The group has marked the theater’s 160th anniversary by touring cities in Ukraine and also performing the play Hutsul Year at the Edinburgh Fringe International Festival. It was also given the status of an academic theater. The anniversary festivities ended with a large-scale artistic event — the First Nationwide Theater Festival “Kolomyia Performances.”
The Ivano-Frankivsk Franko Musical Drama Theater, Drohobych Lviv Oblast Music Drama Theater, Kyiv Municipal Theater, Shevchenko Ternopil Ukrainian Drama Theater, Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema, and Television also performed at the festival. The jury was headed by Rostyslav Kolomiets, a corresponding member of the Arts Academy of Ukraine.
The festival program was diverse. So, the play Solodka Darusia adapted from the novel by Maria Matios by the Ivano-Frankivsk Franko Theater (stage version by the director Rostyslav Derzhypolsky and songs directed by Natalia Polovynka) tells about the events that took place in Bukovyna and Galicia in 1930s through the 1980s. The fate of little Darusia, who became an involuntary culprit of her family’s ruin, is projected by the theater both upon the fates of generations who experienced these events and those who view them in the distance of time.
The Kyiv-based playwright Tetiana Ivashchenko in the play The Mistery of Existence presented the personality of Ivan Franko from an unusual angle, not an “eternal revolutionary” or a fiery “stonemason,” but a restless, suffering man who is able to say sadly, “Why do you come to me in my dreams?” The duet play Mistery of Existence staged by the Drohobych Theater (directed by Oleksandr Korol) presented a family dialogue of the great writer Olha Khoruzhynska (Korol’s wife), but in a down-to-earth interpretation — merely communication of a man and a woman. Alla Shkodnina-Khoruzhynska subtly played the female part. And the audience could see a psychological duel, an offence felt by the unloved wife, and her gradual regeneration from the husband’s friend into his enemy. A wall of misunderstanding prevented Khoruzhynska from reaching Franko’s genius whereas he could do not let either his wife or other women he loved into his soul.
Family relationships were also in the focus of the comedy Quartet for Two by Anatolii Krum from the Shevchenko Ternopil Theater (directed by Viacheslav Zhyla), but its evens unfold in a different time field and different conditions. Although passions are high here as well, they are in the manner of the Krivoe Zerkalo (Distorting Mirrow) TV Show. Therefore the audience does not worry much, watching ruination of the family of Olena and Yevhen, who has decided, at the age of 60, to find a young wife for himself instead of the old one. What has emerged from this plot is a simple comedy of situations in which everything is clear and transparent.
The playwright Neda Nezhdana has defined the genre of the play Taras Bulba staged by the Kyiv Municipal Theater as a love musical. The play is based on one of the subplots of Mykola Hohol’s (Nikolai Gogol’s) work: the love between Andrii and a young Polish lady. Taras Bulba has a plenty of characters, thus creating the scope of confrontation, struggle, and war between nations. Ivan Nebesny’s music is full of bright emotions, establishes an intensive rhythm, and conveys the energy of irreconcilability and passion. Valerii Nevedrov, who is both the set designer and the stage manager, used video images to help the audience feel the width of Ukrainian steppe. Contrasted with the beauty are the actions of people, with their unbridled desire to their own truth by fire and sword.
Vasyl Druk, a young stage manager and a student at the Karpenko-Kary University offered his original interpretation of Where the Wind Blows, a little known play by the Ukrainian classic Stepan Vasylchenko.
The grand-prix of the festival went to its hosts for the play Vii by Hohol (adapted for stage and directed by Serhii Pavliuk). Yurii Polek, who played Khoma, won the Best Male Part Award. The key to the theater’s interpretation of Hohol’s famous novel was suggested by Serhii Rydvanetsky’s set design. The stage is a wooden floor made of crossed boards, which the characters tread with fear and all the evil spirits either “fall through” or suddenly “emerge” from the space between the boards.
The multiple dimensions of the stage’s space offered interesting and unexpected opportunities to the actors. Pavliuk staged Vii as a parable about man’s life path on earth. When young student Khoma leaves for vacations, falling through and stumbling over the boards, he appears to be going through a quagmire of his desires, temptations, and life definitions. The circle, which Khoma drew around himself hoping to defend himself from demons and vampires, is interpreted as the presence of the kind of spirituality that can be attained through prayer and moral purity. Vii is rich in image metaphors. One can contemplate the ingenious associations and solve them like a kind of a crossword.
