This company was founded ten years ago by Volodymyr Kuchynsky, a prominent Ukrainian stage director, and has since succeeded in keeping politely but firmly aloof from “official culture.” Its first productions, Lina Kostenko’s “Garden of Never-Fading Statues”, Vynnychenko’s “Stus-Antonych” and “Between Two Forces,” were banned by the authorities, but strictly speaking this was not an outright official reprisal. The company considered itself a “creative laboratory” and political scandal was the last thing it needed. To the contrary, after adopting a certain dramatic pattern, it became an obscure performing group, operating on what was very close to underground status..
In fact, this is Ukraine’s only avant-garde drama company which has not discarded its original ethical and creative maxims, with standing the temptation of commercial and politicaly affiliated projects. In a way, the Kuchynsky group’s proud stance is unique: they still maintain that the sole mission of the theater is in perfecting man spiritually, times and politics notwithstanding. To them the stage is a microscope aiding the naked eye to examine the soul; each actor is like a probe introduced in a certain philosophic problem, which is solved only due to one’s own spiritual effort.
The company started the tour by one of its most spectacular productions, Hryhory Skovoroda’s “Herod the Good”, a philosophic dispute about the sense of human existence. Which is the best approach: getting adjusted, building a public career, seek amusement or harmony between one’s soul and the environs, learning to be restrained and altruistic? Volodymyr Kuchynsky’s performers seem to have chosen a different approach which they consider the only correct one. Their renditions are permeated with the joy of creativity and masterful impersonation.
Toward the end of the week they will have shown their best productions — Lesia Ukrainka’s “Apocrypha,” “Faustian Games” based on Dostoyevsky, Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” — at the Left Bank Drama and Comedy Theater.
Photo by Viktor Marushchenko, The Day:
The followers of Kurbas look to the skies like the grave, Natalka Polovynka in the Herod the Good exhibition







