DATELINE NEW YORK: Experimental theater from Lviv (03/24/96)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Experimental theater from Lviv

by Helen Smindak

The 174-seat theater building at 3 Les Kurbas St. in Lviv, near the Ethnographic Museum in the center of the city, is the professional home of an intrepid group of actors, drama students and production assistants who have been staging unique productions for the past eight years under the direction of Volodymyr Kuchynsky.

The company has been experimenting with new methods and drama techniques to achieve a close relationship between actors and audience. To do this, it employs a number of elements - dance, gesture, movement, sound, light, texture and audience participation.

For the second time since the group's founding in March 1988, Mr. Kuchynsky and fellow members of the Les Kurbas Theater are spending several weeks in New York, this time under the auspices of the Harriman Institute and Columbia University's Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies.

Heralded as one of the most innovative and acclaimed drama groups in Ukraine, the company presented "Games for Faust" at Columbia's Miller Theater last month. (See review in The Weekly, March 17.) The play, based on Dostoyevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment," won awards for best play at the Khersones Games International Festival in Sevastopil in 1994 and the Golden Lion International Festival in Lviv in 1995. The company itself was voted the best Ukrainian theater at the 1995 international Les Kurbas Conference in Kyiv.

This weekend, after a sequence of workshops, rehearsals and performances that took this avant-garde troupe around New York City, to Soyuzivka, Philadelphia and some New Jersey centers, the group returns to the Columbia campus with a performance of "Grateful Erodiy" (March 22, Miller Theater, Broadway at 116 Street). The play is a staging of a parable by the 18th century Ukrainian philosopher Hryhoriy Skovorada, dealing with the issues of proper upbringing, altruism and the true nature of happiness.

Ballet, music, recitation, lighting, color and art figure prominently in the production. Costumes are by Nina Lapchyk of Kyiv, whose textile designs, as it happens, are on display at The Ukrainian Museum through April 14.

Mr. Kuchynsky and two of the actors, Natalka Polovynka and Andriy Vodychev (who gave sensitive performances in "Games for Faust"), found time recently to meet with this writer and share some insights into their work. Soft-voiced, eyes bright with intensity, they spoke in mellifluous Ukrainian as they described their abiding passion: the Les Kurbas Theater of Lviv.

The company consists of eight actors, all in their 30s; all but two are natives of Lviv or the Lviv region.

Ms. Polovynka, a graduate of the Lviv Music Conservatory, was born in the Vinnytsia region; Mr. Vodychev comes from the Crimea and studied at the Kharkiv State Theater actors' studio.

Mr. Kuchynsky, the artistic director, worked as an actor at the Sumy Theater of Musical Comedy and Lviv's Zankovetska National Theater, and studied acting with Anatoliy Vasiliev in Moscow. He co-founded the theater with a fellow member of the Zankovetska Theater, Oleh Drach, a dynamic actor who has won best actor awards at two international theater festivals.

Their colleagues are Tetyana Kaspruk, an alumna of the Zankovetska Theater who joined the Les Kurbas Theater in 1988, and Oksana Tsymbal, Yurko Mysak and Oleh Tsiona, who were members of the Les Kurbas Theatre drama studio before joining the company as full-fledged actors.

With them on the U.S. trip, in charge of lighting and sets, is set designer Andriy Humeniuk. At home in Lviv are 10 assistants who work behind the scenes.

As I chat with my guests - the director, bearded, dark-eyed; the poetic-looking Mr. Vodychev, shoulder-length hair framing a sensitive face; and the slender Ms. Polovynka, her elegant features highlighted by high cheekbones - I learn that the company developed from a small group and began life as the Lviv Youth Theater-Drama Studio in March 1988. It was officially designated the Les Kurbas Theater in October 1990.

"That was like a reward that was given to us by the authorities; the name is renowned, and we felt highly honored," observes Mr. Kuchynsky. Les Kurbas is the brilliant Ukrainian theater director who worked in Kyiv in the 1920s and 1930s; he perished in a Soviet concentration camp sometime after 1937.

For the first two years, the company had no quarters. Sometime after the group settled in the theater it now calls home, it learned that the building had served the famous Les Kurbas Theater Company. It is a fitting coincidence, for there are distinct parallels between the Kurbas and the Kuchynsky concepts and treatment of theater.

The new company has been troubled by two major problems: censorship and a lack of funds. Its premier production in 1988, "The Garden of Non-Dissolving Sculptures," based on two works by leading contemporary poet Lina Kostenko, was forbidden because it had not been previewed by censors, as Soviet rules dictated. To get around the ban, the company refunded money to ticket holders and invited the public to attend performances billed as "rehearsals."

