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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Volodymyr KUCHYNSKY: "The time has come to start tending our trees"

13 November, 2012 - 00:00


Volodymyr Kuchynsky, founder and artistic director of the Les Kurbas Youth Theater in Lviv, received his academic training at Moscow’s prestigious GITIS State Institute of Theatrical Art, under the able guidance of Anatoly Vasiliev, prominent Soviet stage director. Like all the other students (varying in talent and professional level), Kuchynsky learned from his teacher the main idea: for a creative personality the theater is not a place of work or career; it is a philosophy of life, a world view. A certain principle of cultural creed, healthy youthful aggressiveness, the idea of national rebirth. This was precisely what determined his concept of a new Lviv drama company.

Perhaps it was thanks to this new concept that Kurchynsky’s theater has survived, unlike many other drama companies that emerged in Ukraine in the late 1980s and vanished into thin air. The man is not interested in his theater’s objective so much as in how everything they produce is received by the audience. Dramatic identification techniques, but always training and rehearsing. His actors train on a steady basis (unlike those employed by other “academic” drama companies). They have visited a number of international theatrical centers and mastered techniques professed by modern dramatic art gurus.

Volodymyr Kuchinsky and his theater have never lacked publicity. One of their earlier productions, Faustian Games, based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, won a number of trophies and prizes, including the Grand Prix at Moscow’s recent festival commemorating the city’s 850th jubilee, and the actor playing Svidrigailov received an award for the best male part.

Stanislavsky said that a drama company could be creatively active for 15-20 years. Lviv’s Les Kurbas Youth Theater has traveled most of the road, marking its tenth anniversary this year.

Lviv has turned into a city of a variety of creative groups, each with its own sphere of influence. Kuchynsky and his drama company remain unaffiliated, which is a significant fact in itself, retaining their own creative Weltanschauung.

Q.: How does your own creative world outlook tally with that of this city? Particularly, how can it coexist with the Galician mentality?

A.: Lviv is a closed-circuit system. Everybody knows everybody here. It makes me think of an ancient Greek polis city-state. I mean there are many residents and, seemingly, as many intellectuals. I deal with a certain number of people who embody Lviv for me. Among them are Andriy Sodomora (I have seen him on three occasions) and Yaroslav Dashkevych, the historian. I rub elbows with them and I am happy to know them. These people constitute my cultural foundation. Our company was joined by Oleksandr Hrynko recently. The man brought a whole new world view with him and we were happy to accept both. I am very fond of talented people, and somehow I have been fortunate enough to live among such gifted personalities. Moreover, my inner world depends on them considerably, whether they are friends or nodding acquaintances.

Q.: Les Kurbas said once that Lviv is a European center, although it has been denied the presence of true art. Have you ever felt like leaving this city and settling elsewhere?

A.: Yes, I have been tempted to do just that. I found myself surrounded by people best described as downright conservative. They all wanted to keep time at a standstill, and they sincerely believed that things were best left the way they were at the moment. It was horrible. It gave me physical pain. Still, I had my own closed little society in Lviv, so I think that Kurbas’s caustic remark does not apply to me. Of course, there are still people in Lviv who make me sick, but they are no part of that closed society of mine. I hate them and I know that we are worlds apart.

Talking of the city, Lviv has every chance to turn into a backwater province culturally. And you know what, I think that the quicker it does so, the better. If we all allow this to happen, it means that we deserve it. So let it happen, except that I want no part in this dirty game. So I tendered my resignation. I did not want anyone in our local creative association, this crumbling structure, to say that they do have a drama company answering world cultural standards. I’d rather they said they had none, no such stage directors or actors. They say Valery Bilchenko is no longer there, so there is no one to create and host the Pectoral program for Kyiv.

They prefer to act on the lesser-of-evils principle. We have enough intellectuals left to stop this devastating process and think of our future. Someone must do this. I think of Serhiy Proskurnia in his Culture Ministry office, with his 15 aides hard put to go through the motions of voicing ideas, let alone carry them out, perfect nincompoops, and I ask myself what the hell he thinks he’s doing there. He has creative potential, he could achieve a lot.

Q.: You have just made a very impressive statement. They disgust you and you will not play their dirty games. However, you are in your physical and creative prime, so you sound a little unreasonable. Why?

A.: If I preserve my company intact now there will be other people walking the corridors of power. How can I be sure that they will not make me steer another middle course? What I am doing now is a compromise that will cause another one tomorrow. I am sure of that. This is something which does not depend on our times. There will be other times, and people will find themselves forced to play other dirty games. If one follows this road, all the way, one will find oneself in crap, up to one’s ears, a vicious circle with no way out.

Q.: And your cast and personnel. Suppose some of them think you turned chicken or traitor?

A.: No, I don’t think so. I think that if I quit now we will join again, sometime later. I mean people I respect who will help me build another drama company. See, if I were offered a big-budget production and if I were interested in money in the first place, then of course, we would call it quits with the company, But there are different issues involved.

Q.: You mean you would quit even when working on a production you have been wishing to make most of your creative life?

A.: The company has a very good repertoire: Skovoroda, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Lesia Ukrainka, and Ihor-Bohdan Antonych... Previously we could only dream of such productions. Now our company looks like a real temple of art. Let’s hope things will stay that way. Under the circumstances I would easily quit as an artistic director or manager. I have built my structure and the most important thing is remaining true to oneself. One’s position is not important so much as getting one’s job done well. We are planning to renew Vynnychenko’s The Law, Lina Kostenko’s Snow in Florence... I want to make these productions my own way, meaning that I will work on them day and night, until I can see them on stage the way I want them.

