Kyiv's theatre landscape today involves a variety of shows unheard-of during Soviet days. But there's been a trade-off: As productions lost their political value to the government, they also lost state financial support. As a result, today's productions are more creative and diverse, but directors are required to look for sponsors and investors to get the plays produced.
Kyiv's theatres are evolving, with dozens of new theatre companies having emerged since independence. From basement studios to formal theatres, artists have moved from performing literature that had once been banned to new works that explore techniques and ideas never before envisioned.
The initial creative surge experienced after independence has now been tempered somewhat as directors look for financial support. They are learning how to finance performances without government support. They know that they must fund their own activities, and that theatre must be self-sustaining businesses. That's resulted, in effect, in a new form of censorship - the self-censorship that a market economy brings. If a program won't attract the ticket-buying public, it can't be staged. It's more important that a show be popular than that it be on the cutting edge.
As a result, Kyiv's theatres stage plenty of comedies -plays that the public has shown a willingness to support, and it isn't unusual to sell out a performance. Dramas don't sell quite as well. The capital's theatre-goers, voting with their cash, have sent the message that they want to relax and have fun in a theatre after an exhausting day's work.
Attending a theatrical performance remains one of the most economical ways to spend an evening in the capital. A theatre seat can cost as little as Hr 6, and expensive seats go for Hr 50. Movie tickets, by comparison, average about Hr 30.
Repertoire swing
This season, Kyiv's theatres are presenting a range of new plays. Most theatre companies have incorporated a principle called "repertoire swing" in their season's offerings, scheduling a variety of shows from light comedies to intellectual classics in an effort to attract audiences.
At the Ivan Franko Theatre, Ukraine's major stage, the artistic director has taken a missionary path, endeavoring to attract younger audiences in an effort to expose them to and educate them about theatre.
They also offer savory spectacles with a touch of eroticism, like Tartuffe. The Franko's directors also plan to premiere a modern interpretation of the classic Ukrainian play, Natalka Poltavka.
Some theatres are attracting crowds by inviting celebrities and foreign directors. Natalka Poltavka, for instance, is being directed by Moscow's Alexander Anurov, and will include a performance by Ukrainian rock musician Oleg Skripka. The performance is filled with romance, popular tunes, songs and dance.
Skripka has said that it is his first prestigious theatrical work, and that he was captivated by the opportunity to work on stage. He doesn't know yet, however, what part he'll be asked to play.
"Knowing the peculiarity of Anurov's artistic vision," quipped Bogdan Stupka, the theatre's art director, "one might assume that Skripka will be assigned the part of Natalka."
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has also been reinterpreted as a play for children. Retitled The Mousetrap, Dmitry Cherepyuk tells the familiar story of the star-crossed young lovers, but the characters are mice. The feud between the Capulets and Montagues takes place in a mouse kingdom.
After Christmas, Alexander Belozub will present his vision of the opera singer Solomiya Krushelnytska. The director is now completing a play based on archival documents. The lead will be played by Polina Lazova, and the production promises to combine elements of drama, opera and ballet.
Indian offering.
Admirers of exotic Asian culture will be pleased that director Andrey Prihodko is working on the Indian epic Shakutana, which is part of Mahabharata. The director says this literary piece has much in common with poetess Lesya Ukrainka's The Forest Song, and he exploring parallels between the two cultures. Participants in the project have been studying Oriental dance and music since April.
Drama and Comedy Theatre on the Left Bank is offering three performances that premiered last spring: Traders in Rubber, I love Meliss and Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The theatre is also preparing to premiere The Completion of Don Juan, based on a play written by Edward Radzinsky. The play places the legendary lothario in modern circumstances to conquer a woman. The storied ladykiller is too old to do the job, however, so his loyal servant pretends to be the master so that the playboy's glory isn't tarnished. The play's young director, Maxim Mikhaylichenko, claims that all people's desire to love, flirt and seduce is everlasting.
The Left Bankers continue to work with Lithuanian Linas Zaykauskas, who staged Our Town last year. Now the director is working on Anton Chekov's Cherry Orchard, with Kseniya Nikolaeva in the role of Ranevskaya.
It will premiere before the New Year.
Popular actor Vitaly Lenetsky is set to play the part of Swedish vagabond playwright August Strindberg in a drama directed by Eduard Mitnitsky. The Night of the Tribades examines Strindberg's relationship with women.
