The art exhibit “Stage Settings. 2008 Season,” organized by the Theater Center at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy was made up of works by Kyiv drama production designers. (The author of the project is Andrii Prykhodko and its curators are Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky, Liudmyla Nahorna, and Viktor Baryba.)
Hosted by the Zamostian Art Gallery, the exhibit featured the works of over 30 works of scene designers, so an inquisitive visitor could get an idea of Kyiv’s theater life. Among the items on display were costumes, elements of stage settings, models, photos, photo collages, and sketches of stage settings many of which looked like full-fledged paintings and prints.
The exposition starts with works by young artists (as determined by the organizers) and ends also with their works. This creative range is proof of continuity and the permanent spiral creative self-perfection process.
The sketches of the young artist Natalia Shylo of the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv University for the stage settings for Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs (Les Chaises, 1952) are reminiscent of ROST cartoons with their militant propaganda orientation. The characters look like collage pictures and are made of newspaper columns, just as their costumes are. Information is part and parcel of man’s life; while newspapers provide the bulk of it, this kind of data serves to alter one’s ego and eventually replacing it, leaving little room for soul-searching discussions.
Pylyp Nirod’s stage setting designs for Tennessee Williams’s This Property Is Condemned are characteristically rendered in black and white. This visual dualism is a symbol of one entity merging into another.
Fedir Aleksandrovych, a young but already fairly experienced member of the celebrated Aleksandroych-Dochevsky dynasty, displays his costume designs for Hamlet and sections of stage settings for Two Aspens staged in the Kyiv Youth Theater. What regards Hamlet, the setting is the proper forbidding interior of a medieval castle, with the floor designed as a chessboard of black and white squares. Toward the backdrop is the large black arrow of a giant metronome, an image of the inexorable passage of time. Up front, in the center of the stage is a skull of “poor Yorick,” which serves as a warning. The artist applied a purposefully sketchy technique in designing the costumes. His images are ambiguous, with the emphasis on moods, colors, and onstage emotions.
There is the Baba-Yaga’s mortar from Dva kleny: visitors are itching to get into it in order to find themselves in the wonderland of fairy tales. This fantastic stage setting reminds one of a cabin in a spaceship or the time machine. Aleksandrovych gave vent to his adolescent fantasies here, while at the same time providing the evil apparatus with ironical modern pieces. Here there is a rusty computer screen, a pressure meter with a broken needle, wires, springs, bulbs, a funny rear-view mirror, and a huge magnifying glass mounted on the back of Baba-Yaga’s chair, so she can have a distinct view of whoever occupies it.
Among other items on display are Danylo Taranyn’s stage setting for Ruslana’s Wild Energy concert number. He believes that the “techno” style fits this song’s melody best. The stage settings are made of glass and steel, arranged in a carefully designed and yet chaotic pattern, reminiscent of a mountainous landscape, which is emotionally close to Ruslana’s image as a pop singer.
The Lesia Ukrainka Russian Drama Theater presented its premieres, Marat/Sad (production design by Valentyna Plavun) and Zakhid Sontsia (Sunset, production design by Olena Korchyna) as photo montages. These collages allow one to visualize all the characters and even sense the performance’s rhythm. Here the actual theater and the one in paintings exist within the same space. A similar creative approach, using modern technologies, marks a collection of photos illustrating Les Kurbas Theater’s The Day of Eleonora Nich, Abba and Death, and The Khazar Dictionary, highlighting the special atmosphere of each production.
Oleksii Havrysh’s stage settings for The Witches of Konotop (Kyiv Youth Theater) follows the vertep pattern. Here you see the space conventionally divided into three levels: earth, heaven, and hell. There are birch brooms scattered on the stage, forming a bouquet-like pattern.
Volodymyr Karashevsky’s stage setting model for the Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater’s God’s Tear contains characteristically and arrestingly vivid images, as are his other works. The plot has to do with the tragic events that took place in 1932-33 in Ukraine, and the stage is set with village homes under thatched roofs with gaps through which you can see the stars ever shining in the dark sky. It is only to them that a person can address his cry of despair...
Maria Pohrebniak’s stage settings for the play Vertep staged by the Theater in Podil follows the naive trend. There is an image of the Mother of God decorated with fabrics and paper flowers. The Virgin looks like a kind peasant woman; the scythe of Death, decorated with children’s wooden toys, is leaning against the throne of King Herod, as a philosophic symbol of the confrontation between life and death.
Mykhailo Hryn’s stage settings for the opera Zaporozhets’ za Dunaiem (Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube) are designed using a wicker basket pattern. This basket is upended, with no bottom, creating an ideal setting for the plot, with the easily identifiable characters: Cossack Karas with a bottle of vodka and his quarrelsome wife Odarka brandishing a ram against the backdrop of a fence decorated with jugs and rushnyks (hand-embroidered towels).
The exhibition’s poster “Stage Settings. 2008 Season.” by Borys Firtsakt shows the curtain of a theater. This is a metaphor pointing to a miracle that is performed before the audience every time the curtain is rung up.
