Volodymyr Tuka was born February 25, 1986, in the city of Nadym in the Tyumen region of Russia where his parents worked. The family moved to Kherson, Ukraine, in 1991. By profession he is an engineer of naval power plants, his specialty being in internal combustion engines. He has worked as a dance teacher, an animator, a presenter, a performer in the touring Jin Roh Circus, and an actor at the Mykola Kulish Regional Academic Theater in Kherson. Attempting to leave occupied Kherson in May 2022, he was stopped at a checkpoint for carrying a Ukrainian flag, having his car, his money, and his phone confiscated. His captors mocked and beat him for hours, ordering him to run in a field hung with a grenade lacking a safety pin, and a sign declaring, “mines,” while they shot at his feet. He enlisted in the 79th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on October 12, 2022, and was deployed in Mar’inka in 2022, and Krasnogorivka in 2023. After discharge from the military, he wrote Play 22, or, the Hero’s Path as a participant in the Veterans Theater project. It has been staged twice, once as A Hero for a Day, a one-actor performance, and a second time under the full title as a noise drama at the Kyiv National Theater of Operetta. He acted in both productions. He currently is studying directing and acting at the BeaT Theater in Kyiv. His play, Orange, is still awaiting production. Play 22 was long-listed in the 2024 running of Contemporary Play Week.