Irina Petrivna Kločko, born on 25 July 1985 in Kiev. Irina is now a regular soldier in the Ukrainian Army. Before that, a television director, today an operator. She would give her life for her comrades in battle.
Like all children, I went to a kindergarten where I was friends only with boys, it got to the point that my mother was called to the kindergarten several times because of this. She said I wasn’t friends with girls and played with cars and guns, not girls and dolls. My mom has said every time that on our street I have a boys‘ company and there are no girls, so it’s normal that I’m more used to being in the company of boys.
There was a family next door that we were friends with, and we visited each other often. They had two sons, the younger one, Zhenya, was my best friend in childhood because we grew up together almost from birth. I spent almost all my time with him. Over time we stopped communicating because my mother and I moved away, and it was almost impossible to maintain our friendship. In order for us to see each other, an adult would have to accompany us and, as always, there was no time for that.
I was working in a company on our street where we lived and there were no girls there except me. We often played war games together there, although few of us could have imagined that these games would one day turn into reality. My friend Dyma from that group is also a soldier in the army now.
Then came school, where they called my mom again and complained about me, not because of my grades but because of my behavior. Whether I was fighting with someone, or running with the boys in the hallway, or running away from class because I didn’t enjoy sewing, embroidery or cooking. I even ran after boys for pre-registration training to handle the duties of a homeland defender or for boys‘ job training. I was more interested in that. And there were many such situations during my adolescence when my mother complained that I was spending too much time with the boys. My mom always said that I was a normal girl, even though it was more interesting for me to interact with men, adding that I had been like that since early childhood.
I never had problems with grades. In school, I spent most of my time in the staff room because I was involved in almost every school event and spent a lot of time in revision exams, which didn’t please my class teacher. When the time came to choose a college, I was convinced that I wanted to study theatre, but my parents were against it. However, that didn’t stop me, and I stubbornly applied for theatre school. There were a few problems associated with that:
- Nobody could help me with the preparation, as nobody in my family or among my friends had any experience with it, I was on my own.
- I was far from an ideal candidate for theatre faculty, as I am short and not skinny (in short, I am far from the parameters of a model).
Of course, the first time around, I didn’t pass the casting before the actual audition. That’s why I joined a factory the first year after school and took acting classes alongside my job. In the courses, the teachers advised me to forget about acting and go for directing instead, because, with my stubborn nature, no director would stick with me, because if something wasn’t the way I saw it, I wouldn’t be quiet, and I would assert myself and the directors wouldn’t like me.
The next year, I sent completed applications to several universities at once. Finally, I applied to the Academy of Culture and Arts. And so, on September 1st, several of us gathered at the gala parade, where I met, as it turned out later, my classmate Slavo. We stood together in the front row, we started talking about how we both hate these ceremonial parts, where the same banal text is always presented, which doesn’t say anything new or interesting. So I suggested to him that we go somewhere for a beer, because we still had a lot of time before the first class. Slava and I stood together in the front row. When we started to push our way through the students, many of them asked „Where are you going?“ All they heard was our answer, „For beer.“ and so they joined us. That’s how almost half of my classmates left. We didn’t notice at the time that the class teacher was standing nearby and heard everything…
I liked learning, I never missed a subject, I always came prepared, and sometimes I helped my classmates if someone didn’t have time to prepare for a lesson. I didn’t have any problems with my studies, but I had a small conflict with the rector because I react very strongly to injustice towards other people, especially those I know personally. That’s why the rector didn’t like me and called me “a little revolutionary”. But it was very mild, compared to the fact that he tried to get me expelled before I was even inducted.
I studied hard, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t so much have problems with my grades, I didn’t lack determination, but there was Mr. Rector. Every time we were assigned a new teacher (sometimes teachers changed, especially if the rector didn’t like them), there was an effort to lower my grades, or to not get me classified at all. So, it was an ever-present problem because it could affect my future fate; I could retake exams, but only at the end of each semester. Examinations in vocational subjects were held like theatrical performances in our school, and the final verdict was announced by the head of the department (who supported the rector), but he never read the programme and did not know who the director of this or that passage or sketch was. And almost always, when he came on stage at the end of the exam and listed the best works, my works were always on the list. When they were evaluating this or that piece, he would first say what he liked about it and then ask who the director was. Every time he heard my surname, he was red with anger, as again there was no reason to exclude me. As time went on, my teachers (who were supportive) advised me to transfer because sooner or later they would find something they could grab onto to expel me. So, I transferred to the stunt faculty where I was the only girl on the course, the next semester two other girls transferred to us.
Already in the second year I started working in a small theater of Ukrainian classics „The Ship“. It was here that I fell in love with history, although I was always interested in ethnography. In my fourth year I had my own theatre studio in the theatre. During and after graduation I worked as a presenter at various events, in the theatre and the studio, rarely returning home, if only to sleep. Eventually, but not always, I often stayed at the theatre to sleep.
When I was 25 I moved to Dnipro for a few years, I wanted a change. Then I went back to my old job in Kiev again, tried to revive the studio, but the work didn’t bring me the satisfaction it did before, and I couldn’t even make a living from it. I found a job as an assistant director at the „Kievan Rus“ amusement park, and it was there that I began to study the history of Kievan Rus in more detail, dating back to the 10th century. I have to say that I do not like Prince Volodymyr, who brought Christianity. He introduced it by force. I fell in love with the horses in the park, I liked them very much, although I am still a bit afraid of them. I officially worked there for a year and a half and then I traveled around the horses as a volunteer for about 3 more years. I used to organize excursions with them because I liked them.
Ever since I started working in the park, I have not liked sitting in an office. I don’t sit in one place, except for important urgent work that requires sitting in an office. By Tuesday, sometimes Wednesday, I used to have everything that needed to be done finished. Then I would just sit idly by, but the rules required me to stay at my workstation. On Saturdays and Sundays, we worked in the park, organizing entertainment programs for visitors.
Then I tried to open the theatre again, we staged a few plays. During the holidays I participated in a music video festival as a director. It was my first experience with filmmaking. I fell in love with the hobby (it was just a hobby back then). A few months after that I found a job in a production studio as a live director and shortly after that I joined STB TV as an assistant director. Within 3-4 months I was promoted to director and from that point on I forgot about my personal life, as there wasn’t enough time for anything and my personal life didn’t fit in as I was at work all the time and almost constantly travelling for work. It was while working for a TV channel that I met a lot of today’s friends. And again, it was almost exclusively male teams.
At that time, I was doing a lot of business trips, a lot of filming and slowly my personal life started to improve. And then the coronavirus came, and we were all locked up at home. It was very difficult because I wasn’t used to sitting in one place for so long. After three months of sitting at home, I started looking for at least some work and I got to TV series…