Theater and time, artist and power

For nine decades the face of our country’s main stage has been gradually changing. Art is a vast field of unpredictability, but in theater everything depends on the personality of its director. How and where will he or she lead the company? How will they move? Will they go in the windward or downwind direction? Will their artistic search have a major guideline, or will it be scattered? “Theater and time,” “artist and power,” “soul and stage” – these questions don’t lose their urgency in view of the 90-year long progress of the Franko Theater.

“THE THEATER OF HNAT YURA”

It is only today and only to some people that Hnat Yura seems to be an orthodox traditionalist. In fact, the Franko Theater’s company of the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, created by Yura’s initiative, efforts and talent, successfully competed with the Kurbas’ Theater Berezil. No confrontation between traditionalists and innovators – just a creative competition!

Yura considered Vynnychenko to be the best Ukrainian playwright of the time, an outstanding representative of the Ukrainian urban culture and post-realism culture of the 20th century. He spoke about the European face of the Franko Theater. He was creating a theater that sought to speak with contemporaries in a modern theatrical language and to be on the edge of European artistic quests. Another thing is that Yura directed his plays to today’s audience, while Kurbas worked for the future. Kulish became Kurbas’ favorite playwright, but Yura’s production of 97 by Kulish was considered by contemporaries more artistically persuasive than Kurbas’. And vice versa: staging Mykytenko, Kurbas often overdid Yura. Anyway, the Franko Theater company of the time is justly called “The Hnat Yura Theater.” And the creative competition Yura vs. Kurbas, i.e., the Franko Theater vs. the Berezil Theater, ensured the intensity and variety of the Ukrainian theatrical development.

When the social realism method, a new way of creating art, won, Vynnychenko, a refined intellectual and political player by his convictions, the sincere Kulish, and Mykytenko, an ardent champion of ideals, were replaced by the talented, sober-minded, and self-seeking Korniichuk, who actually became one of creators of the social realism method. Since the second half of the 1930s and almost until the end of the 1950s, Korniichuk dominated the Franko Theater’s playbill.

The strange thing is that with Yura in command, even in this situation his theater did not turn into an ideological institution and continued to create artistic works of high quality that were in great demand with the audience. First, Yura created a range of still unsurpassed plays based on Ukrainian classics. His play Stolen Happiness by Ivan Franko with Amvrosii Buchma as Mykola, Viktor Dobrovolsky as Mykhailo, and Natalia Uzhvii as Anna belongs to the “golden fund” of the Franko Theater. Impressions of his Martyn Borulia, Vanity, and Stolen Happiness were passed from generation to generation of spectators. The duet of Martyn (Yura) and Omelko (Yakovchenko) – one was obsessed with obtaining nobility, while his friend unsuccessfully tried to cool down his crazy ambitions – belongs to the highest achievements of the national theatrical art.

Paradoxically, staging Korniichuk every season, Yura was, it seemed, moving opposite to this author’s instructions, more specifically his rational instructions. We will see this later.

Korniichuk’s comedy In steppes of Ukraine became the adornment of the Franko Theater playbill. In it, Halushka (Yurii Shumsky), the “politically unsophisticated” head of a collective farm who “feels good under socialism, too,” and who takes care of collective farmers’ present, prevailed over Chasnyk (Dmytro Miliutenko), the “politically farsighted” head of a collective farm who aspired to “the victory of communism” and didn’t want to see the uncomfortable present of peasants. At the time, Kyivans picked up Halushka’s lines with Shumsky’s intonations and exchanged them in everyday conversations.

Korniichuk himself was an extremely controversial personality. He managed not to see the Ukrainian Holodomor. However, he reached artistic persuasiveness in his several works. In Yura’s staging of, for example, Platon Krechet, a question arose: What is bad in Platon’s wish to overcome death, or in Lida’s dream to build the City of the Sun? In Korniichuk’s plays, the talent of a playwright often prevailed over his rationalistic directions, and the truth of life broke through artificial drama constructions. (I guess, Korniichuk himself understood this too, when at the beginning of the 1960s, he started rewriting his plays, creating new versions of his “classical” works.) As a director, Yura keenly discerned these “breakthroughs,” emphasized them, and created plays of high artistic value. There are all reasons to consider the Franko Theater in the second half of the 1930s through the 1950s the “theater of Hnat Yura and Oleksandr Korniichuk.”

“OBSCURE TIMES”

The 1960s and the first half of the 1970s: in view of the Ukrainian theater reality, it became clear that theater cannot exist in the situation from “victory to victory” and move “higher and higher!” This point becomes irrefutable while reviewing the creative activity of the Franko Theater’s company in the post-Yura period. Not that there were no qualitative plays – sure, there were some, but they appeared sporadically, as if from nowhere, from nothing.

