’ve been doing this job for almost thirty years and, for one reason or another, I’d never managed to make it here. It always felt like one of those journeys that, if you work in theatre, you simply have to make at least once. A bit like performing at the Greek Theatre in Syracuse.
I also think it’s a very different experience depending on your age and where you are in your life. For me, more than being fun, it was fascinating to discover there is truly everything: wonderful shows, less wonderful ones, artists of every kind, extraordinary clowns. It’s a jungle. And everyone arrives carrying their own dreams and hopes. People.
My strongest memory, though, is from those first few days. I arrived completely unprepared and hadn’t even managed to fully memorise the English version of the text. But I knew the play intimately in Italian, having adapted it myself. So, on opening night, I walked on stage—as the technician who had travelled with me from Italy jokingly said—like a kamikaze.
I had a few pages with me, some parts I knew by heart, others I translated almost simultaneously as I was performing. And in the most emotional moments I almost instinctively slipped back into Italian: when Lyudmila called her husband, when she cried, when she sang. Then there was a moment of complete silence. A beautiful silence. I suddenly realised that, despite everything, the story was reaching the audience. I could see people moved, their eyes filling with tears.
And I remember thinking: “It’s arrived. The story has arrived.” Despite me. Despite the fact that I was almost improvising. It was an extraordinary moment. It reminded me that there is something in theatre that passes from the stage to the audience, something that doesn’t depend only on words. Many years ago, the director Alvis Hermanis, with whom I had worked, once told me: “When actors are truthful, I can feel it, even if I don’t understand the language.” I think he was absolutely right.
Then there were so many other wonderful memories: Maggie, who welcomed us with extraordinary generosity, the conversations with audiences after the performances, the city itself. It was all very special. Very exhausting, but very special. I don’t know if I’d simply call it “wonderful”. I’d call it something much rarer: a strange, unforgettable experience.
What are you looking forward to the most in Edinburgh?
What I’m looking forward to the most is, strangely enough, that feeling of fear !!!! I think there’s something slightly crazy about going back to a place like the Fringe. Last year went well. I could easily have stayed at home..why not? I have a very chaotic life ….. and yet here I am again. It’s again a risk ….Because the fact that last year went well means absolutely nothing. There are simply too many variables.
This year, for example, we’re performing in a slightly bigger venue. So yes, I’m actually looking forward to feeling that fear again—that sensation of stepping into the unknown. And of course I’m also looking forward to telling this story again. Everyday life is incredibly complicated; we’re constantly swallowed up by a thousand different things. Going back to Edinburgh is also a way of reconnecting, at least for a month, with the essence of what I do, of rediscovering that sense of beginning.
In my own country, this is my profession. I know the theatres, I know the people, I know the system. Edinburgh is different. I am a number, but it’s real every day. I want to say that this is a particularly difficult time for many artists working in Italy. Simply changing the air for a while, meeting an international audience and experiencing different ways of making theatre feels incredibly valuable to me.
And then there’s the audience. Having them so close, in such small, intimate venues, is almost a cathartic experience. Perhaps that’s the real magic of the Fringe. It completely takes over your life for a month. It exhausts you. It constantly pushes you to your limits. And yet, once it’s over, all you want is to come back.
I honestly think the Fringe gives you a kind of Stockholm syndrome: you end up falling in love with the very place and experience that has completely held you captive for an entire month.
What’s next for the show?
To talk about the future of Atomic Tales, I think it’s important to say a few words about its past, simply to put it into context. The production premiered in Italy in 2017 and has had a remarkably successful journey. It has been performed more than 350 times, received several important awards, and has continued to evolve over the years. The Italian version runs for almost two hours and includes additional testimonies from Voices from Chernobyl, as well as the testimony of a Nagasaki survivor based on the writings of Kyoko Hayashi. In recent years, I have also shared part of this artistic journey with the wonderful singer and actress Monica Santoro.
In Italy, I feel that this production has now completed much of its journey. It still returns to the stage from time to time, but my research on women and war has continued along two different paths. One is Notes for the Future, which continues my work on Svetlana Alexievich and women in war. The other is my ongoing exploration of the poetic works of Yannis Ritsos, particularly the texts he wrote during the years of the Greek military dictatorship.
And that is precisely why I am in Edinburgh. Because I would love Atomic Tales to continue travelling. I would love it to move beyond Italy, to meet different audiences, to be performed at other festivals and in other countries. Today, more than ever, I feel we need to listen to the human consequences of these reckless decisions. Beyond politics, ideologies and propaganda, it is always ordinary people who pay the price.
I want to keep telling, through their voices, what war and great human catastrophes really are. How devastating they are. How profoundly absurd they are. Because these stories do not belong to the past. They are still our present. When I chose the title Notes for the Future, it almost sounded like a paradox. But they really were notes for the future. The same is true of Voices from Chernobyl. These are stories that ask just one simple thing of us: Keep our eyes open.
And, if I may paraphrase the great singer-songwriter from my hometown of Genoa, Fabrizio De André: don’t be afraid of people. Be afraid of power.