The soiree dedicated to Bohdan Stupka’s 70th anniversary started from an orchestra rehearsal. Stupka debuted as a drummer, performing a drums and cymbals solo. And he stuck to this role for nearly the whole three-hour program.
The musicians of the jazz band Bohdan performed the world hits and Ukrainian rock & roll songs, whereas Stupka commented on what the audience saw on the screen (scenes from the films, Lviv and Kyiv sceneries, video congratulations from Russian fellow actors, specifically Sergey Garmash, Galina Volchek, Aleksandr Kalyagin, Gennady Khazanov, Konstantin Raikin, and Leonid Yarmolnik).
You may ask: why was namely jazz the main hero of the evening? The reason is that jazz was Stupka’s first love. In his youth he was a real Lviv dandy (wore slim-legged pants: remade pants, so that you had to try well in order to pull them on), and at night he worked as a photographer at the observatory where he shot stars, and if the sky was cloudy he rejoiced because he could do what he wanted, he also was an emcee of legendary Ihor Khoma [founder of the Ukrainian school of jazz music, author of jazz plays and improvisations, variety songs, music to drama performances and music films, organizer and head of the Medikus Ensemble. – Author]. He was nearly expelled from the theater studio. “‘You play jazz today, you betray your motherland tomorrow,’ the newspaper Pravda wrote in the Soviet time,” Stupka said smiling, “But I was past laughter. The militia caught us, dandies, in the street and ripped up the pants, and at the meetings they came down hard on me for dancing shake and rock & roll and listened to the ‘music of Western enemies.’”
Then we heard a recording of Giorgio Germont’s aria from Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. Stupka explained: “I practically grew up behind the scenes of the Lviv Opera. My father sang in a choir and liked this opera a lot, he frequently sang this aria. The lyrics is very touching there, the father grieves for his son who left his home. It seems only that I have understood only now why my dad liked this piece so much.”
Stupka’s son Ostap danced and sang at the soiree, he was also the host of the event. However, his strict father noted, “Son, you cannot earn money with your singing,” but forecasted that Ustynka, Ostap’s daughter might once become a singer, a Ukrainian Ella Fitzgerald.
The graphic works of the renowned artist Serhii Yakutovych were projected on the screen, whereas Stupka was recalling his first love. “I was serving at the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Trancarpathia Military District, whereas Larysa came to Lviv after graduating from the Baku Choreography School and worked as a ballerina at the Opera House. Thanks to Lara I’ve got all the best things in my life (she is sitting in the box). Thank you, Larysa!” At this moment his grandson Dmytro Stupka appeared on stage in a soldier’s overcoat to the song which was popular in the 1960s, “Don’t Forget,” and waltzed with a young actress.
Fortunately, the official part of the event was quite short. Minister of Culture and Tourism Mykhailo Kulyniak read the greetings from Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, and the present from the Kyiv mayor’s office (a bronze statuette, Stupka as legendary Taras Bulba) came in the famous cart from the play Tevye Tevel. Commenting on his surprise, the head of the Kyiv City Administration Oleksandr Popov said: “I think that Hohol wrote his Taras Bulba, because he knew that this role would be brilliantly performed by Stupka centuries after that.”
VV front man Oleh Skrypka performed passionate Lviv jazz, Pikkardiiska tertsia sang Ivasiuk’s song “The Echo of Your Steps,” and the “Ukrainian Paganini,” a virtuoso violinist Vasyl Popadiuk played a bunch of ethno-jazz melodies with an ardor that made even the audience shiver, and in the end he even forced Stupka to play (Stupka held a fiddlestick, Popadiuk – the violin, and they made a wonderful duo). Actresses from the Ivan Franko Theater sang passionate super jazz (soloist Tetiana Mikhina). Stupka jumped: “In Soviet time they said that we did not have sex, but our theater is very sexy.”
Only at this soiree you could hear “Ragtime” performed by the famous Georgian film director Robert Sturua. Incidentally, he admitted that he dreamed to work with the Ivan Franko Theater company. His play Oedipus the King, staged in Kyiv, received many prizes at theater festivals. Blitz retrospectives (scenes from the films White Bird with a Black Mark, Red Bells, Mykola Vavilov, Ogniem i Mechem, A Driver for Vera, Prayer for Hetman Mazepa, Taras Bulba and mini-scenes from the plays Uncle Vania, Stolen Happiness, King Lear, Tevye Tevel, Oedipus the King, A Lion and a Lioness, etc.) brought the audience to different periods of time, it seemed as we were together leafing through Stupka’s the creative and family albums.
A whole group of fellow actors came from his alma mater, the Lviv-based Zankovetska Theater, with the general director Andrii Matsiak at the helm. They reminded that Stupka’s “singing is good, but disgusting,” yet he could not keep himself from singing funny kolomyikas together with them. Stupka was so moved to tears by the performance of the little ones from Halychyna, ensemble Tsomochky (Little Kisses), whose participants dream to study at the Lviv School No. 28, where the famed master of theater and cinema used to study.
Stupka also recalled his senior friend, teacher and film director Serhii Danchenko, in a creative cooperation with whom Stupka played his significant parts in the productions Stolen Happiness, Uncle Vania, King Lear, Tevye Tevel, which are consideredre theater classics by the critics.
