New York theatre director of Ukrainian origin Virlana Tkacz has come full circle. Years ago, when she worked towards her graduate degree, an advisor suggested she find a “quick and easy topic” for a part of her thesis.
Perhaps there was a Ukrainian theatre director that wasn’t well-known and little had been written about them, he said.
Little did Tkacz know that her advisor’s suggestion would lead to a years-long exploration of Les Kurbas, the experimental theatre director who worked in Kyiv in the 1920’s, and whose life would be a metaphoric launching pad for her own career.
“I remembered that my grandfather had talked about someone he had met at the University of Vienna. His name was Les Kurbas,” recalls Tkacz. “I went to the library and was real happy to find only two books on him. I could read them and throw something together in a snap.”
She has used this kernel of opportunity to grow first into a university paper and then to break new artistic ground in theater. Her early shows heavily featured Ukrainian themes: “Explosions” interwove documentary material from the Chornobyl nuclear accident and explored society’s ambivalence to technological power.
Then, there were “Blind Sight” based on the life of blind writer Vasyl Yeroshenko and “Forest Song,” rooted in Lesia Ukrainka’s work of the same name.
Much of her expression has come through the Yara Arts Group, a troupe Tkacz founded 20 years ago, and finds its home at the internationally-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. Over the years, Tkacz has evolved into one of America’s most innovative theatre directors, as well as a conveyor of cultures unknown to many in the West, both through plays and in a recently published book called “Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation.”
From left: Susan Hwang, Ainura Kachkinbek kyzy and Maria Sonevytsky in Yara Arts Group’s performance of ‘Scythian Stones.’ (Margaret Morton)
Born in Newark to Ukrainian parents, Tkacz attended a Ukrainian-language school as did other children of Ukrainian immigrants. But unlike many who eventually cast off their roots, Tkacz, who speaks fluent Ukrainian, immersed herself in it and grew to love Ukrainian literature.
It was Kurbas and the world he inhabited, however, which proved to be the starting point for Tkacz’s career. Through his theatre groups, Young Theater and Berezil, Kurbas broke new ground in Ukraine staging political and philosophical plays as opposed to purely entertainment shows.
“Writing the thesis on Kurbas, it’s all connected to the multicultural stuff,” said the 58-year-old Tkacz of her work. “I do what I do because I grew up in Newark [New Jersey] where everyone spoke another language.”
Through Yara, Tkacz has created avant-garde plays that have been called a “luscious experience” and “what theatre should be and rarely is” by some of New York’s toughest critics.
In 1991, she and Yara’s actors had put together a show titled “A Light from the East,” which incorporated writing from Kurbas’ diaries, as well as the poetry of Pavlo Tychyna, Ukraine’s premier writer in the 1920’s.
Working on a shoe-string budget, Tkacz brought 14 actors from the U.S. and Canada to then- Soviet Ukraine to perform the play. The timing couldn’t have been more ironic; the play was shown in Kyiv during the week of the attempted Soviet coup in 1991 and played to standing-room-only audiences in the capital and in Lviv.
It also proved to be a fitting tribute to Kurbas, who like many other intellectuals and artists was destroyed by Josef Stalin in the 1930’s.
Part of Tkacz’s mastery is that her productions are original, collaborative efforts where everyone is a part of the creative process. Instead of a script, Tkacz starts with a kernel of an idea and then grows the production from there. “It’s more like gluing things together,” said Tkacz of her directing style.
When asked, Ukraine’s vocal treasure Nina Matvienko said that Tkacz is unlike anyone she’s ever worked with in her homeland. “Virlana gives us a little idea and we should find ourselves in this,” said Matvienko, who performed in Tkacz’s latest production, Scythian Stones. It premiered in Kyiv and New York earlier this year. “She supports, she pushes…This [directing style] is not characteristic in our region.”
The collaboration between actors and musicians is one reason why Tkacz has been able to break through the language barrier. Her productions are international in that they are multilingual and understandable to a wide audience because of visual and musical effects.
Tkacz has increasingly moved away from her Ukrainian roots by incorporating or focusing on other cultures in her work. “Waterfall Reflections,” for instance, was created with Matvienko and explored notions of identity in a changing world and wove together family histories, myths, ancient songs and contemporary poetry by Ukrainian and American women.
In 1996, Tkacz started working with indigenous Buryat artists from Siberia, which led to the creation of six original pieces on the region’s legends, shamans and Mongols.
Tkacz undertakes extensive cultural exploration, going sometimes to extreme limits to understand other peoples and their heritage, said Kenzhegul Satybaldieva, one of Kyrgyzstan’s most famous performers. Satybaldieva played the title role in Yara’s “Janyl” production in 2007 and was a lead character in Scythian Stones.
When “Janyl” was being constructed, she and Tkacz traveled on an old Soviet bus “down torturous passes” to the Chinese-Kyrgyz border to see the area where Janyl Myrza lived. A real figure who became a legend, Myrza was a woman warrior; her story has been handed down for generations in Kyrgyzstan.
“The Kyrgyz soldiers saw us and wanted to detain us,” Satybaldieva recalled. But after hearing about the purpose of the trip, they ended up accompanying the group on its research trip.
Despite her other-culture explorations, Kurbas remains close to Tkacz’s heart. She has spent recent weeks traveling around the U.S. and Canada promoting “Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation.” While the book explores Kyiv as a theatrical capital and the artistic production of its many diverse groups, Kurbas remains at its heart.
“I am still deep into this topic that I thought I would be done with in a ‘snap,’” Tkacz said.
To find the schedule of Yara’s performance, check www.brama.com/yara/
Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected].
