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IN THE LIGHT The American and Ukrainian participants of Yara Arts Group’s IN THE LIGHT directed by Virlana Tkacz in Kiev summer 1991. Photo credit: Vasyl Artuchenko. Американці і Українці — учасники Мистецької групи "Яра” у виставі "У світлі". В другому ряді четверта зліва — режисер Вірляна Ткач. Київ, 1991 р. Фото Василя Артюшенка. I first saw Ukraine just over a year ago. In December, a few days after my show A LIGHT FROM THE EAST finished its run at La Mama Theatre in New York, I stepped off a plane in Kiev. I can’t say my first impres sions were overwhelming or even positive. It was cold. Aeroflot lost my luggage, so I had only the clothes I was wearing, plus a handbag full of pictures from my show in New York. The customs lady screamed at me because I didn’t have any bags. The streets and hallways were dark; the shows I saw in Kiev were bizarre. I wanted to go home. Instead, they put me on a train to Kharkiv. For us who were born in America, the search for our homeland is a quest in our imaginzations, in our hearts. The first trip to Ukraine challenges this under standing. I was in Kharkvi for only two days in December, but it turned my idea of home inside out. Standing in the muddy courtyard of the Slovo Building in Kharkiv I saw Les Kurbas work and Pavlo Tychyna write. I heard Mykola Khvylyovyi’s suicidel shot. My show at La Mama used Kurbas’ diaries and Tychyna’s poetry to explore the dream of experimental theatre, the dream of creat ing a new world on stage. We had created a new theatre place by interweaving our own dreams with the dreams of the Ukrainian avant-garde from the 1920s. In New York these people had enchanted me through the pages of books, but they had lived in Kharkiv. This place was full of their presence, their energy. Passages of the diaries came into focus as we walked down the streets or stood on the stage of the Berezil where Kurbas worked, (now the Shevchenko Theatre in Kharkiv). As I talked about Kurbas with Roman Cherkashyn, the last of Kurba’s actors, the past spoke to me. I had come home — into the night. I came to Ukraine the second time in summer of 1991, and I brought with me a very unusual group of people — my theatre troup, the Yara Arts Group. Yara is made up of young Americans of various ethnic back grounds, who had created A LIGHT FROM THE EAST at La Mama. We were invited to Ukraine with this show and we decided to expand the play to include local actors. Together we would create a new bilingual ver sion called IN THE LIGHT. Ukrainian theatre groups which took part in our project were: the Budmo Theatre Studio in Kiev, the Kurbas Center in Kharkiv and the Molodizhni Theatre in Lviv. Yara’s trip to Ukraine was made possible by the generous support of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, the Ukrainian National Association, Self-Reliance FCU (NY), Shev chenko Scientific Society, Veselka Coffee Shop and over 80 friends of Yara in US and Canada. I arrived in Kiev mid-July with the small group that would help me conduct theatre workshops. Our team included: Shona Tucker, an actress of African American heritage who played one of the major parts in our piece and had learned to speak some Ukrainian, Adrian Iwa- chiv, a musician from Toronto and our stage manager, Dorian Yurchuk from New York. We conducted theatre workshops in three cities Kiev, Lviv and Kharkiv. The workshops examined the nature of poetry in perfor mance. They also allowed us to choose the Ukrainian actors for our show from the participants and prepared us for the collaborative work. Our first workshops in Kiev were real testing grounds in communication, Ukrainian actors work in a different theatrical environment and in a very different style. We didn’t know if we could find a common ground. I had to 18 “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 1992 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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