The finalists of “Taking the Stage,” theater program for directors by British Council, are about to present their own vision of contemporary British plays, translated into Ukrainian, at Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center.
In June and July, the British Council organized a contest for Ukrainian theaters and young directors (42 applications had been submitted; the expert group selected the Top 10 to stage one of five contemporary British plays: The Pitmen Painters, Lungs, Under the Blue Sky, Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone, and Blackbird). According to the organizers, the pieces proposed for the contest have been written and shown in British theaters over the last 15 years and has attained high marks from critics and viewers, which demonstrate their successful theatrical history in the UK and relevance to the Ukrainian audience.
Now the ten finalists of the competition will present their creative perspective of the selected pieces featuring actors from the theater, which has submitted the relevant application.
The Forum will be initiated by Roza Sarkisian, who will present her reading of Blackbird together with the actors of Kharkiv Theatre for Children and Youth. The theater connoisseurs are not going to miss out on the theater experiment by Tamara Trunova, who chose Under the Blue Sky (National Operetta). The mini-festival’s curtains will close after Vlada Belozorenko’s presentation of Lungs in cooperation with her colleagues from Kyiv Youth Theater. By the way, this play is a favorite of the competition. Yevhen Merzliakov at Luhansk Drama Theatre (Sievierodonetsk) and Dmytro Zakhozhenko at New Drama Theater on Pechersk (Kyiv) are also going to show their versions of the work.
“The leading roles are rehearsed by Viktoria Tabachuk and Oleksandr Sokolov of Youth Theater,” Belozorenko told to The Day. “The play Lungs is about a young couple who has decided to have a baby – but it turns out that doing so means taking the responsibility and abandoning the convenient way of life; moving out of the comfort zone – and this act is one of a mature adult person...”
The shows will mark the debut of these plays in Ukraine and will present an opportunity for our audience to get acquainted with the contemporary British drama. The jury will name four winners; the bonus for winning will be the opportunity to add the young director’s production to the repertoire of a professional theater.
