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YARA’S WATERFALL/REFLECTIONS by VIRLANA TKACZ Сцена із вистави "Водоспад/Відблиски". Зліва: Шіґейко Суґа, Юджін Ким, Сесілія Арана, Оксана Бабій, Ніна Матвієнко, стоїть Карен-Анджела Бішоп. Фото Галі Гірняк. Another scence from Waterfall/Reflections. From left: Shigeko Suga, Yunjin Kim, Cecilia Arana, Oksana Babyi, Nina Matvienko; standing: Karen-Angela Bishop. Photo by Halia Hirniak. The first person I actually got to know in Ukraine was Nina Matvienko. I arrived in Kyyiv in December of 1990. I was supposed to look for suitable theatre spaces for Yara’s first production, A Light From the East, which had just had a very successful run at La Mama, the internationally acclaimed theatre in New York, where Yara is a resident company. For some reason my bags did not arrive with me on the flight to Kyyiv. The cus toms lady yelled at me for not having any luggage. My attempts to explain the situation in Ukrainian only pro voked her into tirades in Russian which I didn’t really understand. As I stood there staring at her hair, which was the strangest color of orange I had ever seen on a human head, I realized I would have to survive the next two weeks in Kyyiv in what I was wearing: sweat-pants and sneakers. It was December, cold and gray. The landscape on the way from the airport was — well, depressing. I walked down my first Soviet stairway, pitch black with missing steps, and fell down the stairs. Jet-lagged I stared at a theatre show with happy, danc ing, drunk Cossacks, it was — well, depressing. I wanted to go back to New York immediately. My companion reassured me that I would change my mind when I met the person with whom I was staying. Well, he was right. I was staying with Nina Matvienko. I didn’t think I had arrived with any preconceived notions of what Ukraine would be like, but I guess I had expected to recognize things I had never seen before. And till the moment I met Nina nothing was even vaguely familiar. But Nina was — well, wonderful, and somehow very familiar. Her house reminded me of my mother’s house, her children reminded me of my brothers and sisters. I knew how to talk with her. We stayed up talk ing half the night. I didn’t leave for New York next morn ing. Instead, I began the long process of learning to recognize what was familiar in the very different. That summer I returned to Ukraine with my theatre group. We did our show about Kurbas, opening the week there was a coup in Moscow and Ukraine declared its independence. (See articles in Our Life March & April 1992) We returned to Ukraine in the spring of 1993 with our production of Blind Sight. We worked on the show with Ukrainian actors and performed it at festivals in Kharkiv and Kyyiv, before premiering it at La Mama. (See articles in Our Life September & November 1993). Each time I was in Ukraine I would see Nina, but usually we were both extremely busy. After all, she was ’’the voice of Ukraine,” and my collaborative projects in Ukraine were a handful. We never managed to find the time for an extended conversation. In the spring of 1994, the Yara Arts Group worked in Lviv on our version of Forest Song with the Kurbas Young Theatre. After the show, most of our cast flew to New York out of Lviv, but I had to go to Kyyiv to take 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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