This year there were almost no scandals or protests over the Pectoral Prize. For the first time in the 13-year-long history of this prize, experts and the members of the organizing committee worked in a concerted fashion AT all three stages — watching all 56 Kyiv-based premieres, deciding on contenders, and finalizing the list of 16 nominees.
After a prolonged absence from artistic competition, the Lesia Ukrainka Russian Drama Theater was high on the list of prospective winners. The organizers admitted there were some disputes, but the groups of three nominees announced at a press conference sparked no media protests. Last year the opinions of experts and the committee differed so radically that there was talk of canceling the prize.
Vying for the best production prize are Quantity by the Lesia Ukrainka Theater and Cyrano de Bergerac and Romeo and Juliet by the Dnipro Left Bank Theater. Incidentally, Romeo and Juliet is being nominated in other categories: best direction (Oleksiy Lysovets), best male actor (Akhtem Seitablayev), best supporting roles (Dmytro Lukyanov and Olesia Zhurakovska), and best acting debut (Olha Lukyanenko).
New nominations were added: best musical concept for which V. Nazarov’s Cinderella (Wheel Theater) and O. Skrypka’s Natalka Poltavka (Ivan Franko Theater) are competing. Vying for best scenery and costumes are Olena Bohatyriova for My Beginning Is in My Ending (Young Theater), Mykhailo Frenkel for Forest Song (Children’s Theater), and Andriy Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky for Solo-Mea (Ivan Franko Theater).
There was one fly in the ointment. According to the head of the experts’ group Hanna Veselovska, when the Beniuk-Khostikoyev Theater Company learned before the third stage that there would be no art project nomination this year, they said they would bow out of the awards. But since The Black Sheep had already gone through the selection filter, their play was left on the list. It is vying for “Best Musical Production” together with My Fair Lady by the Operetta Theater and Faust by the National Opera of Ukraine, as well as for most refined production (choreographer Dmytro Karakuz) and for best acting debut (Yulia Vdovenko as Joan of Arc).
Veselovska said that the experts, including theater specialists, critics, and journalists, and organizing committee members chose 14 nominees, while two special prizes were to be confirmed only by the Kyiv Pectoral committee.
When Oleksandr Bystrushkin, chief of the Kyiv City Administration’s Culture and Art Department, announced that Ihor Bezhin, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts, Serhiy Yefremov, artistic director of Kyiv’s Puppet Theater, and Olena Palchun, senior editor at the National Television Channel of Ukraine, were being nominated for their contribution to theatrical art, no one objected.
But nominating the Lesia Ukrainka Russian Drama Theater for “Event of the Year” surprised some in the media: first of all, there were no other competitors, and, second, while the Kyiv Pectoral is awarded for artistic achievements, in this case it was being honored “for a principled position,” i.e., politics is at work here.
Perhaps it would have been better to honor the theater’s artistic director Mykhailo Reznykovych some other way and award “Event of the Year” to someone else for truly artistic achievements, not for the exhausting “marathon” of lawyers and spin campaigns waged by politicians of all stripes, who used the theater as a podium for making statements. The Day asked Mr. Bystrushkin to comment on this controversial nomination.
“We must stick together. The Lesia Ukrainka Theater troupe and Reznykovych personally have passed a serious test. I have been in theater since 1970, and in all these years no other theater company has ever defended its civic position in such a courageous, dignified, and concerted manner.
“The months-long conflict between the theater and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism proved that things are not so simple in our life. We can only win if we are united. I am extrapolating the situation in their troupe onto the entire theatrical community. Although the experts’ group opposed awarding this nomination to the Russian Drama Theater, after a majority vote the organizing committee ruled to give the award to this theater. We are honoring them for its principled and uncompromising attitude.”