At the end of the evening the general director of the Franko Theater Mykhailo Zakharevych went on stage and told that the theater had been greeting Stupka for 1.5 months and announced: “Franko Theater is giving a people’s performance now. It is people’s because all the participants are people’s artists.”
“Stupka is our star. Even more than that. He is the sun of Ukrainian theater and cinema,” Les Zadniprovsky and Co started the parody show. “Guests from the wild West, the Apaches,” (young actors from the theater) hit the drums and presented Stupka with the pipe of peace. A la Vakarchuk (Nazar Zadniprovsky), who gave a solo performance that day in the Ukraina Palace, dropped in. The audience was shown the “model of the future monument to be placed instead of the fountain in the public garden near the theater.” When the sheet was pulled away, the audience became tearful with laugh: that was a cartoon bust (Stupka as Tevye) and the pedestal folded with the EU flag. Indeed, many countries consider the actor their idol: Poland, Russia, Germany, Canada, and the US. “Bravo and encore!” both the actors who took part in the Concert No. 70 and the audience were chanting.
COMMENTARIES
Larysa KADOCHNYKOVA, an actress of the Lesia Ukrainka National Theater of Russian Drama:
“It frequently happens that actors grow in their creative work with years. Usually, they stop to do so at some point, but Stupka has been playing deeper with each role. By this moment he has become a powerful figure of a master of a worldwide scale. I can only wish him happiness, because he has everything else: the wonderful theater Bohdan Sylvestrovych is heading, a wife, son, daughter-in-law, three grandchildren. I recall the time when we were working on the White Bird with a Black Mark (Stupka’s debut in cinema). All actors were being nervous. The shooting was complicated, but meeting Ivan Mykolaichuk (he wrote Orest’s role for himself, but the then party officials forbade the actor who had played Kobzar to play a Banderite in this movie). Ivan gave Bohdan tips, took care of him, and Stupka played brilliantly. Kyiv has recently hosted a retrospective of Stupka’s films, dedicated to his anniversary. I watched White Bird one more time and recalled my young years. If one makes a workshop for young actors, in my opinion they should watch and make a detailed analysis of Stupka’s filigree performance in White Bird and Tevye Tevel.”
Myroslav SKORYK, composer, artistic director of the National Opera of Ukraine:
“I cannot say we are close friends with Stupka. We know each other well, though we are engaged in different spheres: me – in music, and he – in theater and cinema. But we have met each other frequently for many years in succession. I have seen his theater works first in Lviv, then in Kyiv. Our life paths crossed in America (I have lived a couple of years abroad, and Stupka came on tour). Since 2001, after I moved to Kyiv, I try not to miss the productions where this master of stage takes part. For me it is pleasant to follow his fantastic actor’s growth in each role and in each performance. Stupka is an actor, without whom you cannot imagine present-time theater and Ukrainian cinema. I have an impression that he can play all kind of roles. For me he is above all a great drama actor, namely in theater his talent revealed itself in the deepest way, he is able to play a high tragedy and a comic role. Stupka has a great sense of humor. He has got a natural talent granted by God and his parents, and he also has another very important trait: diligence. He so easily becomes a different person that even without a makeup the audience sees that this is an actor. (Lysenko, Khmelnytsky, Vyshnia, Kerensky, Briukhovetsky, Brezhnev, Mazepa, and Tolstoy are historical personalities, wonderfully played by Stupka in cinema and theater.)”
Ivan DZIUBA, writer:
“We can speak much about Stupka and write whole volumes about his creative work. We met each other so long ago, in the 1960s, that it seems to me I have known him for my whole life. I will tell you one thing: in spite of everything, Bohdan Stupka is a happy person, because in one life term he has managed to live and play the lives of various people on stage and in cinema.”
Mykola ZHULYNSKY, academician, head of the Shevchenko Institute of Literature at the NAN of Ukraine:
“My Stupka is an unmatched master of the stage and cinema. I came to know him first as an audience, watching his plays and films where he played. But we became most close when I was a vice prime minister and Stupka – a minister of culture. That communication brought a colossal pleasure from working together. He has always been categorically anti-bureaucratic. Stupka is an amazing phenomenon. He has a unique gift of becoming a different person and at the same time he remains himself. Whatever is the image he creates, I see Stupka: his eyes, voice, his nature, and at the same time he is a wholly different person (the character he plays). Stupka has great creative amplitude, and apparently this is the essence of his unique charisma that no other actor in our country has. He is a very interesting artiste, and I am glad that the actor has such a rich creative life and that the palette of his characters in theater and cinema is so varied. God grant him good health so that he could play many more interesting parts.”
Robert STURUA, a Georgian director:
“Stupka is Stupka! He is an actor of genius, and I am happy that we are not just acquaintances, but that we have worked together (Oedipus the King). Hopefully, we will continue to work together. At the moment we are trying to choose a play for the Ivan Franko Theater stage, but I would like to stage Ukrainian classic in Kyiv. Hopefully, Bohdan Stupka will play in the new production. He is extraordinary in his work. If he considers himself right, he argues, but he believes the director and is always a co-author, creating the image on stage. When he plays, I forget he’s an actor, and his works on stage are always a strong emotional shock for the audience. It is a great joy to work with him.”