There was Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear produced by Volodymyr Ohloblin with Maryan Krushelnytsky playing the leading part, and Dmytro Pilotenko as Fool. Then there was the comedy Pharaos by Oleksa Kolomiiets with the unsurpassed actors’ ensemble: Volodymyr Dalsky, Mykola Panasiev, Olha Kusenko, and Nonna Koperzhynska. One can enjoy this play in a video version even now.

I am proud that in the obscure times at the beginning of the 1970s, together with the Moldavian theater designer Filimon Khemuraru and composer Myroslav Skoryk, we managed to create Casa Mare by Ion Druta with Olha Kusenko as Vasiluca and Stepan Oleksenko as Pavelake. Kusenko seemingly did nothing special on stage. But one always says so when it deals with the mystery of creativity and when an unexplainable wonder is born in your presence. In Vasiluca’s character the artist protects the humane: following the free aspiration of her soul, the heroine bound her fate with Pavelake, much younger than she was and then, following her free choice of conscience, she bade farewell to him.

Generally, those times were connected neither with a certain esthetic course, nor with artistic personality capable of determining this course. After Korniichuk, there was a competition on the Franko Theater’s stage between two playwrights deprived of his special greatness, Mykola Zarudny and Oleksa Kolomiiets: Who will do better? Who will do more? Not yet knowing the title of the play, they left space in the playbill, because they were sure that this would be a play by either Kolomiiets or Zarudny. It looked as if there were no other playwrights. Every season without fail – either Zarudny, or Kolomiiets, or both.

However, Serhii Smiian did manage not to slay the artist in himself, and after staging the declarative Cassandra by Lesia Ukrainka, he created the tragedy In the Night of Lunar Eclipse by Mustay Karim, where Natalia Uzhvii, acting as Tankabike, impressed the audience with the scale of her unfading talent, and Oleksandr Bystrushkin and Nina Hiliarovska played the roles of the Bashkirian Romeo and Juliet in a new way.

But generally those were hopelessly gray seasons in “obscure times.” Chronic mediocrity of theatrical collectives, in any event, signalized the overall sickness of society. The stage was suffocating of incense and was deafened by apotheosis. The Franko Theater was involved in the process of producing artistic mediocrity and was being turned into a theater-museum in which routine theatrical exhibits were passed for national traditions.

Even if the Franko Theater actors desperately opposed the unavoidable loss of their face, they did it only owing to the fact that they were Ukraine’s best company, prominent actors, and, let me reiterate, the sporadic appearance of high-quality plays. This couldn’t last for a long time, but this is how it was. And what does it mean for a theater to lose its face? It means turning traditions into canons.

“THE THEATER OF SERHII DANCHENKO”

There was a major difference between Danchenko and his predecessor as the Franko Theater director. It was not in some artistic taste gradations and not even in the incomparability of artistic giftedness, though this was the case, too. The fact is that Danchenko was just touched by his time, and his opponent was absorbed by it. Belonging to the generation of the Sixtiers, the people of indocility and opposition, Danchenko resolutely stopped the Franko company’s triumphant march into an abyss.

He started by inviting to the company Bohdan Stupk, with whom he had prepared his best performances in the Zankovetska Lviv Academic Theater and on whom he now relied in the Franko Theater. His first play a new, non-standard version of Stolen Happiness with Stupka as Mykola and Oleksenko as Mykhailo. Through it Danchenko stated his vision of this classical play and the contemporary Franko Theater. Whereas Hnat Yura didn’t look for the guilty among the play’s characters, since no one, according to his version, was an arbiter of one’s own destiny, Danchenko directs his criticism against the philosophy of extreme individualism and the unwillingness to take into account the others. He actualized the work in the sense that Mykola and Mykhailo in their struggle for Anna’s sympathy acted as equals in terms of age and intellect.

It looked as if Danchenko expanded our ideas about the psychological theater – both by new conceptual readings of famous works and by the indirect way of conveying psychology through stage and scenic metaphors. Tevye-Tevel, based on Shalom Aleichem and with Stupka in the leading part, conquered the audience of different countries and became a landmark play of the Franko Theater. Tevye appeals to our kindness and compassion for each human being – little or big, poor or rich, wise or simple-hearted: we’re all in God’s hands. We all need love and sympathy.

Chekhov’s Diadia Vania (Uncle Vania) also spoke in a new way with Stupka as Voinytsky and Ivchenko as Astrov, as did The Visit of the Old Lady by Duerrenmatt, with the inimitable Nonna Koperzhynska playing the leading part and Stepan Oleksenko as Ill, and King Lear by Shakespeare.

