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OCTOBER A Look at the Past and the Present This year marks the 59th anniversary of the death of Les Kurbas, long recognized as the father of avant-garde Ukrainian theater. Bom in Sambir, Halychyna in 1887 and educated in Vienna, Kurbas began his brilliant career as actor, director, and teacher ju st prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In the early 1920’s, historical and political changes in the world around him convinced Kurbas that theatre was a powerful instrument, one that could captivate and influence audiences with ideas that could inspire and motivate great passions and great deeds. It was this belief that inspired the boldly innovative and creative experimentation that Kurbas’ work is best known for. Unfortunately, this same belief led to conflicts with Soviet authorities who were adamantly opposed to theatrical productions that deviated from the universally prescribed Soviet realism. Les Kurbas epitomized the creative spirit that rebelled against that prescription and, accordingly, suffered the consequences. In 1922, Kurbas founded the Berezil Artistic Association. Located in Kyiv from 1922 to 1926 and then in Kharkiv from 1926 to 1933, the Berezil Artistic Association’s six studios and staff of directors soon became the focal point of modem Ukrainian theatre. In Kyiv, Kurbas concentrated on producing new interpretations of world classics and Western European expressionist drama. In Kharkiv, his work centered around productions of new plays by Mykola Kulish. This last, in particular, was abhorrent to Soviet authorities who, in October 1933, dismissed Kurbas from his post as director of Berezil and subsequently banned his work in Soviet Ukraine. In December, Les Kurbas was arrested, condemned as a nationalist and counter-revolutionary, and sentenced to imprisonment in the Solovets Islands. Though no one is certain of the exact date of his death, it is presumed to be October 15, 1942. Following in the footsteps of the great Les Kurbas is a Ukrainian-American woman bom in New Jersey in 1952. The founder of the Yara Arts Group (1990), Virlana Tkacz has proved to be an innovative and creative theater director, one who believes, as Kurbas did, that good theater engages and captivates an audience and forbids passive viewing. It is fitting therefore that one of Tkacz’s earliest works was A Light From the East (a production based on the diary of Les Kurbas and the poetry of P. Tychyna) and that she was co-founder of the International Kurbas Society. Yara Arts Group, like the Berezil Artistic Association, derives its strength from innovation and experimentation and never shying away from the unknown or unfamiliar. Tkacz relies on tradition as the springboard for non-traditional creativity. Thus, old village wedding songs are juxtaposed with fantasy lighting and multi-lingual chanting. The group performs in Ukraine as readily as in New York. Tkacz’s frequent collaborator in translating the works of modem Ukrainian poets is an African-American woman named Wanda Phipps; Yara actors have performed with the Buryat National Theatre. Virlana Tkacz has conducted theater workshops and presented lectures in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, the Yalta Pedagogical College, the University of Manitoba, Harvard, Yale, and the East Siberian Institute of Arts in Ulan Ude. She is as well-known in the Ukrainian-American community as she is in Ukraine and has friends and acquaintances within the contemporary Ukrainian literary and theatrical communities in both worlds. One of her most recent collaborative endeavors was the Nova Nomada series, a unique collage of events planned and executed with Julian Kytasty and Eugene Hutz. The series featured music, poetry, and arts “from New York’s Emerging Ukrainian Art Underground,” performed at selected venues. It sparked considerable interest among Ukrainian-American youth, whose absence from traditional community events has long concerned community leaders. An unpretentious and entertaining writer, Virlana Tkacz is also prolific translator. A Hundred Years o f Youth, a bilingual anthology of 20th century Ukrainian poetry published in Lviv (2000), includes thirty translations by Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Yara Arts Group will be performing excerpts from the newly published anthology on October 27, 2001, at an event co-sponsored with the Office of Community Outreach Services of the New York Public Library. Ms. Tkacz has contributed several articles to O ur Life. They include Yara’s Waterfall/Reflections (July-August, 1995), Virtual Souls in Siberia (January, 1997, At Home in a Poem (July-August, 1997), and Visit to Utoropy (November 2000). 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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