Last year, spectators in Kyiv first saw two new productions from the repertoire of the Lviv Zankovetska Theater: the monodramas Insane and The Actress. They were staged based on the plays by Roman Horak, a modern Galician author, by the renowned director Alla Babenko. They were made specially for a young and truly original actress, Oleksandra Liuta. The audience was delighted by this talented pupil of Bohdan Kozak. While in the first day of her mini-tour the auditorium of the Center for Culture and Arts of the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (where the actress performed Insane, a play about the life of Ivan Franko’s wife Olha Khoruzhynska) mostly saw young people and the representatives of the Lviv community, the next evening The Actress (telling the life story of the great Maria Zankovetska) was mostly watched by professionals: Liuta’s colleagues from Kyiv and art critics. Hearing them applaud and shout “Bravo!” must have been very pleasant. It should be mentioned that the entire audience was greatly impressed by the Leopolitan star.
After seeing the performances the audience remained under the spell of Liuta’s acting for several days. How can such a young actress, who hardly uses any makeup on stage, transform beyond recognition? Insane shows one day in the life of her heroine Olha, May 28, 1916, when her husband Ivan Franko died. In the finale she sings her favorite aria, Lauretta’s Oh Mio Babbino Caro from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, while the voice of the legendary Maria Callas drifts to the background. Liuta’s performance is so moving and convincing that many in the auditorium could not help crying.
The Actress is a kaleidoscope of Zankovetska’s life. The story of the painful love that sparkled between the prima donna of Ukrainian theater and Mykola Sadovsky is just a pretext to tell what agony precedes a new part, and what backstage intrigue later bursts open on stage. This play is a hymn to all actresses. When in the final scene Liuta covers her head with a white shawl, sits down on a chair and looks up, the spectators cannot see a young beauty anymore. Instead, before them is an old woman whose life is behind her, and then, there is this creepy, eerie feeling. It is not Liuta they can see. It is as if Zankovetska’s portrait had turned to life.
Today, Oleksandra Liuta’s artistic record includes almost 30 parts, both main roles and minor ones, which she has played at home, in the Lviv Maria Zankovetska Theater, along with se-veral awards from prestigious theater forums, in particular, those in Melikhovo and Moscow. After her performance in Kyiv, the actress spoke with us.
Nearly all girls dream of becoming actresses, but with time, this fancy fades away. You do not come from a dynasty of Thespians, there was no one to help you grasp the subtlety of the profession. Could you tell us about Bohdan Kozak’s school of acting?
“I have always loved singing, dancing, reciting poems — ever since I was a kid. I decided to apply at the vocal department of the Lysenko Lviv State Music Institute. I think I was very lucky to end up at the acting department where Kozak taught.
“He created his own methodology in teaching his class. First we prepared sketches, and when he started dramatizing, he chose Chekhov’s works as a school of psychology. Next we played Shakespeare in fair shows, then we learned how to act in a vaudeville and how to combine drama, singing, and dancing. Thus, step by step, we discovered the art of acting for ourselves.
“I remember The Day when Kozak first walked into the classroom and said, ‘I am no mother or father for you, I am your big brother!’ And indeed, he has become a big brother, our friend. Also, he would say, ‘Maybe I will fail to make you into good actors, but you will be fine human beings, that’s for sure!’ Kozak is a real erudite, he can quote entire books on philosophy, psychology, Ukrainian and foreign classics from memory.
“In class, he could elicit everything from a student. In his classes I even wrote poems in English. Kozak believed in us. He would always say, if you cannot do it, you will learn it. He would also speak about an actor’s five fingers: singing, the musical instrument, dancing, scenic speech, and mastery, which we had to have a good command of, and use in our acting. And his main secret was acting in such as to make spectators, not actors, cry.”
On this mini-tour, you have shown two female images. Not just women, but real historic figures: Olha, the wife of a genius (Ivan Franko, a great Ukrainian writer, poet, scholar, political essayist, public figure and politician), and a brilliant actress, the leading light of our national theater, Maria Zankovetska. How did you find those different paints to depict tragic love?
“The entire literature is built on this theme: man and woman, love, joy, betrayal, separation... I did not aspire to show outward resemblance to the images I had to play on stage. What was important is to show why love had brought so many bitter moments in the lives of both women. Also, I had to appear different on stage. In The Actress the heroine seems to be thumbing through her diary, whatching photographs from her first appearance on stage to the last one. I am not playing Zankovetska... She was unsurpassable! The contemporary critics wrote that the actress had a knack for subtle observation and an extraordinary artistic imagination. She could quickly and naturally transform on stage, and always had this sense of proportion. First and foremost, she was an actress of great psychologism, broad mind, and genuine talent. Our performance is fragments of Zankovetska’s life, her story, and only in a few cases there is the merging of the actress and her character...