A separate episode from the Franko Theater’s activity of Danchenko’s epoch is Merlin by Dorst and Hoffmann’s series Little Zaches by Yaroslav Stelmakh with Bohdan Beniuk in the leading part of a brilliant sly person.

It should be mentioned that in 1980 Danchenko brought back Danylo Lider to the theater and encouraged the creative activities of the young talented stage designer Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky. He also brought a new generation of actors to the theater’s proscenium.

Danchenko’s strategic position lay in a multidirectional creative search. In fact, he returned the Ukrainian stage to the original, foundational law of ensuring artistic unity and integrity through variety. The play by Valentyn Kozmenko-Delinde Midsummer Night’s Dream in which, as I still remember, a staid comedian-buffo Mykhailo Kramer was energetically jumping on a trampoline, was crucial in the process of the creative empowering of the company. In the interpretation of the young Kozmenko-Delinde, the story of the triumphal glorification of a ganger – the role of Arturo Ui was played by Bohdan Stupka – looked as a deep and brave dissection of the totalitarianism and its socio-psychological foundations.

The plays by Ihor Afanasyev, a master of paradoxes, manifested his unique style – A God Slept at My Home by Figueiredo, The Witch of Konotop, and his own play and staging – Shindai. At the time, the startling stage director Andrii Zholdak with his Moment based on Vynnychenko’s early novels also appeared in the Franko Theater.

Danchenko himself was successfully exploring the domain of Ukrainian musical-dramatic-plastic theater. He found, together with Ivan Drach, the theater in Kotliarevsky’s Eneida in which the all-conquering, optimistic, and heroic Anatolii Khostikoiev triumphed as Aeneas and the wise and ironic Stupka ruled as Kotliarevsky.

Owing to Danchenko, the Ukrainian rock-opera White Crow (libretto by Yurii Rybchynsky, music by Hennadii Tatarchenko) with the unique sincere and cordial Natalia Sumska as Joan of Arc appears on the stage of the Franko Theater – perhaps for the first time in the history of the Ukrainian theater.

It seems as if Danchenko peered into himself and his time – the time of changes – and came up with an idea to stage Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Bohdan Stupka was supposed to play the old meditating Peer, while Ostap Stupka, the young acting Peer. Aleksandrov-Dochevsky created a stage design for the play. I translated the dramatic poem. Alas, the fate decreed otherwise. However, “Danchenko’s theater” has a worthy place in the history of the Franko Theater.

“THE THEATER OF BOHDAN STUPKA”

At the beginning of the 21st century, Bohdan Stupka took over the artistic helm of the Franko Theater. His harmonious art proves the idea that real art creates and flourishes when a talent overlaps with another talent and where dignity meets spirituality at the crossroads of the soul.

The first period of Stupka’s rule was focused on preserving Danchenko’s achievements and keeping to the theater’s path. On his initiative, “The Theater in Foyer” was established as a training ground for experiments. Stupka believes that the theater must be “a bit ahead of the spectators,” but this “bit” is not a mathematical notion, which means that a play’s success cannot be predicted. There is no young talented stage director whose proposal he has ignored and whom he has not offered a chance to satisfy his often overweening ambitions by staging a play in the Franko Theater.

Andrii Prykhodko found a place here with his own vision of the theater: the idea of “pre-theater” or “free variations on archaic theatrical systems themes.”

One should mention his staging of Tragic Comedy about the Resurrection of the Dead by Hryhorii Konysky, performed in the Old Slavonic language, Ukraine’s theatrical interpretation of Cain by George Gordon Byron, and The Primer of the World by Hryhorii Skovoroda, and Shakuntala based on ancient Indian epos.

After a long while, we got to see his magic Legend about Faustus, done in the esthetics of buffoonery, full of scenic encouragement to a dialogue with the spectators, and with the particularly artistic and provocative behavior of Casper (Bohdan Beniuk) – soap bubbles, boots thrown into the audience, cues written by blood on canvas, and real horses. This is a wise and sad comedy about the lack of aim and sense in human life and its absurdity. The profound imagery of the play is impressive: for example, Lucifer’s mask consists of separate elements together creating an ominous face. Bohdan Stupka acts as old Faustus and Mephistopheles: it looks as if director turns our gaze deep into our soul – Mephistopheles lives inside each of us, and do many of us succeed in resisting his temptations?

Yurii Odynoky became the staff director at the Franko Theater. In an artistically persuasive way and in the genre of the psychological theater, he solved the mystery of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and as a tribute to Hnat Yura, who played the leading part in his time, offered an ingenious and ironic staging of The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais in Yura’s translation.

