Finalist stage directors of the theatrical program “Taking the Stage 2017” will present their ambitious projects, and a British-Ukrainian jury will select three winners who will be able to carry out their project on the professional stage from November 2017 until March 2018.
“Taking the Stage” is an annual theater program of the British Council in Ukraine that offers emerging directors and Ukrainian theatres an opportunity to stage original and socially relevant artistic work with mentoring support from some of the best UK and Ukraine theatres, i-pro.kiev.ua reports. Now in its third year, “Taking the Stage” has worked with some of the best UK and Ukrainian theatres: London’s Young Vic, Newcastle’s Live Theatre, Hull’s Truck Theatre, and Cardiff’s Sherman Cymru. In Ukraine, the program runs in partnership with Teatralna Platforma NGO.
Incidentally, in the first year of the program, young Ukrainian director Olga Turutia-Prasolova from Kharkiv directed David Harrower’s Knives in Hens at Ivan Franko Theatre in Kyiv. A simple plot about breathtaking relationships between a young woman, a farmer, and a miller raises the question of the knowledge that changes awareness and of man’s search for the harmony of being (pictured). One of the finalists of the prestigious British Linbury Prize, the UK-based stage designer Minglu Wang, designed the first Ukrainian production (put on by Yevhen Khudzyk) of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in the Lviv Les Kurbas Theater.
Last year, the program supported four new productions in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Sievierodonetsk based on the works of contemporary British playwrights.
