‘I have lived my life! I’m not afraid of anything and I’ll sleep in my own bed, me and my aching bones.”

So declares the 82-year-old woman from her apartment in Kyiv as Russian bombs explode in the streets all around her — the ongoing toll of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Olga’s ordeal, and the fantastical way she confronts it, is at the heart of Sasha Denisova’s play “My Mama and the Full Scale Invasion,” making its New England premiere Aug. 22-25 at the Northampton Center for the Arts. The Aug. 24 show happens to fall on Ukrainian Independence Day.

The play, directed by Robert Freedman, at times funny, poignant, stylized and surreal, is based on long-distance texts and quarrels between the playwright and her mother, who courageously remains in Kyiv over two years after the war’s escalation.

Their correspondence began on WhatsApp and invariably opened with the greeting: “Sasha, we’re alive!”

A poster for the play, designed by Ukrainian illustrator Vladyslava Lopatetska, shows Mama (Olga) in her apartment, standing defiantly at the window as missiles rain from the blinding sky outside. Clutched in one raised fist is a kitchen knife, in the other a cutting board, eerily mirroring the sword and shield of the Mother Ukraine statue blocks away in the smoke. Only last year were the Soviet hammer and sickle removed from the 335-foot colossus and replaced by the Ukrainian coat of arms.

Of equal note is the large jar of pickles resting on the woman’s windowsill.

Born in 1941, Olga as an infant was hunkered in a bomb shelter as Nazi Germany shelled Kyiv and occupied the city during WWII.

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Sasha Denisova, like her mother, was born and raised in Kyiv and was working in Russian theater when the 2022 invasion began. She fled to Poland, urging her mom to come with her. The older woman steadfastly refused, taking her inspiration from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Zelenskyy and I will stay here and defend Ukraine!” she cries from the stage.

In interviews, Denisova does not think of her mother as some helpless creature needing to be rescued and respects her position, all the while arguing vehemently against it.

“Get to the bomb shelter!” shouts the daughter.

“I’m not going there — I was born there!” comes the retort.

The war is the largest conflict in Europe since WWII, while also producing the continent’s largest refugee crisis. The International Criminal court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and five others for war crimes.

But the nightly TV news and its miles-away shots of missiles streaking through the night sky has about as much impact as fireworks on the beach. And like most wars since American nukes annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, civilian populations are convenient pawns. Very few populations have endured the repeated trials of Ukrainians, who took the brunt of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the mercilessness of the Third Reich. All of which comes up in Denisova’s play.

“My Mama …” won the Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play when it made its U.S. debut earlier this year at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington D.C.

“I’m always drawn to plays with a sociopolitical theme and compelling, well-written characters,” said Freedman, who cut his teeth directing one-act plays for the legendary Vincent Dowling.

Freedman saw the D.C. production live and streamed a performance in Philadelphia.

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” he said. He got the script in the mail.

“The script had no stage direction, only dialogue, but incredible conversations — are they going on in her head?” he wondered.

Having close friends in Ukraine, Freedman recognized the offbeat, sometimes gallows humor of the country in Denisova’s work. He took note of the play’s ability “to laugh at the human condition, some of it laugh-out-loud, while making a profound statement about the absurdity of war.”

The play is partially narrated by the daughter, but the interaction between the two takes different forms — sometimes via Smartphones like their real-life conversations, other times right there in the kitchen together, reliving Sasha’s childhood moments at the beach, the park, the museum. A matter-of-factness pervades the piece, as Mama cooks stuffed peppers and hums to Bach as war rattles the windows.

“It’s so interesting how she casually brings the tortured history of Ukraine into conversation,” said Freedman, as Olga speaks of the infamous 1941 slaughter of 34,000 Jews at the hands of Nazis over a mass grave in Babi Yar.

Though in real life the mother and daughter communicate from afar, onstage comes with perspective anew and an ensemble approach to directing. Freedman brainstormed with cast, crew, colleagues and Ukrainian friends. “A lot of people have their hands in this play,” he said.

Jarice Hanson stars as Mama, Laura Nichols as Sasha and Liam Bobersky as practically everyone else, from world leaders, to former lovers, to Olga’s much younger husband, who’s “gone downhill since the war began.”

“Liam’s finding ways to show the character of each person, fleshing each one out,” said Freedman.

In an interview with NBC Washington, Denisova described her mother’s writing as “Fierce. When Olga went international in her writing and appealed to France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz, I knew it had to be a play.”

Denisova calls Zelenskyy an international hero and that her mother envisions herself as a key strategist working directly with the Ukrainian leader.

The play immerses its audience in its foreign world of resistance and survival, but Denisova has stated that “the more Americans realize that Ukrainians live lives similar to theirs, that will be a big victory, and more weaponry will be freed up.”

During one scene, Mama feeds Joe Biden stuffed peppers while twisting his arm to sign off on shipments of F-16 fighter jets.

Freedman apprises the playwright with changes that come up in rehearsal. The show he saw in D.C., for instance, ended with the playing of the old chestnut “Sunny,” by Bobby Hebb, which induced Freedman to cringe. “We’ve got to have Ukrainian music,” he insisted. “Sasha trusts me.”

Some have said that the play combines experimental theater with something more mainstream.

“The closest I ever came to experimental was a lot of wasted hours in movie theaters,” he laughs. “The experiments came organically. We have things in the kitchen — an eggbeater becomes a weapon, a bowl a Nazi helmet. That type of humor is pure Ukrainian.”

“But the overriding theme of the play is defiance against a dark, foreboding sky,” said Freedman. “I don’t want this country to enter a full scale war with Russia, but the people in Ukraine are still dying … and still resisting.”

“My Mama…” is not the first play Denisova’s written and staged about the war. “Six Ribs of Anger” concerns the plight of Ukrainian refugees in Europe; “The Hague” imagines Vladimir Putin tried for war crimes.

“She never thought her work would be shown in the U.S.,” said Freedman.

Jarice Hanson, long and fondly remembered for her snarling turn in Hadley as Dick Cheney in David Hare’s “Stuff Happens,” couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into this one.

“Olga engages with Zelenskyy, Putin, Macron, Scholz and Biden as if she’s known them all her life,” marvels Hanson.

In her fantasy of addressing the nation, Mama roars: “Anyone who can should enlist in the Terrorist Defense Unit! The enemy’s success or failure depends upon our resilience!”

“That passage gets me every time,” said Hanson.

In its play notes the production offers “content transparency,” warning about the depictions of famine, guns, bombs, the effects of radiation and use of profanity.

A show Freedman once staged at the Academy of Music led to calls to Northampton Police Dept. when people thought they saw assault weapons being brought into the theater. “Though they were paintball guns made to resemble AR15s, I got the point,” said Freedman. “I was in the service and still have my seabag — that’s how I transport weapons now,” he laughed.

At any rate, the chronically triggered might be better off staying home and watching “Ozark.”

“Such an important show for so many reasons,” said Hanson. “This is all about democracy and whether it will survive.”

“And,” she stressed, “a love story about a mother and her daughter. There was a point in rehearsal where you felt this connection, where you really see a family.”

But will she brain Putin with a jar of pickles?

“That’ll be up to the audience,” Hanson grinned.

All shows start at 7 p.m., except for the 2 p.m. performance Aug. 25. For tickets, visit https://tinyurl.com/23n2thpu.