Natalia VOROZHBYT is a Kyiv-based playwright and scenarist. She is one of the leaders of the “new dramaturgy.” The mass audience knows her as an author of the TV series School. In 2000 she graduated from the Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow.
Vorozhbyt has taken part in theater and drama festivals, such as Liubimovka, New Drama, etc. She is a winner of the Evrika Literary Award (2004). Her plays include Life of Simple People (1994), A Girl with Matches (1995), Super Boom and Other Gifts (1997), A Screen (1999), Halka Motalko (2002), What do you want, Ukrainian god? (2004), Demons (2004), I’m in (2005), A Corn Depository (about the Holodomor). Her first drama work, Life of Simple People, was staged by the Kyiv Young Theater in 1995. Vorozhbyt’s plays are for the most part staged in Moscow and London (Royal Court Theater). However, Natalia has not left Ukraine. Recently she has taken part in organization of the Dramaturgy Week. With the help of this interview we want to draw the reader’s attention not only to a talented Ukrainian author, but also the outrageous situation in Ukrainian theater, specifically the attitude of our directors to modern plays.
How did you start?
“I wrote my first play when I was 19. But even after entering the Literature Institute in Moscow and studying there for five years, I didn’t consider dramaturgy as my calling. That was simply a reason to go somewhere and broaden my life.”
When did you understand that it is your calling?
“When I heard a good reading of my text for the first time. It was at the Chekhov MKhAT, where Liubimovka Festival was taking place. That was my first successful play. I was about 25-26 years old, and I saw the response of the audience and critics. I am an ambitious person on the whole, and ambitions have always given me impetus to development. And when I saw and heard the text being read, something awoke inside of me, and I started to treat my plays more seriously. Before that I wrote rather because of institute rules, according to which you had to present something annually at a seminar for discussion.”
Who was your teacher?
“I cannot give a definite answer. At first I was taught by Anatolii Diachenko at his Kyiv lab. I absorbed everything like a sponge, but as time was passing, I understood that what he was teaching to me was not enough, that was only elements. At the Literature Institute we were not taught dramaturgy whatsoever, so I acquired professional education simply on the run, when Moscow began to hold seminars of the London Royal Court Theater and Liubimovka. For example, same Mikhail Ugarov, the initiator of Liubimovka was definitely one of my teachers. Plus, there were bright texts of my colleagues, who came to the theater at that time. There have been many people.”
So, the milieu is the most important in mastering your profession.
“Yes, this is the most important thing. To read and to listen.”
You and Maksym Kurochkin realize yourself abroad, anywhere but Ukraine. What is the reason?
“It is good that we work not only in Ukraine and that our plays are staged in Moscow or in London. Because the broader the geography of a dramatist, the better for him. Another thing is that, to put it mildly, we are hardly in demand in Ukraine.”
Why?
“Because our theater is deeply provincial, it is not ready for modern dramaturgy.”
It is strange, because at the same time directors complain that there are no modern plays and there is nothing to stage.
“These directors don’t read anything. They might have read one modern play in their life and they build their conclusions on this. On the other hand, they understand that they won’t be able to stage such a play. Modern dramaturgy is a strange body for them, and in the same way the playwright rejects such a director. In my opinion, these things cannot be combined. I think we simply need new directors, who would have different views and who have a different upbringing. It does not mean that none of the existing theaters will cope with this task. It is simply that there are few directors who are open and ready to deal with this. I am ready to speak with everyone, but…”
Why did you take up the burden of organization of the Week of Dramaturgy in Kyiv? It must have taken much time.
“As far as I can see, such events give much for beginning playwrights. Be it not for Liubimovka, for example, we would have never heard about the most of the authors. A dramatist needs a stimulus, he cannot shelve his creations; this is neither prose, nor poetry. Therefore I regularly attended the Moscow festival to communicate with interesting people and for the moment of competition. You are all the time within a context, you listen to someone’s text, and envy him in a good way, thinking, ‘I would like to be like him,’ or ‘next time I will write a better piece.’ Therefore, I repeat, it is very good that we have had a festival in Kyiv, I saw young people, who feel an urge, who became enthusiastic. I am sure that we will have even more talented plays next year.”