“Roman Horak is not just a writer and playwright, he is also an expert in Franko studies, and a curator of the Lviv Ivan Franko Literary Memorial Museum. While Zankovetska is more or less familiar to the audience (with different people knowing more or less), the heroine of Insane Olha Khoruzhynska appears to be quite an obscure figure. It is no easy thing to live with a genius, but she was a faithful wife to the great Mason. His death dealt her a heavy blow. She had to be taken to a mental hospital. She survived her husband by many years. In the play, my heroine says bitterly what she learned: it was not her who had been the Mason’s Muse.
“Khoruzhynska graduated from the Kharkiv Institute for Noble Maidens and was trained as a teacher. She spoke French, German, and English, and was a wonderful pianist. This accomplished woman was Franko’s wife and helper. She gave him three sons and a daughter, wrote articles, ran the magazine Zhyttia i Slovo (Life and Word), and helped her husband a lot in the writing and publishing of his works. She was with him through thick and thin. It was she who urged Franko to apply to the University of Chernivtsi and get a degree. It is a well-known fact that Franko went to Vienna and got his doctoral degree there at the expense of his wife. Their marriage was called a cherished dream of the Ukrainian nation, which then was separated by a border: the dream of unification of the west and east of Ukraine.
“However, in a letter to his friend Ahatanhel Krymsky Franko admitted: ‘It’s a loveless marriage. I married my present wife because of convenience: you have to marry a Ukrainian woman (i.e. one who comes from the Dnipro area), and a well-educated one at that... But it is all to no avail. You cannot fool your destiny.’
“The writer married Khoruzhynska in May, 1886. Yet the family idyll did not last long. New women kept appearing in his life: Olha Roshkevych (his first fiancee), Jozefa Dzwonkowska, Uliana Kravchenko, Klymentyna Popovych, Olha Biletska, Celina Zurowska. Franko himself admitted that ‘A considerable influence on my life and, consequently, on literature, has been exerted by my women...’
“Nevertheless, Franko was a genius, and it is no easy thing to get along with one. At the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, next to a rock which the Mason is breaking with his pick, there is a modest little gravestone. When the sun sets and its slanting rays find their way through the dense foliage, the long shadow of the rock on Franko’s grave seems to caress the grave of Khoruzhynska. They rest there together for ever.”
What kind of parts do you find the most interesting to play?
“When I understand the material better. I can quote my teacher’s words: ‘As you read the material for the first time, try to remember your impressions, as this is the most correct, true feeling of the story and its characters. Then you can use these emotions in your work.’
“As I read texts, I feel if this play feels right, if it has struck a note. If so, I can start working on the material, developing the part. Horak has written more than one book, and as I was reading his play, Insane, and the letters, I saw a vivid image of a woman who was constantly worrying about her husband, her sick children, the constant lack of money — but she kept her head high. Khoruzhynska also was a secretary to Franko. And how she suffered because the Galician society would not accept her and treated her as an outsider.”
When Khoruzhynska came to Galicia, she didn’t know Ukrainian very well, which also stopped her from fitting in with Franko’s milieu. You also learned Ukrainian as an adult...
“I graduated from a Russian-speaking school in Ivano-Frankivsk. I come from a mixed family, Ukrainian and Russian. When the independence came and we had to take exams in Ukrainian, I, being a Russian-speaking student, panicked. What should I do? So then I got enrolled in Lviv, and Kozak told us freshmen: ‘Once you have chosen a Ukrainian school and intend to work in the Ukrainian theater, you must learn the language.’ So I and my friend Irma Vitovska (now an actress at the Young Theater, Kyiv) buckled up and started to speak only Ukrainian. We realized that we had to know the language to such an extent as to even think in it.
“So when someone in the south or east says that they don’t know Ukrainian, and that is why they don’t speak it, I can object that where there is a will, there is a way, and you can learn a language at any age! You need to realize where you live, and if it’s in Ukraine, then learn Ukrainian. I did not force myself to do it. I just know that language is my working tool, and I am Ukrainian. And very soon I switched to Ukrainian even in my everyday life. I have fallen in love with authentic Ukrainian songs, too...”
The spectators where deeply impressed with the finale in The Actress, when you transformed into an old woman right there, before them. It was such a powerful, emotional moment... You even looked like Zankovetska. It was astonishing!
“I have read a lot about her. Well, the spectators may think I did it... There is a big photo of Zankovetska in our theater, where she is wearing a white shawl, that is why we used this detail in the monodrama.”
Kyiv is experiencing a theater boom these days. What about Lviv? Are there many theater-goers?
“We have our own audience who never misses a new production. The interest in theater is high, we can see long lines at the box-offices, and this is a great motivation for working.”
P.S. In December, the Zankovetska company is going on a tour to the capital. They will appear on the stage of the Kyiv Operetta. It has already been arranged that two productions will be shown,
The Courtship of Honcharivka and The Lady of the Camellias — their big stage repertoire. The question of chamber productions is still open. Yet we really wish our spectators were able to see their small format jewels, too.
