Balance is a brutally honest and darkly humorous monologue drawn from the lived experience of a Ukrainian combat medic serving on the front lines of the war. The narrator reflects on her childhood as an outsider who learned early how to maintain emotional equilibrium in hostile environments; a lesson that becomes essential years later when she enlists after Russia’s full-scale invasion. As the play moves between past and present, moments of mundane civilian life collide with the surreal realities of war: evacuating wounded soldiers, packing bodies for transport, arguing with comrades during shelling, and navigating the strange normalcy of coffee, markets, and social media just miles from the front. Interspersed with ironic “self-soothing exercises” for managing stress, the play reveals the psychological mechanisms soldiers develop to survive trauma. Through sharp storytelling, gallows humor, and devastating emotional turns, Balance becomes a portrait of resilience and dissociation – examining how a person maintains their humanity while working daily in the shadow of death.

Alina Sarnatska is a Ukrainian playwright and war veteran. Her plays explore how war reshapes everyday life, intimacy, and women’s experiences. They have been staged at the Theatre of 
Playwrights in Kyiv, the Molodyi Theatre in Kyiv, and the Lesya Ukrainka Theatre in Lviv.

Before the full-scale invasion, she worked as a social worker and researcher. In 2022, she joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a combat medic.

Alina was one of 18 Fellows in the 2026 Resilient Futures Fellowship. The programme brings together changemakers from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine to strengthen democratic resilience across the region.
In 2025, she was a Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. That same year, she received a fellowship from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and PEN Ukraine for her forthcoming book.
She is the founder of Teplonosiї, a volunteer care network for wounded soldiers that has been active since 2022. She holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Social Work, and a PhD in Social Work focused on safety and empowerment for women vulnerable to gender-based violence.

Director: S. Dylan Zwickel
S. Dylan Zwickel (she/her) is an NYC- and London-based writer and director. Her plays and musicals have been Finalists or Semifinalists for the Princess Grace Award, the Blue Ink Award, the Parity Development Award, the O’Neill, and more. As a director, she has worked on everything from workshops of new plays and musicals to large scale immersive experiences and assisted multiple Tony-nominated directors. She holds an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU (Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program) and is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the TedxBroadway Young Professionals Cohort.

Stage Manager: Madison Figueroa-Diaz

Cast: Marissa Ruben