Ivan Franko Theater’s founding father

For decades Hnat Yura’s name symbolized the stability of the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater and, to a certain extent, its conservative approach. For many theatergoers the actor would forever remain Martyn Borulia and Tereshko Surma. Yura’s finest stage productions included the works of the Ukrainian classics and Soviet playwrights of the 1930s-1950s. For some reason his productions of Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Gerhart Hauptman, Lesia Ukrainka, William Shakespeare, and Friedrich Schiller are rarely mentioned. As an actor, Yura starred as Figaro, Schweik, Charles VII (in Shaw’s Saint Joan), the title role in Andreev’s Dr. Kerzhentsev, the shepherd Laius in Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, and Luka in Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths.

In this article I would like to remind readers of how Hnat Yura became a creative personality and recall the early years of the Ivan Franko Theater, to which he dedicated more than 40 years of his life; the years of his creative quest and his stage productions, which were markedly politically unbiased and made consciously in accordance with his own aspirations and concept of the new Ukrainian theater; his talented family, and memorable events connected with Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro.

Hnat Petrovych Yura was born into a large family in Fedvari, a village in the county of Oleksandrivka, in what is now Kherson oblast. His parents Petro Musiiovych and Melania Hryhorivna had 13 children, only four of whom — Terentii, Oleksandr, Tetiana, and Hnat — survived. Each of them would become closely associated with the theater.

In his memoirs Yura wrote: “My father was an ordinary peasant, although he worked as the district secretary.” Further on he contradicts himself, saying that his father was an educated person, who read Tolstoy, Shevchenko, and Korolenko. Yura’s memories of his youth offer interesting facts concerning “Granddad Musii,” who bore a striking resemblance to Leo Tolstoy and in whose courtyard “strange people used to gather, wearing weather-beaten and patched-up military uniforms...” Hnat was a young boy when he made his first acquaintance with the theater, the dramatic scenes performed during Christmas. By the time he was 10 years old, all the boy thought and dreamed about was the theater.

Even when he was working for the local council in Yelysavethrad, Yura and Uncle Afanasii (also a theater buff) spent every evening at the municipal theater. The first professional production that he saw was Hauptmann’s Der arme Heinrich, which strengthened the young man’s resolve to spend the rest of his life in close contact with the theater and art in general. He began taking part in various amateur performing groups, reviewing plays, writing poetry, and translating the works of Nekrasov and Heine. His older brother Terentii also embarked on a theatrical career. He had a good voice, so he started performing as a singer and later joined one of Ukraine’s itinerant drama companies.

In Yelysavethrad, Yura met Maria Zankovetska and Panas Saksahansky, the giants of the Ukrainian theater, and received their blessings. Yura considered Saksahansky his lifelong teacher. Performing in the traveling company’s productions, he partook of the elevated dramaturgy of Sophocles, Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Friedrich Schiller, George Byron, and Maurice Maeterlinck. When Yura met the actor Pavel Orlenev, who was renowned in Europe and the Americas, he discovered the secrets of the dramatic art. At 19, Yura signed his first contract with the impresario S. Maksymovych. As a member of his troupe he became friends with Semen Semdor, who would become his creative comrade in arms.

Yura’s first steps on the road to the summits of dramatic art were cut short by his army service, but even then he tried to pursue his cherished dream. During a brief furlough, he tried to enroll in the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT). He passed the first round of auditions, but then received strict instructions to return to the army. After demobilization he found a letter from Semdor, who was acting in the Ruska Besida Company. Without wasting any time, Yura went to Lviv, where he was destined to experience the decisive moments of his life. It was at Ruska Besida that the three artists — Hnat Yura, Semen Semdor, and Les Kurbas — were destined to meet. They were all dreaming of founding an essentially new kind of Ukrainian theater, with a repertoire rooted in Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shevchenko, Schiller, and Lesia Ukrainka.

Their dreams would come true in Kyiv only in 1916, after the Molody Theater was founded. Kurbas, Semdor, and Yura undertook to work as stage directors and instructors at the actors’ studio. Hnat’s younger brother Oleksandr Yura (Yursky) joined the Molody Theater after graduating from the Lysenko School of Music and Drama. The three years of the Molody Theater’s existence unveiled a new set of dramatic aesthetics in Ukraine, a kind of dramaturgy that was unknown until then. At the same time, this period laid bare the insurmountable differences between the spectacular creative personalities of the theater’s founders.