Q.: We know that you returned to Marusia Churai and actually made no changes there. Why?

A.: The play is made in keeping with the “music box” laws. There was nothing to change.

Q.: What seems absurd is that you are trying to get your audiences back at a least a decade, and you have been cultivating these audiences, making them understand and accept you all these years. It is as though you told them that there is no future, that all good things, ever accomplishment is history. Is this really so?

A.: You are right that we have a problem deciding on our prospects. For example, at the Golden Lion Festival Oleh Liptsyn showed his old production. Bilchenko is no longer there and his people are trying to do something, but this is old hat. We do not have that refreshing, innovating trend in the theater we need so much. We don’t know what will be the outcome.

Q.: Does this mean that we are a nation without a future?

A.: I don’t know. I think that each and every one of us must find an answer to this question. We all have to. I believe in my native land, and I am a convinced optimist in this sense. So far as I am concerned, everything depends on when we start tending our own trees, if you know what I mean.

Q.: Doesn’t this attitude make you feel like another Don Quixote in your city?

A.: Tarkovsky’s Mirror has an excellent line read off screen: “Live in your home and you will have one.”

Q.: You had to enter this home as a very small man, didn’t you?

A.: When a small boy I was known for my personal independence and self-sufficiency. Almost as soon as we had our supervising fourth-grade instructor I realized that the woman would play an important role in my life. Later, I met Bohdan Kozak and Larysa Kadyrova, both prominent Zankovetska company performers. I saw them onstage and I got in touch with them, even though I was young and inexperienced at the time. I did this because I knew it was important. You can make friends and lose them quickly. People are interested in you for so long as you can remain useful to them. If you do, their interest will increase in geometrical progression, and you will be able to evolve accordingly. I dreamed on hundreds of nights of combining efforts with Anatoli Vasilev, thinking he was my creative mirror, believing I would make my most cherished dream come true.

Q.: You mean you have this sensitive attitude, this insight into every actor you have to work with?

A.: I wish I had, honestly.

Q.: Which aspect of your creative ego seems the most important?

A.: The biggest problem is very personal. Of course, the company plays a very important role. When we were offered Vasyl Stus’s poetry I plunged into the project headlong. Here I felt an identity with the author who said that his private life was intertwined with social issues, and that this was putting the finishing touches on his creativity.

Q.: Are you worried by how much things social are reflected by your own creative self?

A.: No, what actually worries me is not being influenced by social issues. I am interested in the theater as a professional. Getting distracted by all that public and social nonsense we are having these days would make it difficult for me to create the kind of tense creative atmosphere in which one can make a real good production.

Q.: How about accepting our “normal production standard” when you are allowed and paid for a certain term in which you have to make a good play?

A.: Yes, I could do just that, but then the whole thing would no longer be a creative challenge. You take a script, cast the roles, decide on the scenes. Yes, you can work that way, except that I prefer a different approach, the one we used when staging Ivan Franko’s The Stone Host. Ours requires a distinct inner perception.

Q.: Getting back to the casting problem, do you practice any human factor research?

A.: I am interested in my cast, every single man or woman, in the first place. I have long watched Romko Hrynko. The man doesn’t seem to do much most of the time, but his presence keeps the company ticking – I mean whether he sings, gets the cast together for a rehearsal, or rinses glasses and dishes. I am happy to have him by my side. Now we exist as a small community of so many like-minded people, trusting one another. We started with an experimental drama studio, now we have a full-fledged drama company. We are faced with a task we understand and are eager to fulfill. My cast is made up of people who have experienced all the ups and down in their creative careers. Now they are faced with the choice: signing up for a $1,000 dollar part in a movie or stay with my company.

Q.: You have dedicated 10 years to your company. Now you have people under your command. They believe you and want to work for you. Does this mean that you have made your crucial choice? Have you embarked on a life path, meaning that you will have to deny yourself all those simple joys others can afford and enjoy?

A.: I have always had the Skovoroda complex – I don’t know how it happened, but I realized at an early stage that I would not be a family man. Of course, I knew that I must have a family, children to take care of, but this was a natural instinct and it made me suffer. I was frightened by it. At the time I knew I would become yet another dropout. Even as a boy I somehow realized that I would have to get enrolled in a college, graduate, then enroll again. I was constantly falling in love and I was constantly aware of my Skovoroda complex. Of course, it was especially difficult between 25 and 30 years of age. Now I accept this as a matter of course. I have mostly lived with and at the theater. Now I have an apartment. I try to keep it cozy, but this is not important. Actually, I could have continued living at the theater, for I spend most of the time there anyway. It’s just that I once felt I had to go to the ground. The world around me was changing, so I had to take my time getting adapted to what was happening. To do so, I had no need for my theater, because the theater had become a luxury few could afford. Here one had to work like a slave and expect little if anything in return. Now I have to cope with my daily chores in a “professional” way: paying all this as little attention as practically possible. And yes, I am fond of cooking. This is a way of communicating with other people who will come, partake of it and say they really like it. I also like cooking for myself – also a way of communicating with yourself as though you were a different person. I think that if I learn to come to terms with myself, I will be able to find a common language with others.

Photo by Viktor Marushchenko,The Day:

"All my life I have had a Skovoroda complex" (left photo)

Actor Oleh Stefan (right photo)

 

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