Do you think that the festival was a success?
“I was very pessimistic at the beginning. You always make yourself prepared for the worse, thus a good result is even more pleasant. The Week of Dramaturgy outmatched my expectations. A lot of people came. There were many interested eyes. There were lively discussions. For seven days I never felt discomfort before the authors for the empty hall. People came to listen even to the worst plays. The festival has proved that there will be theater in Ukraine. In my opinion, we have no theater at the moment, but it will inevitably come to existence.”
Let’s come to prosaic things. How does a playwright earn his living?
“Through cinema at best, but most often it is television. All the time you have to be the main author or editor-in-chief, invent some series. Of course, it is really distracting, because it takes time, but it also allows one to be independent and say: ‘I don’t care about your naphthalene directors and academic theaters, don’t stage my plays there.’ It cuts both ways. On the other hand, I would have written more good plays, if my plays were staged now, and this would have been the source of my incomes.”
So you have to rely on television?
“Sometimes I have to make two or three series simultaneously. However, currently I am in a better situation, as I hold a position on a Ukrainian TV channel, which allows me not to take sidelines, so I can work on three ordered plays and a full-length screenplay.”
Speaking about sidelines, the School series is the most famous among them. Are you satisfied with what you did there?
“I am not ashamed of this work. It is one of the few TV projects, about which I can say this. You often give in, do something for the producer, or the material is not interesting for you since the beginning. Although I did not work on the final series, because we did not agree on the finale with the director, the rest was quite fine.”
All people have different memories about school. Did you have to give such a harsh picture of school?
“I don’t think that something in this film is exaggerated. I used my own experience, and I did not invent a thing. All situations are based on real events, there are no stretches. I think that even worse kinds of things take place in schools. Clearly, there are different schools and different children, but nobody would have watched a series about excellent students. You should raise painful questions about teens whose lives are not okay. This conversation should urge you to act.”
Where do you find plots?
“You should bring out what worries you most at the moment, what you have accumulated since the time you wrote your latest play, and try to give it a certain shape. For example, I studied at a sport boarding school, and the play Halka Motalko is about this. The information was sitting inside me, it was worrying me, and I had to use it somehow. Kurochkin advised me to do so: ‘You always tell so interestingly about the sports boarding school, write about this.’ Or Demons, it is a story about my aunt, her life twists and turns. Apparently, something is embellished there, there are some exaggerations, bit she had largely inspired me. This truthfulness makes the text work. The screenplay Ridiculous Feelings is also based on personal experience. As for developing the plots, it is a craftsman’s work: you sit and think over the turns.”
What is the criterion for a well done story?
“When I listen to a well done play, I become very irritated. I don’t like it a lot. Ours is time of another kind of dramaturgy. I like when there is less of the plot, but more miraculous senses, when a miracle takes place, but it is not caused by the plot, rather something else. But in television you should twist the plot to make the audience watch. It seems to me, theater performs a different function.”
What is your attitude to the method of documentary play which is also called verbatim, which is practiced by Moscow’s Teatr.doc Theater?
“Verbatim is not a way to write plays, and I don’t want to write in such a manner. This is not quite author’s work. But you should master this, this is a very useful exercise, every dramatist should try his hand in this genre. Documentary drama revives the characters and language, and it brings a playwright back to reality. In 2000, when Teatr.doc emerged, the characters began to speak normal language. Before that they used literature language, which has nothing in common with life, so verbatim has somewhat improved the situation.”
In one of your interviews you said that the audience should be hurt. What does the word “hurt” mean in your understanding?
“The audience should not leave the theater calm and happy.”
What should it be like?
