Turning the pages back... March 29, 1864 (03/24/96)

Turning the pages back...

March 29, 1864

The Ruska Besida was a Ukrainian cultural educational club formed in Lviv in 1861 to provide a forum for social interaction and develop a program of literary and musical evenings, lectures and concerts.

In early 1864, the club subsidized the creation of Ruska Besida Theater, the first Ukrainian professional touring theater. On March 29 of that year, the company staged the first Ukrainian language theatrical performance in Lviv, Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovianenko's "Marusia."

As it continued its activity, the RBT was occasionally sponsored by the Galician Diet (parliament), and staged productions throughout Galicia and Bukovyna and toured Poland. After the ban on theater performances was lifted in Russian-ruled Ukraine in 1881, the RBT became instrumental in the development of modern theater over the entire country.

Having begun with a Ukrainian repertoire in populist-realistic style (Ivan Kotliarevsky, Mykola Kropyvnytsky, Panas Myrny), in 1890s the company began staging Ivan Franko's realistic dramas and works by Western European playwrights, such as Friedrich Schiller, Georg Hauptmann, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg as well as that of Russian dramatists Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky and Mykola Hohol (Gogol).

The RBT branched out into opera, offering performances of Charles Gounod's "Faust," Jacques Offenbach's "Les Contes Hoffman," and George Bizet's "Carmen." In 1911, it began performaces of Volodymyr Vynnychenko's psychological dramas.

Many prominent actors appeared on its stage, but none more so than Les Kurbas, arguably Ukraine's best actor and director.

After a hiatus caused by the first world war, the company resurfaced under the name Ukrainska Besida Theater, and in 1921-1924 it became a resident theater in Lviv. It merged with the Lviv Ukrainian Independent Theater in 1924.

Source: "Ukrainska Besida Theater," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993)

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