MUR and Digital Popularity: How a Cultural Project Changed the Approach to the Classics

How MUR's vision of history found a contemporary audience through music and theater.

The cultural project MUR offered a new way of presenting Ukraine's literary heritage. Project founder Oleksandr Khomenko, together with his team, transposed texts from the past into rap, theater, and film, showing that classic works can resonate with a contemporary audience.

MUR's experience demonstrated how contemporary technology can spark new interest in historical storylines. A closer look — in this DeTalks article.

MUR's Origins and Mission

The project was born in May 2022, when director Oleksandr Khomenko, composer Viktor Tkachenko, and cinematographer Mykola Shmundyr looked for a way to talk about Ukrainian culture sharply and tenderly, but in a way that would actually be heard.

The name 'MUR' ('wall' in Ukrainian) is a metaphor. According to Oleksandr, MUR is 'a wall of civilization' separating a creative, educated Ukraine from aggressive barbarism.

The Album Ty [Romantyka]

Ty [Romantyka] ('You [Romance]') is MUR's full-length release, which became the catalyst for expanding the project's audience. The album was presented as historical hip-hop with musical elements, built on material from artists of the 1920s and '30s. It included 17 tracks that formed a continuous narrative about the writers of the Executed Renaissance and their lives in the Slovo Building.

For its songs, MUR used archival facts, diary fragments, and accounts of residents' daily lives, letting them show the environment in which this generation's tragic history took shape. The album's title comes from Mykola Khvylovyi's novella 'Ya (Romantyka)' ('I [Romance]').

The release's central figure was a composite image of 'the boy who survived in the Slovo Building,' who endured creative doubt and fear from government surveillance and repression.

Writer and musician Serhii Zhadan, actors Olena Kravets and Yevhen Yanovych, and the music groups Heitspich and Nazva all took part in the project.

Zhadan, for instance, voiced fragments reflecting the political pressure of the era. One example is his poem 'Kyday Mertvykh za Bort' ('Throw the Dead Overboard'), which became an addition to the song 'Tretia Rota' ('Third Company'). Kravets, meanwhile, voiced sections conveying the atmosphere of creative work and the pressure the authors faced.

The band Heitspich appeared on the track 'Bi Bo Bu,' where their delivery style reinforced the experimental character of Mykhail Semenko's texts, with their unconventional rhymes and language structures.

Khomenko explained that through this album, he wanted to show history not as isolated fragments, but as a coherent sequence of events.

Khomenko has said the main takeaway he wants listeners to draw is that history, unfortunately, is cyclical, and that anyone who fails to learn its lessons will be forced to 'retake the exam.'

Theater and Film: The Musical's Transformation

After the album's success, the MUR team staged a theatrical production of the musical and set off on a tour of Ukraine. Tickets for the premiere sold out within 15 hours of going on sale, and at the Lviv Opera, within a single day. To make the art even more accessible, the MUR team created the cinematic performance 'Ty [Romantyka] v Kino' ('You [Romance] at the Movies'), which premiered April 10, 2025.

Filming was done with 12 cameras over three days. The actors performed as if in front of a live audience, and editing and post-production preserved the theatrical wholeness while giving the film a sense of 'presence' in the hall.

Oleksandr Khomenko didn't hide the fact that he'd once been drawn to Russian culture. But the full-scale invasion became a turning point for him.

Khomenko has said there's no need to go back, no need to give Russian cultural context even a chance, since it always ends the same way for Ukraine, for Ukrainian creative work, and for the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

Social Resonance

Rapid ticket sales became one of the first signs of large-scale interest in the project. In several interviews, Oleksandr has said that combined proceeds from the shows and donations made it possible to support Ukraine's Armed Forces with over five million hryvnias.

After the release of the album Ty [Romantyka], the team didn't stop at that creative work. MUR presented the album PAX ROMANA, devoted to the period of the Roman Empire, drawing parallels between Ukrainian history and the present day through musical compositions and dramatic scenes, touching on themes of betrayal, justice, the common people, and 'imposed peace.'

MUR later launched a nationwide tour with a new musical, Rebeliia ('Rebellion'), about the events leading up to the declaration of independence. Tickets for most of the shows sold out quickly.

Competition, New Formats, and Prospects

Khomenko says there's nothing comparable to MUR in Ukraine's media landscape, since it's a unique blend of theater, music, and educational mission. The director also sees potential 'successors' — young people who'll be drawn to this format and create their own unique projects.

Criticism and Controversy

But MUR has received critical feedback too. During one scene in the show 'Ty [Romantyka],' for instance, an actor kisses an audience member. This sparked debate over whether the person kissed counts as a participant in the theatrical production. Oleksandr, for his part, said they don't set up audience members without their knowledge.

Khomenko has explained that everyone who gets kissed by the character of Mykhail Semenko has always been someone who came specifically to see the show, adding that there was even a funny statistic where, whenever tickets went on sale for a given city and show date, the three rows where Semenko goes to kiss the girl were always the first to sell out, within five minutes.

In this way, MUR is a project shaping cultural discourse in Ukraine. The team combines an educational mission with emotional drama, history with rap and theatrical forms, deep respect for the classics with openness to a contemporary audience.

Still, this kind of audience interaction raises both enthusiasm and questions about the limits of theatrical realism. And there's a risk that commercial success could overwhelm the educational function if MUR becomes a brand rather than a project driven by an idea.