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28 WWW. UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 2014 “Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine” by Yara Arts Group at La MaMa Experimental theatre piece about an iconic figure in American history and his unexpected journey to Ukraine. From February 27 to March 9, La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York and Yara Arts Group presented “Captain John Smith Goes to Ukraine.” This experimental theater work, created by poet Bob Holman, performance artist Susan Hwang, Ukrainian musician Julian Kytasty, and director Virlana Tkacz, deals with Capt. Smith's adventures in Eastern Europe circa 1603, where he first met “other” people and gained experience that helped him prepare for dealing with Native Americans as founder of Jamestown. Everyone knows about Pocahontas, but few are aware that shortly before Smith first sailed for Virginia, he was an adventurer in the Mediterranean and fought against the Ottoman Turks. He was captured and sold as a slave. His master, a Turkish nobleman, sent him as a gift to his mistress, who fell in love with him. Taken across the Black Sea, he escaped through what is now Ukraine. He returned to England in 1604, joined the Virginia Company of London in 1606 and set sail for the New World. Smith's autobio g- raphy, the first autobiography in English and pu b- lished in 1630, was the primary source for this play. Although the theatre piece is grounded in historical material, the issues raised in “Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine” find reflection in today’s headlines from Kyiv. The show is a comedy/musical/historical epic- in-an hour with three characters. John Smit h is played by Bob Holman , founder and artistic director of Bowery Poetry Club in New York. Susan Hwang, Bob Holman and Julian Kytasty in Yara Arts Group’s “Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine” Photo by Volodymyr Klyuzko Julian Kytasty in Yara Arts Group’s “Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine” . Photo by Volodymyr Klyuzko Susan Hwang , a Korean- American comic/per- formance artist and accordion player, plays all of Smith's love interests. Prior to this show, Hwang had appeared in Yara Arts Group’s “Scy thian Stones,” at La MaMa in Kyi v and in Kyrgyzstan in 2010. The sound score for “Captain John Smith Goes to Ukraine” is provided by Julian Kytasty , a legendary Ukrain ian traditional musician and one of the world's premie r bandura players who has concertized throughout the Americas and Europe. As Bob Holman explains, “Julian’s work gets to the essence of Ukrainian tradition which, when set against the contemporary immediacy of my own work, results in a new kind of translation. Spoken word tradition has bridged the African griot and hip hop. Working with Julian on the Smith material illuminates a different aspect of this tradition —the connection of Ukrainian ‘d u- ma,’ the autobiography of Smith, and my own co l- loquial contemporary poetry. This mix creates a wide open synthesis, a fresh visioning, for this untold Smith story. My over-the-top love poems fill out the emotional dimension of our piece, while Susan Hwan g’s ironic songs undercut them.” Performed in Ukrainian and English, “Captain John Smith Goes to Ukraine” echoes Smith’s travels across many boundaries. Proje c- tions by Volodymyr Klyuzko with Mikhail Shraga include archival discoveries and beautiful engra v- ings by John Payne from the original edition of Smith’s book, all enlivened with an outrageous a sense of humor.
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