Special theaters for special children

How does one use public transport, cross a street, or go shopping? These routine tasks are a major problem for intellectually handicapped people. Between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally handicapped children are born every year in Ukraine. They all need special help to prepare them for an independent life in society.

A few years ago the civic organization Soniachnyi promin (Sunbeam) founded a theater called Parostky (Sprouts), for intellectually handicapped people. During the eight years of its existence, the actors have learned to speak better and are no longer afraid of other people. They can even use public transport on their own and go to recreational places.

There are 80 theaters like this in Ukraine. Recently, a number of them gathered at the 7th Sun Wave International Integration Festival, where actors from Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Poland recited poems, danced, and sang, activities that the attending theater directors called an aptitude test. The Day visited Sunbeam a few days before the festival opened to find out if rehearsing and performing on stage are activities that are truly helping Ukraine’s intellectually handicapped people adapt to real life.

REHEARSING WITH REAL ACTORS

There is a hubbub in the corridor of the building that houses the theater: boys and girls are putting on their slippers and going into the reception room. Spotting me at the entrance, they greeted me politely and invited me to follow them. A few minutes later, the Parostky Theater began its dress rehearsal of the mini-play The Colorful Dreams of a Hedgehog in the Fog, based on a fairy tale by Serhii Kozlov.

The director says this is a unique production because for the first time in the theater’s history ordinary actors and people with special needs will appear on the same stage. The people playing the main characters, who have to memorize a lot of text, are actors from the Babylon Theater Studio — students from Kyiv’s National Mykhailo Drahomanov University — while the Parostky actors act out musical scenes portraying the colorful dreams of the little hedgehog.

The actors are making a final check to make sure that all the props, such as chairs, a ball, and a microphone, as well as the participants are in their places and ready for the director’s cue.

“Let’s start. Listen closely to my instructions and don’t fool around during the rehearsal. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish,” said Volodymyr Fedorov, the director of the Parostky Theater, who is an associate professor at National Karpenko-Kary University of Cinema and Television.

As soon as the first chords of the signature tune “Bila Vezha Forest” sounded, a boy waved his hand at the director: “Andrii’s not here!” It turned out that one of the actors had not showed up. To avert a panic, theater manager Vitalii Liubota came up to the boy and calmed him down. (Liubota told The Day later that it is better to calm the actors down before a performance and let them know everything is OK, thereby avoiding any emotional upsets.)

The rehearsal continued. After the signature tune, the actors performed the little hedgehog’s first dream, in which he flies through the clouds. They came onto the stage one by one and called out their names joyfully to the imaginary audience. Tonia was assigned the important task of singing a solo, a song called “Childhood.” It would be difficult to call her singing excellent, but allowances should be made for her intellectual handicaps.

Tonia worked for several months with Fedorov and a voice teacher. There is a voice studio at the theater, where all the actors learn how to sing songs to musical accompaniment, and Tonia was selected for this production because she is the best singer.

“We’re getting ready for the discotheque now,” Fedorov told the actors, reminding them that they are going to rehearse the dances, the hedgehog’s next dream. “Tonia, you should walk erectly, you don’t have to bend your knees,” the director noted during the disco dancing, demonstrating how the actors should move in a dance that is a bit like the lambada.

When it was the student actors’ turn to play, the Parostky participants sat on the stage. To prevent distractions, Fedorov gave them an assignment: to listen attentively to what the heroes are saying and laugh during the funny parts.

THE ACTORS ARE LEARNING TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF ACTION

The play lasts only 40 minutes, but it took three times as long for the rehearsal. But the result was worth it. According to Fedorov, all the actors put their hearts into it. The special needs actors played even better than the students because they expressed their emotions much more naturally. Tetiana, who plays the young mother in one of the hedgehog’s dreams, rocked the doll in her arms so tenderly and lovingly that no one could doubt the sincerity of her feelings.

“We have already staged Ali Baba and The Wall,” Tetiana said, recalling the plays in which she has taken part, “and now we are rehearsing a play about a little hedgehog. I like doing stuff on stage: singing, dancing, or just sitting.”

It is hard to believe that eight years ago, when Tetiana first came to the theater, she could hardly utter a coherent phrase. This is not the only change that has come about in her and the other Parostky actors over the years of their rehabilitation. Today the theater has about 20 mentally handicapped people between the ages of 18 and 38. The theater manager is delighted to note that the actor’s job, the never-ending reincarnations, rehearsals, and stage appearances have helped all of them stand firmer on their own two feet.

“Our actors can get together and attend a production on their own, without being accompanied by their parents. They are now more open to strangers. The actor’s profession is responsible for this fantastic progress,” Liubota explained.

“All of our actors are devoted to their occupation. They are passionate about the theater and can’t live without it. They treat every role in line with their outlooks and abilities. Sometimes they make suggestions to the director, which means that they are fully aware of what they are doing or expected to do. For example, it was the Parostky actors who suggested introducing dream songs into the production. The director and I helped translate their favorite songs into the language of action by creating little musical scenes.”

The actors’ path to adaptation began with acting lessons. Fedorov says that he taught them not only to express their emotions with their faces, but also to shake hands, let a woman pass first (when they invited me into the reception room, one of the actors politely let me go first), and to overcome stage fright. The director dreams of The Day that his actors will perform with real professionals.

“We have had talks with Ada Rohovtseva, Vadym Talashko, and the leading actors of Kyiv theaters about participating in our production of Hamlet,” the director said. “At the moment we are strapped for cash and can’t stage it. But the first step in this direction has already been made. Performing with the students was beneficial to our actors because they saw the way they should behave with other people, what they should say to friends and older people. Incidentally, no other theaters that are taking part in Sun Wave have tried to carry out this kind of experiment.”

The theater management is convinced that their actors are a gold mine for directors because they perform in the most natural way. They truly believe in what they do.