In fact, this rift was caused by life itself. There was a civil war in Ukraine, followed by a period of terror. Governments followed each other in quick succession. In order to save the troupe, Yura took his actors to Kamianets-Podilsky, where Mykola Sadovsky was working. Their sojourn in this city was a sad one. They never saw Sadovsky, who was ill. His deputy made it absolutely clear that Yura and his friends would not receive any help, so they went to Vinnytsia, where the New Lviv Theater was performing. It was in Vinnytsia that the New Lviv Theater and the Youth Theater merged into the Ivan Franko Company. During the first seasons its repertoire consisted of the Molody Theater’s productions, including Hauptmann’s fairytales Die versunkene Glocke, Max Halbe’s Jugend, and Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. After seeing Yura’s productions at the Molody Theater, Volodymyr Vynnychenko brought him the manuscript of his play Hrikh (The Sin), which Yura first staged at the Molody and then used this production to launch the Ivan Franko Theater on Jan. 28, 1920. Vynnychenko’s plays dominated the company’s repertoire during the opening season. Another production was prepared, Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro, with Yura as translator, director, and actor playing the lead role. From the moment it premiered on Aug. 27, 1920, this play would remain in the Ivan Franko Company’s repertoire for 13 years.

DRAMATIC QUEST

Remembering those who founded the Ivan Franko Theater, you find yourself sometimes forgetting that this company was founded by young people. Yura was 32 years old, his wife Olha Rybchakivna (Suzanne) was only 17; Oleksii Vatulia (Count Almaviva) and Amvrosii Buchma (Bartolo) were both 29; and Feodosia Barvinska (Cherubino) was 22 (the role was later played by 20-year-old Polina Niatko). During the years that this play was in the repertoire, it starred Kost Koshevsky (Count Almaviva), Olha Horska as the Countess, Tetiana Yuriivna as Fanchette, Mykhailo Pylypenko as Bartolo, Semen Semdor as the Magistrate, and Yevhen Kukharenko in the role of Antonio.

The production featured a colorful futuristic-cubist setting created by the 24-year-old production designer Heorhii Tsapok. A person of artistic erudition and inventiveness, Tsapok was an artist who, together with stage directors, sought the most expressive forms of dramatic expression. This is what the drama critic Oleksandr Borshchahivsky wrote about that 1920 performance: “Beaumarchais’s comedy was performed with a great deal of expressiveness, briskness, and remarkable dramatic identification. There were remarkably many and diverse mise en scenes. The characters were comically exaggerated, and this exaggeration sometimes verged on the grotesque.”

Only young and daring actors could have created an essentially new kind of dramatic art. Most importantly, they also endured with dignity all the travails of a traveling drama company’s daily routine. During the earliest years of its existence, from 1920 to 1923, the Ivan Franko Theater toured a number of Ukrainian cities. A graphic example of Yura’s struggle for the survival of his company was his appearance on stage, where he addressed the representatives of the Ukrainian National Republic attending the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vinnytsia. In his speech he said that no company could work in the conditions in which the Ivan Franko Theater had to exist, and that his company still existed only because of everyone’s passionate desire to work and selfless dedication to the theater.

Yura’s stand was not supported by the entire cast during this trying period. There were heated debates, but the core group of actors sent a letter to Yura, asking him to remain in his post. As though trying to challenge everyone, Yura began working on Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio, which was followed by the premiere of Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna, rehearsals of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song, and company tours. The actors traveled to the Donbas, when the local coal miners were living in dugouts and cabins under the scorching sun. It took a great deal of perseverance and resourcefulness to perform every day — let alone survive — in such conditions. That was when the company’s production designer and one of its founders, Matvii Drak, proved his worth (he and Yura staged a number of productions between 1920 and 1949). Drak’s immense artistic talent, profound knowledge of his profession, and innate intuition proved especially helpful in the extreme conditions of the first decades of the theater company’s founding. One can only imagine how this drama company traveled for six months, moving from place to place on horse-driven carts or walking from one coal mine, factory, or workers’ settlement to the next, stopping to perform the Forest Song, Fuente Ovejuna, The Lower Depths, Haidamaky, and The Marriage of Figaro.

