TOURS
This summer was rich in travels and interesting meetings for the Franko company. They were a great success in Greece, at an international antique drama festival, with their famous production of Kotliarevsky’s Aeneid, performing at 3,000-year-old open air theater. Heavy clouds gathered before the play began and it even rained. They would admit later that everybody got nervous, but then the sky cleared and they performed to an enchanted audience. In fact, they were offered to come again next year provided they brought a new play on an Old Greek theme. Getting ahead of the story, the company is negotiating cooperation with Robert Sturua, a noted Georgian stage director.
In July, the company’s Good Soldier Schweik was a success with the Slavic Bazaar Festival in Vitebsk [Russia], starring the excellent duet of Bohdan Beniuk and Anatoly Khostikoyev.
And, of course, the US tour, the first in the history of the Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater. Their version of Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye der Milchiger conquered the New York and Chicago audiences . Now a look at the play from backstage. Bohdan Stupka, the company’s artistic director and title character, says he will remember the US tour not by heaps of clippings with praising reviews, but by a toy, a little teddy-bear-like man that starts dancing Havah Nahilah once you clap your hands. It is a nice addition to the collection at the actor’s study.
“I’ve long told Serhiy Danchenko that we must take our Tevye to the States,” Mr. Stupka admits. “They have a vast emigre audience, people from the former Soviet Union. In 1994, when I first performed in the Diary of a Madman at La Mama in Manhattan, I noticed their keen interest in the Ukrainian theater. Well, arranging for tours, especially abroad, means a lot of red tape. This time the US tour idea was conceived by Igor Afanasyev, formerly with the Franko company and now in America for ten years, running a TV channel and staging his own productions. We flew as a team of 42 and performed once in Chicago and twice in New York. The organizing committee rented a large audience seating 1,000 and then one seating 1,500 at the Millennium. Every time it was standing room only and 15-20 min. of standing ovation in the end. I must say that there weren’t only Jews in the audience, but also Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and other Americans. We had a very pleasant surprise, being visited by Aleichem’s granddaughter, British writer Bel Kaufman. She came specially to open our tour. A fantastic woman! At 91 she sported spike heels and she flew rather then walked on stage, like a butterfly, wearing white pants and a turquoise blouse. And then she sat very still, watching the play, laughing and crying with the rest. After the performance she looked very excited, talking to actors, taking pictures, and posing with all who wished to have a photo. She said Sholom Aleichem loved Ukraine so much, how he missed it. He died in America, but wanted his remains to be transferred to Ukraine. And there was a very moving letter from Mrs. Zaslawski, granddaughter of the real Tevye immortalized by Aleichem. He did live in Boyarka and was a dairyman. The writer went to Boyarka from Kyiv to rest. They often met and talked. What Aleichem especially liked about the man was his knowledge of the Torah and the Holy Bible. He seemed to know an answer to every question, so many sought his advice. You often feel like talking to a clever person to know his opinion. This is probably why Tevye has remained so popular over the years.
“After every performance people would stay in the audience, asking us about life in Ukraine. Many, especially elderly people, complained they had never got assimilated in America and were longing for their native land; that after watching Tevye they felt as though they had been taken back to their childhood. Taking a stroll in Brighton, we thought there were people we knew all around. We were recognized, asked for autographs, and sold things at a discount. Practically everybody asked us to come again. How can one forget such things?
“We dedicated our Greek and US tours to Oleksandr Danchenko, an excellent stage director, author of the Aeneid and Tevye productions. I am sure that the Ukrainian theater deserves to be known across the world.”
The Franko company will perform in Moscow, November 15-24, as part of the Year of Ukraine in Russia. They will show the best productions dating from different periods, Tevye and Schweik, and the latest premieres Mother, or an Unpalatable Creation and The ABC of the World.
PLANS
Thirteen years ago, the Suzirya Theater was a great success with Valery Shevchuk’s Garden of Divine Songs starring Bohdan Stupka as Hryhory Skovoroda. In the coming season the Franko company will perform The ABC of the World, or the Conversation of Five Travelers about the True Happiness of Life Meaning that Skovoroda is back on stage.