“Excited, angry, touched in its beliefs, feelings. This is not a therapy session, where one calms you down and pats on the back. It seems to me the theater should awaken and give one an emotional shaking. Any theatrical enterprise is aimed first of all at giving some satisfaction to the audience, so that the spectators laughed, like in a TV show or series. But this is a wrong path.”
Should theater educate the audience?
“I don’t think so. At least it should not set such tasks. I don’t know. A play is above all a strong expression of an author. This energy does not have either entertaining or educative functions. Another thing is that the playwright has to stretch the truth sometimes and play up to the audience, but this is not an obligatory condition.”
Is the notion of catharsis topical today?
“I think so.”
But using classical definition, catharsis is a kind of therapy as well.
“Yes, it is purification through suffering. But what present-day theater offers is not purification through suffering, rather it is an attempt to hide from sufferings behind entertainment. I am not saying anything new, it’s just that theater, at least in Ukraine, has been smoothed over so much that there is a need to bring back some real senses.”
Maybe, present-day theater lacks high tragic origins?
“It is very hard to speak about serious things in a serious manner. Everyone is afraid to do so and hides behind irony, even the new theater seeks to write about tragic things in a comic manner. This is not bad, I like it for example. You should be a very daring and strong playwright to write a tragedy which makes one believe, as well as comedy. Maybe, you should set such task before you. Today, there are no pure genres, so there is no point in insisting that they should exist.”
Obscene vocabulary appears in many new plays. This is rather a matter of stylistics: how to use it properly?
“My characters speak such language because they speak so in life. I never do so for the sake of provocation and I simply don’t believe that someone does so intentionally.”
You want to show to the audience a hero who drinks alcohol and uses obscene language, like in life, but drunkards or people who use bad language all the time hardly come to the theater. Maybe the message does not reach those at who it is addressed?
“Of course, it does not, unfortunately in most of cases. But the message is not only in showing people how they swear. People who are able to change the situation should come to theater. Not to please their ears, but to look the truth in the eyes. In Europe bourgeois theaters regularly stage social plays, because elite wants to be part of the society, wants to know more. When bourgeois come to a play they are in a way performing their civic duty. And it is not bad at all. We have recently staged a play about Cherkasy, gathered material using verbatim technology: it breaks quite acute questions which concern the city. I would like very much that such plays were attended by local officials, or that such plays were shown in every city. The stage anyway has a stronger impression than a newspaper or television, which does not tell the truth. Theater is an extremely strong instrument, it’s just that nobody understands this. Maybe it is even good that our politicians don’t understand this (laughing).”
What are your plans for the future?
“I need to quickly write a play based on Hohol’s Vii for Kyiv’s Dakh studio. I need to write a play for London’s Royal Court Theater, which I have been writing for a while. And one Moscow director has asked me to broaden my old play Demons. Besides I have received an order from New York to write a play about our emigres in this city.”
Speaking about Vii, what relations do you have with this text and with Hohol’s heritage on the whole?
“Vii is a fairytale above all. Working on my Vii I greatly enjoyed reading the original. Another thing is that in this case Vii is a reason to write something completely of your own. My work uses only the groundwork of the original story. And Hohol is one of my favorite writers, he has influenced me the most. I am fond of everything he did. When I was writing the play, I began to see his profile on wallpapers and strange things were taking place. So I have serious relationships with him. I don’t know about him though.”
And a non-serious question: do you have a hobby?
“I have no time for other things besides work and my child. Plays are maybe my hobby. They don’t bring money, but lots of pleasure. Sometimes I think to myself: what am I doing? I fall asleep near my daughter and think: ‘Tomorrow I should finish that, that, and that,’ and my child says: ‘Tomorrow I should water the tomatoes, because they will wilt.’ Here is the truth, the person is doing a real thing. And I am concerned with some nonsense, I am serving my ambitions. I am often very critical about my activity. But I like it and I can’t do anything else.”
