John Edward Freedman
John Edward Freedman (born June 18, 1954) is an American writer, theater critic, and literary translator whose work has introduced Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian playwrights to a global audience.
After 30 years in Moscow, he left Russia in 2018 due to the deteriorating political situation, and relocated to Greece, where he continued his literary activity and began making experimental films with his wife Oksana Mysina.
Freedman was born in Victorville, CA, and raised in the nearby cities of Apple Valley, and Claremont.
He played one season of minor league baseball, Class A, for the Tri-Cities Ports in Kennewick, WA in 1974.
A year later the newsletter was rebranded as Russia's first English-language daily, The Moscow Times, for which Freedman wrote through 2015.
“I found myself writing the history of contemporary Russian theatre for an English-language audience, and I began to take it seriously very quickly… A clear picture of what was happening at the time still arises out of what I wrote.”[2] During this period he also co-wrote, edited and translated a dozen books on the topic of Russian theater and drama - contributing more than 100 translations of dramatic works by Russian writers and more than 100 articles and essays to anthologies, books, encyclopedias, and periodicals including The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, American Theatre, Opera News, TheatreForum and The Stage (UK).
Other activity in this period: In 2015 Freedman began work as supervisor of English for the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, continuing to be recognized as “a prominent theater critic...active in Moscow's theatrical community.”[6] Freedman and his wife Oksana Mysina left Moscow for Chania, Greece, in 2018, although he continued to work for the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre through 2022.
When Oksana began speaking out against the war in Ukraine in 2014, it had immediate repercussions on her career.
We reached a point where we realized that, by staying in Moscow, we were not only condoning the creeping madness around us, which was bad enough, but we were also letting its poison seep into us.”[7] During the 2020-21 Belarusian protests, Freedman teamed with Belarusian playwright Andrei Kureichik to create the Insulted.
Often working closely with what CITD called the Ukrainian Hope Initiative (UHI) into early 2024, WUPR helped raise money for Ukrainian writers and cultural charities, while curating the translation of 160 texts by 60 different writers, and organizing over 660 readings, productions, performances, videos, films, and installations across in over 30 countries.
[13] Freedman compiled and edited the anthology, A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights (Laertes, 2023),[14] which placed 21st in the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph's list of the 50 best books of 2023.
[17] “After over 40 years as a scholar, researcher, and translator of Russian themes, I am completely committed to Ukraine and Ukrainian drama and theater, continuing with some of my efforts in Belarusian drama.” Since relocating to Greece, Freedman and Mysina – through their Free Flight Films production company – have made a series of award-winning short and feature-length films[18][19][20][21][22][23][24] that combine aspects of documentary and narrative film styles.
[14][33] God's Gift, translation and adaptation of a Christmas poem for children by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in a limited, non-commercial run by the Kyoto Orthodox Church in Japan, 2017.
[34] Real and Phantom Pains: An Anthology of New Russian Drama, compiled and edited by John Freedman.
)[41][42] A Meeting About Laughter: Sketches, Interludes and Theatrical Parodies by Nikolai Erdman, Vladimir Mass and Others.