“Regrettably, our classic and his works are little known and very few people live by Skovoroda’s principle,” muses Bohdan Stupka. “There are student societies in Great Britain and Germany, studying works by Skovoroda, this brilliant Ukrainian enlightener, writer, poet, musician, and philosopher. We, lost in the maze of daily routine, let his priceless creations pass by unnoticed. We will mark the 280th anniversary of his birth, December 3, but it won’t be timed to a certain date. I’ve long wanted to present the Skovoroda theme on the Franko stage, but somehow never got around to it. Aleksandr Anurov, a stage director in Moscow, did. Our version of the ABC is not a potpourri on the Skovoroda topic, as in the Suzirya production. It is based on his works. It is a discourse on the essence of life, existence, happiness. Eternal themes; no matter how far ahead man reaches with his technological progress, he must find the time to look into his heart, his soul. The cast includes Petro Panchuk, Vasyl Mazur, Vasyl Basha, Volodymyr Mykolayenko, Ostap Stupka, Oksana Batko, and Tetiana Shliakhova. We expect the premiere toward the end of October.
“The next one will be Moliere’s Tartuffe, staged by Valentyn Kozmenko-Delinde. Another director, Oleksandr Bilozub, is working on a modern play, Oleksandr Denysenko’s Oksana. It is about little-known events in the life of Taras Shevchenko. There are plans to stage the musical Thanks Forever, dramatic fantasias on Alexander Dumas pere written in verse by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (translations by Ivan Drach and Volodymyr Ikonnykov). It will be a new version of The Three Musketeers, 20 Years Later. Playwright Nikolai Kolyada might visit Kyiv. He prefers to stage his works himself. I saw his Ship of Fools at the Sovremennik Theater. Very interesting. I am trying to talk Petro Fomenko into staging Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (Serhiy Danchenko wanted to do it but didn’t live long enough, passing away last year). There are several other interesting plays in our creative portfolio. If we can carry out all our plans, the whole cast will be engaged. At present, we have 44 actors and 40 actresses. It’s an imbalance. We must have 60% male performers, then the women won’t stay idle.”
Bohdan Stupka says that, with the opening of the Lobby Theater, they have another stage for chamber productions. It is also a proving ground for experimenting stage directors and actors. They started with The Overture to a Date, staged by Andriy Prykhodko and transferred from Suzirya to Franko courtesy of Oleksiy Kuzhelny. It was followed by Strindberg’s Father (staged by Oleksandr Bilozub), adapted Lesia Ukrainka’s Lawyer Martian (Oleksandr Myroshnychenko) — it lost its dramatic effect on the big stage and now looks very good at the Lobby Theater. Andriy Prykhodko is rehearsing Heorhy Konysko’s Tragicomedy of Raising from the Dead with Bohdan Stupka playing five different parts.
The Franko company has a new tradition. Musicians play in the lobby before the play. Very interesting, talented performers were “borrowed from the orchestra” so people know what real talent looks like.
The management is faced with the maximum task of finishing construction of the Small Stage to seat 200. The project has been underway for over a decade. Time is running and it can already be considered obsolete; no one builds things like that anywhere any longer.
FILMS
A year ago Bohdan Stupka announced he was taking a timeout and would not appear in any new productions at the theater, playing the old parts, concentrating on creative guidance, looking for interesting plays, inviting stage directors, so the company could start working at its full potential. Judging by the results, he made the right decision. The company is no longer torn by inner conflicts and the ball keeps running, meaning that the artistic director can relax a little and remember that he is an actor in the first place. Now that he has let us in a little on his creative plans at the theater, what about films?
“I am in Pavlo Chukhrai’s A Driver for Vira as General Serov,” admits Bohdan Stupka. “We’d done one-third when the funds ran out. All work stopped and I’m waiting for word that we can proceed. The New Channel is doing a 16-episode serial titled Tomorrow Will Be Tomorrow, directed by Olena Demianenko. I am the Ukrainian oligarch, together with Aleksandr Belyavsky as the Russian oligarch and Mark Rudinstein as the Jewish one. The cast is good, but I don’t know what the result will be like. I’m going to Poland in March. The well-known stage director Jerzy Hoffman is doing A n Old Tale. It’s a historical picture. 9th century setting, paganism, adoption of Christianity, wars, unification of lands. There is an offer from Slovakia, but they want me to come in October. I’ll still be with Hoffman, so I’ll have to say no unless they change the timeframe.”
