"Yarylo's Games" festival hosts international drama troupes (08/30/98)

"Yarylo's Games" festival hosts international drama troupes

by Julie Anne Franko

LVIV - Under the auspices of the Center for International Cultural Initiatives and as part of its "Week of European Culture," the Les Kurbas Theater opened "Yarylo's Games," an international theater festival devoted to "song as an extension of the dramatic act," at its theater in Lviv.

Hosting theaters from Austria, Denmark, Georgia, Latvia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine, the eight-day festival named for the god of spring presented its participants and spectators with workshops, concerts and performances that demonstrated a theatrical diversity of musical technique and methodology.

The festival began with the Kurbas Theater's production of "Grace-given Erodii" on the evening of May 8, and officially opened the following afternoon. The opening ceremonies commenced with the theater leading a songful procession of the festival participants from the Kurbas Theater to the opera house square, where the festival's artistic director, Oleh Drach, brought together participants and Lviv pedestrians.

Running for about 15 minutes, this unrehearsed opening was graced with a Euclidean precision of energy, enthusiasm and talent. The Kurbas Theater's songs from "Marusia Churai" gave way to the folk songs of the Georgian theaters Mtiebi and Mzetamze. And, in the echo of the applause, the members of the Swedish theater Slava arrived, still in their traveling clothes, to render a cappella versions of music from their international repertoire. Accompanying themselves on violin and accordion, the two-person Danish Musik-Teatr Ofyn Veg wove in ancient folk songs, which were followed by the voice-folly singing of Austrian theater duo Tanto.

As promptly as this ceremony began, it dispersed into another procession that led to a specially built stage behind Lviv's Arsenal. Here each of the groups performed again, formally, and this concert ended with Mr. Drach inviting Lviv to a week's worth of theatrical enterprise.

"What is interesting about this festival," observed the Kurbas Theater's artistic director, Volodymyr Kuchynsky, "is how all of these theaters are very different from one another, yet they all have something to contribute to the theme of music use in theater."

The Tanto Theater's two-person production, "The President and I," explored the dynamics of a woman's relationship with a president made of plasticine with whom she is in love. The work used song and music as an equal element with body movement and text, which resulted in a clear and focused picture of a whole theatrical - and universal - understanding of the forces beneath all relationships.

The Ithaca Theater's (Sweden) all-female collective produced a work in progress, "Virtue and Bliss," based on writing of the collectives' diaries. Here everything from first loves to vegetarianism presented itself as text upon which movement and song was either layered or augmented.

The Slava Theater - a parent group to the Ithaca Theater - offered the festival the vital performance, "Wild Voices," a compilation of theatrical effects (medieval lights and torches, interchangeable satiny robe-like costumes) and song. Incidentally, the title "Wild Voices" is a misnomer. While the tones and harmonies of this collective are far-reaching, and arouse the core of what may euphemistically be called "primitive," the collective's voices (and bodies) exude professional training and demonstrate the degree to which song may be used as a component of theatrical expression.

The Riga New Theater (Latvia) brought Lviv an intentionally disturbing production based on Oscar Wilde's "Salomé." Graphic in its use of colors, textures and distortions of reality, this work, which aspired to look at itself through an opium-induced state, was coalesced by the voices of two musicians who underscored the text with the musical motifs of Indian, Japanese, African and Baltic folk music.

The Zurich Young Theater (Switzerland) presented the two-person opera, "Vis-à-vis," a sentimental comedy about the lives of two shy neighbors who share both a bathroom and dreams for the future. This production did not use its song as a means to join theatrical elements: as an opera, the song and text were one, rather than correspondents. What gave the performance a heightened musical theatricalism was the inclusion of the company's pianist on stage - not exclusively as a means for accompaniment, but as an active source of commentary on the work.

The Ukrainian Folk Theater Gerdan, like the Georgian theaters Mtiebi and Mzetamze, served the festival's theme by providing a context for song's use in theater. While visually and aurally distinguished from one another, both performances incorporated the ritualistic origins of song, which blatantly demonstrated song as an extension of a dramatic act. In the instances of both the Ukrainian and Georgian theaters, the rites and passages of life events, such as courtship and marriage, were recreated through the use of occasional song in which the timbre, emotion and energy calibrated and reinforced the life-force of the act.

The two other Ukrainian theaters represented in the festival were Lviv's Theater in a Basket and Kharkiv's Arabesky Theater. The former presented "White Moths, Woven Chains," a mono-drama based on the writings of Vasyl Stefanyk in which the former Kurbas Theater actress Lidia Danylchuk beat out the rhythms and tones of Stefanyk's work through the use of voice and body.

The Arabesky Theater - a young theater of great promise - presented a colorful and sprightly rendition of Ivan Kotliarevsky's "Eneida." The production infused song into the text as a means to explore the work through the potential of its rhythmic energy. In choosing to approach the work as such, it freed itself of being a work of comic stereotype, and like the energy exuded by Ms. Danylchuk's performance (albeit energy from a wholly different vein), the text's underlying resources became uncovered.

Within the context of the festival's goal, the most critically acclaimed work came from the Danish Ofyn Veg Theater's production of "Idyll," a two-person presentation of "Hamlet." From "to be or not to be" to "... we know what we are, but we know not what we may be ... ," this work evolved as an epitome of theater. In selecting various texts from "Hamlet," and splicing them with various songs and song genres (although the primary source for song in this work was Shakespeare's contemporary, John Dowland), Uta Motz's virtuoso performance as Hamlet, Ophelia, the King, et al, against Christian Bredholt's poised director/bass fiddle and accordion player (irony and comedy intended) transported the will and whimsy of Shakespeare's text through the vehicle of players. These players' bodies became the instruments of the text's spirit, while their use of musical instruments and voices became the body for the work's spirit.

The festival came to a close in a loud echo of its opening. Congregating before the Kurbas Theater, festival participants were immersed in the sounds of Sweden's traditional horns, and a prolonged celebration of the music and song of the gathered countries ensued. The event ended with a bonfire torching of Yarylo, the god of spring, for whose spirit the festival is most indebted.

Julie-Ann Franko is associate artistic director and dramaturge of the Les Kurbas Theater. She received her master of fine arts degree in dramaturgy and drama criticism from Yale University.

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