Theater festival going on in Volhynia

Lutsk – The first attempt to hold this festival in Lutsk was made in 1991. However, back then there were not enough theaters that had plays based on Lesia Ukrainka’s works in their repertories and the famous writer herself was not appreciated enough as a dramatist. Danylo Poshtaruk, director and art director of the Volyn Academic Oblast Puppet Theater, says that nowadays Lesia Ukrainka’s drama should be re-read anew.

The first day of the forum was a premiere of Kaminny Hospodar (Stone Host). It was staged by a director from Warsaw Wieclaw Rudzki, and performed by the Volyn Taras Shevchenko Academic Oblast Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater. By the way, theaters brought to Lutsk different stage adaptations of Lisova Pisnia (The Forest Song), a play that inevitably receives positive feedback from the audience. According to Fedir Stryhun, artistic director of Maria Zankovetska National Lviv Theater, during the long history of the theater’s existence nine plays written by Lesia Ukrainka have been staged. But Lisova Pisnia is the greatest success, with more than 500 performances. Now the actors of the Zankovetska Theater opened the festival with Boiarynia, and actors of the Volyn Theatre staged the play Sim Strun (Seven Strings). Lesia Ukrainka’s poetry and folk songs she loved were performed in it, the actors told about the poetess herself, her family, and the environment she lived in. Theaters from Luhansk, Rivne, Kyiv, Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Vinnytsia, Chrenivtsi, and Kryvyi Rih also participate in the forum. The Kyiv Youth Theater presented a monoplay Rozmova (Conversation). This is a stage adaptation of a not very well-known story by Lesia Ukrainka about an actress who cannot perform on stage, but she cannot imagine her life without it (this image was created by actress Lidia Vovkun). The Dnipropetrovsk Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater invited the audience to watch the play V Katakombah (In Catacombs), and The Chernivtsi Oblast Puppet Theater staged Lileia (Lily). The festival will be closed with Lisova Pisnia staged by the Volyn Academic Puppet Theatre and the Volyn Taras Shevchenko Oblast Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater. A total of seven casts presented different versions of the latter work.

Lesia Ukrainka is our fellow countrywoman. There is a Memorial Museum in Kolodiazhne, a village where the Kosach family used to live. In fact, Lesia Ukrainka wrote her first poem in Lutsk. Volyn nature motivated her to write the immortal Lisova Pisnia. But the story, about which The Day wrote in 2000, can be an example of how little we know about her drama plays. In an article titled “From Mavka to Producer” I told about a former fellow student, a successful businesswoman from Mukachevo, Lesia Demchuk-Komiati. She created a private theater as part of her company just for the sake of one production of Lesia Ukrainka’s play Advokat Martian (Martian, the Lawyer). By the way, this wonderful play about first Christians is staged very rarely nowadays...

The festival plays are performed on the big and chamber stages at the Volyn Taras Shevchenko Oblast Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater and at the Volyn Academic Oblast Puppet Theater. The participants of the forum can visit the Lesia Ukrainka Literature Memorial Museum-Estate in Kolodiazhne, Kovel raion, and the Museum of the Fairy Drama Lisova Pisnia in Nechymne Forest. Borys Klimchuk, head of the Volyn oblast state administration, who supports the festival in Lutsk, promised that the local authorities would do everything to make this event a tradition.