A little mayhem.
Television viewers are accustomed to a steady stream of serial killers, maniacs and other twisted psyches, and these folks provide fodder for theatrical entertainment as well. Leading the way is the Bravo Theatre, whose modern Italian comedy The Mother Queen shocked the public. In the two-act performance, the theatre's art director, Lubov Titarenko and actor Anatoly Sukhanov play mother and son. They argue incessantly, eventually driving each other insane. In the end, the son takes a drug overdose while his mother cries "Fly!"
The popular new Vilna Stsena (Free Stage) theatre run by director Dmitry Bogomazov is offering its own product. After last season's resonant Morphine and Sanctus, the theatre is staging Roberto Zukko, a play by Frenchman Bernard Mary-Koltess. In this post-modern parable, the main character is a maniacal killer depicted as a modern Hamlet, complete with the "to be or not to be" speech. The charming Vitaliy Linetskiy plays the part of Zukko, a sociopath and murderer. Zukko is compelled to kill without motivation.
It is simply the way he was born: he cannot help killing, but being a well-bred boy, he doesn't kill everyone.
Zukko's insanity is illustrated to the audience in that he sees other people as phosphorescent green things. Through it all, Zukko - like the Prince of Denmark - is trying to understand himself by killing other people. When he fails to understand himself, he dies.
Bogomazov's theatre is a modern cultural phenomenon. The universe depicted by the director is as infernal as Zukko's motherland. It is dangerous, dark and cramped. It appears to lack oxygen, and perhaps Bogomazov's suffocating drug addicts and maniacs know something we - who seek fresh air - do not. The performance is in green and black. Green symbolizes life. Death is black. The sparse decor, people dressed in green, which makes them look non-human and the murderer with his chalk-white face are the attributes of the drama.
Bogomazov has created his own unique theatre. His manner and philosophy reflect the principles of the modern European theatre of the post-modern era. Modern culture needs provocation: performances and installations which shock the audience are fashionable. Modern directors resemble avant-garde artists. Gradually, these new tendencies are being used in Ukrainian theatre.
Ukraine's second major stage - the Lesya Ukrainka Russian Drama Theatre - is also trying to stay in step with the times, inviting directors from Russia and Germany to work. Igor Selin, who arrived from Moscow, has staged Mikhail Lermontov's Masquerade, with ballet dancers from the National Opera participating in some scenes.
The show is divided into separate scenes, as in opera or circus. Selin presents a subjective vision of the masquerade based on vignettes - quick, short skits. According to the young director, he is trying to philosophize by deconstructing the text as an integral perception of the world.
Another product of this theatre is a chamber performance titled Julia@Romeo.com, a modern Romeo and Juliet tale. It has only two characters: he and she, a guy and a girl, in a saga about virtual space. The performance is both tragic and comic. Director George Ggeno uses visuals, comics and video in his staging.
Earlier, the theatre premiered Who Killed Emilia Galotti?
The play is produced in collaboration with Germans Elias Perrig and Volf Gutyar, and based on a translation of the Gotthold Lessing play by Alla Rybnikova.
The play's title makes it sound like a mystery, and while it does lean on cliches developed by gangster dramas, it happens that everyone - and no one - is guilty.
The characters include a tyrannical but lovesick prince, a paragon of virtue, an honest old warrior, a courageous count and a bandit. The characters are predictable and typecast within the gangster genre: the men are macho, the women are seductive. Yet the play fails to evoke catharsis. The two-dimensional characters are superficial. When their time on stage is ended, we forget about them because a new program will soon begin.
Theatre crossroads.
Today's Ukrainian theatre is developing in two major directions. The first is a show-business vector featuring spectacles, dancing, songs, and beautiful half-naked actors and actresses on stage. A more sophisticated audience appreciates the second, where the theatre is an illusion cast in virtual reality and visual installation.
An impartial witness to and victim of inevitable changes, the theatre which was tuned to aural perception and psychological conflict in the 19th century switched to visual perception in the 20th century. Today, it is becoming a spatial-sensual illusion. Directors, considering mass culture, often work on the edge, actively incorporating stereotypes.
Whatever the direction Ukrainian theatre chooses, it is still facing one problem of luring spectators who have other entertainment choices including television, movies and computers back to the theatre, the oldest of arts.
Veronika Prikhod'ko is a Kyiv-based arts writer.
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