The foundation’s goals and objectives were in the cultural development field, and foremost of them were supporting theatrical art, helping individual theaters, actors and other artists, The Day was told by Director General of the Maria Zankovetska National Academic Ukrainian Drama Theater Andrii Matsiak. The most important objective is to repair the theater’s notoriously dilapidated building, which the institution’s employees themselves call “this green of its age and knee-deep in the Poltva River ruin of a building.” People talk of its comprehensive restoration for more than a dozen years already.
“Of course, the greatest share of the restoration burden must be shouldered by the government,” Matsiak says, “but private benefactors should get involved, too.”
“And he is right,” the theater’s art director Fedir Stryhun believes, “because should we rely on the government only, Lviv could just find itself without the Zankovetska Theater one day.”
The theater’s employees are often recalling now the events of 1997, when Lviv Brewery raised its product’s price by three kopecks a liter with the consent of the then city mayor Vasyl Kuibida and transferred the money so received to the account of the theater. Close to 230,000 hryvnias had been collected in this way, a very respectable sum for the late 1990s period, and the section of the building that was in need of most urgent repair was saved.
Stryhun was appointed chairman of the newly reactivated foundation. He recalls words of Puzyr, the main character of Karpenko-Kary’s play The Master: “Where do they get those honest people? All are just stealing all the time. I met just one honest man, and he is a German.” However, Stryhun promises to follow the Ukrainian Catholic University’s model and account for expenditures so that donors and the wider public may know how every kopeck of the donations was spent.
The foundation has already organized a fundraising concert featuring the children’s ensemble Veseli Cherevychky, male vocal formation Pikkardiiska Tertsia, Lviv Opera soloist Oleh Lykhach, virtuoso violinist and a finalist of the Ukraine Has Got Talent competition Oleksandr Bozhyk et al. Donations were also collected in donation boxes.
Kateryna and Viktor Yushchenko were among the first to donate, sending a 5,000-hryvnia certificate to the city, and their gift was announced during the concert.
