Stop kicking the high culture out of sight!

Actors of the Les Kurbas Lviv Academic Theater protested on the International Theater Day instead of celebrating it. Their main demands are decent wages, repairs at the theater’s rundown building and providing housing to the actors.

The Kurbas company protested before with similar demands (see “The street instead of the scene” article that was published on August 16, 2011 in The Day’s Ukrainian-language edition). By the way, the 2011 protest which happened just at the beginning of the theater’s 24th season did nothing to improve the actors’ lives.

“There is no breakthrough on our acting academy project,” The Day was told by the theater’s director Oleksii Kravchuk. “The actors’ pay did not increase, with their net monthly wages standing at 1,600 to 1,800 hryvnyas. Nothing was done to repair our building either. They just budgeted some money for development of design and cost estimates.” The decision to go and protest was approved by the theater’s general meeting.

The protest was held beside the walls of the municipal and regional councils’ buildings. The actors brought mirrors to the event, as the theater is “a mirror that the great and good of the country stubbornly refuse to look into.” The Kurbas company promises to take more drastic actions should the authorities ignore them once again, including holding new protests in June 2012 during the Euro-2012, for the officials should “stop kicking the high culture out of sight.”