Later that same year, there were some problems in presenting unpublished works of the dissident poet Vasyl Stus. Theatergoers insisted on seats for Friday's performance (the company stages productions on weekends only), refusing to buy tickets for Saturday and Sunday performances because (they explained) the authorities would most certainly prohibit any Stus work after the first night.

Once Ukraine became independent, it was possible to undertake Dostoyevsky or any work the company wished to stage. "Now only our financial problems smother us," Mr. Kuchynsky declares with a sigh.

Company members shrug off any suggestion that actors are worse off than other citizens, pointing out that life is difficult for everyone in economically depressed Ukraine. As a professional theater company, the Les Kurbas Theater receives support from the regional administration, although this is minimal and just enough for the theater to continue to exist.

The company feels it is a pity that civic authorities and the Ministry of Culture do not have the means to assist a group that officially represents the Ukrainian theater.

Mr. Kuchynsky explains: "Our theater is the only Ukrainian-speaking theater that represents Ukraine at international festivals. From that aspect, it would be desirable for us to produce more plays. We stage one production each year or every one-and-a-half to two years. We simply do not have the money to do more. When we are invited to a festival, the costs of our trip are financed by the government. We go to the festival, we perform, we return, and that's the end of it."

He says he believes "something should be done so that groups that represent Ukraine might have the means to work at full strength and stage first-rate productions."

Although the state pays for the actors' subsistence, funds for set decoration, lighting, costumes and other theatrical expenses must be found elsewhere. Financing is required for the company's current project to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of poetess Lesia Ukrainka, specifically "The Sky-Blue Rose" and "The Stone Master," both already in rehearsal.

What keeps the company alive and functioning is the assistance proferred by organizations like the Soros Foundation (which financed the U.S. trip), and donations from individuals, business firms and organizations (in the U.S., the Ukrainian Journalists' Association and the Ukrainian Language Society). For the U.S. sojourn, Ukrainian Americans are providing accommodations, meals, transportation, contacts and other assistance. Company members say they are particularly grateful to Olha Kuzmowycz and Yuriy Tarnawsky.

Their spirits are uplifted, report the actors and director, by the response of audiences everywhere, in Ukraine, Russia, Poland and the U.S. Mr. Vodychev remarks. "We have fans in Kyiv, and we are very popular in Kharkiv; they're awaiting our next visit. The public was entranced by our performance of 'The Court of Henry III' and sat through four hours without anyone leaving the theater."

Language poses no barrier to understanding the productions of the Les Kurbas Theater, according to Mr. Kuchynsky and his colleagues. Theatergoers who respond to the mood and atmosphere of a performance, listening "with heart and soul," seem to understand the plot and characterizations better than Ukrainian-speaking patrons who absorb every word of dialogue.

Participation by the company in annual festivals and international projects bring rewards. Prizes and awards are earned for outstanding performances, and there are opportunities to exchange ideas and learn new teaching methods that can be used to change the old repertoires and stereotyped methodologies still prevalent in Ukraine.

"Whether it's Grotovski [in Italy] or Vasiliev [in Russia] or Anne Bogart [of the New York-based, Saratoga International Theater Institute] or the Yara Arts Group [in New York], all these exchanges of knowledge and experience are important," Mr. Kuchynsky declares. "This knowledge can be amassed in Ukraine so that young people who work in our theater and other theaters can benefit from it."

For Ms. Polovynka and Mr. Vodychev, the workshops conducted by the Les Kurbas Theater are extremely vital, and they offer their views on this subject.

Mr. Polovynka observes that the training workshops which are part of the theater's activity (workshops, rehearsals, performances) provide a way "to achieve some kind of dramaturgy, to find oneself as an actor and as an individual, and also to find a common language with actors from other theaters. Training workshops enable us to associate on an international level."

Mr. Vodychev adds his evaluation: "Workshops are necessary both for the working actors, to check on the development of their own interpretations and expressions and to determine whether they are still on the right course, as well as for the development of the young actors who come to our theater."

A final question from me, about the future of the Les Kurbas Theater, brings a thoughtful answer from Mr. Kuchynsky: "The future of the theater depends on how serious we are, how responsible we are, how we apply ourselves to build a theater that is a living culture."

As I leave the conference room, I overhear the threesome discussing a newly scheduled engagement - a performance of "Games for Faust" in Maplewood, N.J., on March 31.

I stop to jot a memo in my notebook, not the Maplewood date (I've already seen "Faust") but a reminder to myself: "Drop in at 3 Les Kurbas St. on next trip to Lviv."

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