Anurov’s staging of Natalka Poltavka by Kotliarevsky with the music by Mykola Lysenko arranged by Oleh Skrypka can be regarded as a historical event in the theater’s life. Once again “Ukrainian opera” is revived on stage. Is there any secret in the play that makes it come alive on stage, or have the director and Skrypka found the code to its interpretation? There seems to be nothing special: a naive and universally known plot set against a naively drawn backcloth, the naive belief of actors in everything that happens to the characters, faithful love, unjustified infringements, and a happy ending. Natalka Poltavka surprised snobbish critics by becoming a hit of the past seasons.

Yurii Kovchenko’s staging of Nazar Stodolia by Shevchenko is marked by an attempt to breathe new life into the classic play. The apt genre interpretation of the work as a romantic ballad and its set design – a half-ruined church, a two-storied Nativity Play, action-packed Christmas feasts and processions, and a subtle musical range – all these things have impact on their own, creating an atmosphere of something festive and at the same time alarming and unpredictable. Perceiving this set design as a two-storied Shakespearean theater, one should also expect, according to the author, Shakespearean passions. And the audience is eager to dream up these passions, indulging in wishful thinking. It would be interesting to check the actors’ blood pressure. They are unlike Bohdan Stupka whose blood pressure made the tonometer return an off-scale reading after King Lear.

During Stupka’s reign in the theater, a range of, so to say, polemic plays are staged: at any rate, they are not meant for absolute success. Are there any plays created with a guarantee of absolute success? I guess Stupka takes risks on purpose. In particular, this is true of Ihor Afanasyev’s interpretation of Gogol’s The Inspector General with Ostap Stupka as Khlestakov. And here Ihor Afanasyev undertakes the staging of Edith Piaf. La Vie En Rose based on the play by Yurii Rybchynsky – in my opinion (I watched five plays on this topic), it is the most convincing interpretation of the life and artistic activity of the “French sparrow.”

Take, for example, Valentyn Kozmenko-Delinde’s staging and set design of Gogol’s Marriage in which Bohdan Beniuk acts as Kochkariov and brilliantly plays the fool, singing a masterful solo, which I would call “anti-marriage.” I am saying this without any ironical coloring – motivations of the characters’ actions are hidden so deeply that without additional intellectual efforts it is impossible to find them. This one may, perhaps, an easier one – Gogol’s ambiguous stare into the audience through the window which Podkoliosin has used to escape. Wait a minute! This is Dmytro Stupka acting as Gogol! The continuity is preserved: Bohdan – Ostap – Dmytro…

Kozmenko-Delinde also offered Gogol’s Vii to the theater’s company, which was the diploma project of the students who took Bohdan Stupka’s dramatic course in the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema, and Television. The stage of the Franko Theater had not seen such a contagiousness, relaxedness, noisiness, excitement, and free flight of fantasy in a long while. By the way, Bohdan Stupka recently invited to the theater many young talented actors, offering a vivid theater debut to each of them.

“The Theater in Foyer,” initiated by Stupka, is picking up steam in the Franko Theater: Vasyl Basha in Enchanted Desna based on Dovzhenko’s work and staged by Bohdan Strutynsky; Dowry of Love based on Gabriel Markes, Sarah Bernhardt, We Are All Pussycats and Tomcats with benefit performances of Larysa Kadyrova and Les Serdiuk, and so on.

Oleksandr Bilozub is creating his personal theater. The play Solo-Mia and Two Flowers of Indigo Color tell about such outstanding personalities of the past as Solomia Krushelnytska, Frida Kahlo, and Kateryna Bilokur.

Finally, there is Bohdan Stupka himself. More precisely, there is “Bohdan Stupka’s theater,” which is another unique phenomenon in the Franko Theater. The spiritually distressed Leo Tolstoy in Lion and Lioness is so dissimilar from the iconic images of him. The tragic challenge of the Lebanese king’s inexorability in Oedipus the King by Sophocles staged by Robert Sturua. Sigmund Freud’s spiritual trips in the labyrinths of subconsciousness in Hysteria by Terry Johnson staged by Hryhorii Hladii, and so on.

Time is a marvelous phenomenon. Ten years without Danchenko – and “Bohdan Stupka’s theater” came into being. There is the cunning face of his grandson Dmytro, looking out the window in Gogol’s Marriage. The son of Vitalii Rozstalny, Yurii, offers a shocking version of Lesia Ukrainka’s philosophy – On the Field of Blood.

I catch myself as I unintentionally quote lines from my new monograph Passion for Bohdan – II. These are meditations about Stupka – artistic director of the Franko Theater, the first Ukrainian stage, an unrivaled theatrical actor on the Ukrainian stage, a film actor who deserves an Oscar, and a theatrical teacher who trains actors directly on the Franko Theater’s stage by his own example.

P.S. It will be interesting to see how we will perceive the Franko Theater when it reaches its centenary anniversary. I promise, if fate allows, to continue this theatrical conversation in The Day.