The Beaumarchais play was a real hit with the young people of Donbas. The Forest Song was performed in Horlivka in a huge park on a bright and very hot day. There were no stage props, just the cast wearing fairytale-like costumes designed by Drak. The role of Mavka was played by Feodosia Barvinska. The Donbas tour led to the Ivan Franko Theater being transferred to Kharkiv, then the capital of Ukraine, and awarded official status as a “State Theater of the Ukrainian SSR.” The first season in Kharkiv opened with the German expressionist Ernst Toller’s play Hoppla, wir leben. The company did its best to present the Ukrainian capital’s theatergoers with something new, unknown, and original. But the premiere was a fiasco. Yura rescued the troupe by staging another premiere of The Marriage of Figaro. His wisdom and foresight remedied the situation, and the Ivan Franko Theater began gaining in popularity. The company now ran a drama studio and attracted poets, writers, and playwrights.

The stage director Borys Hlaholin was offered a job, which he accepted. He loved theatricality and tried to turn every production into a spectacular performance. In his first production of Lunacharsky’s Fire Hlaholin used a silver screen for the first time in the theater’s history. His production of Shaw’s Saint Joan was an important cultural event. Yura brought a young and unknown playwright by the name of Mykola Kulish, the author of 97. This play was performed for 20 days straight, with a packed house every night, an unprecedented event in the theater’s history. Yura’s Musii Kopystka went down in the history of the Ukrainian theater.

Nor was it coincidental that the program of the company’s soiree marking its fifth anniversary included scenes from 97, Fire, and The Marriage of Figaro, which were performed after the “Internationale” was sung and Yura’s speech.

THE THEATER AS FAMILY

Yura spent a number of years managing his theater under extremely difficult conditions, trying to remain true to his youthful dreams about perfection of the dramatic art. Step by step he encouraged his cast and audiences to take an interest in the European repertoire, seeking to strip the classical heritage of the encrusted layers that had accumulated over the years. Together with his actor friends he toured Ukraine, sowing the seeds of culture and spirituality. When part of the cast quit after the first years of formation and accompanying difficulties, Yura turned for help to his elder brother Terentii, who was the artistic director of the Ukrainian Actors’ Society in Oleksandrivka. Terentii, his wife Feodosia Barvinska, sister Tetiana Yuriivna, and his colleagues went to Cherkasy, where the Ivan Franko Company was performing.

It was during this difficult period of the theater’s formation that Yura and his family members laid the foundations of the “theatrical family,” where everyone was on an equal footing and acted in every performance. Although each actor had already made his/her name, each combined acting with many other activities. Barvinska and Yuriivna sewed costumes, Yuriivna’s husband Mykhailo Pylypenko was the cashier, Anastasia Shvedenko, the wife of Yura’s younger brother Oleksandr, was in charge of cultural and educational activities, and Oleksandr was responsible for advertising. Terentii Yura was the manager, although before the revolution he had performed all the roles in the repertoire. Yura’s mother Melania shared all their joys and sorrows and was a full-fledged member of the company all those years. She washed their clothes, sewed, cooked meals for the whole company, rejoiced in its achievements and suffered over its failures. When she died in Vinnytsia, the performance scheduled for the date of her funeral was canceled.

A special role in the company was played by Lev Bilotserkivsky, the prompter. He also acted, did the advertising, and acted as business manager, but most importantly, he created the Ivan Franko Theater’s chronicle from 1920 to 1940. Owing to his recorded entries, we can now familiarize ourselves with the lives of our predecessors.

The year 1926 was an eventful one for the theater, as the troupe was joined by the giant of the Ukrainian stage, Mykola Sadovsky, who had spent some time abroad. On Yura’s initiative and active intercession, the actor was able to return to Ukraine, where he played the Mayor’s role in The Government Inspector. The company’s first tour of Moscow took place in April, under Lunacharsky’s patronage. While in Moscow, the Ukrainian actors tried to spend as much time as possible watching plays at the MKhAT, the Maly Theater, and the Meierhold, Tairov, and Vakhtangov theaters. Brimming with impressions, they stayed up all night discussing future productions. After returning to Kharkiv, they learned that the government had decided to transfer the company to Kyiv, and that the Berezil Theater would take its place in Kharkiv. Considering the situation at the time, this was a bad stroke of luck. The actors’ only consolation was the opportunity to work in the Solovtsov Theater, starting in September 1926. They chose Vii to open the first season in Kyiv because the play had been a success for the past two years. This was only natural because such gifted personalities as Ostap Vyshnia, Hnat Yura, and Anatolii Petrytsky had worked on the stage version of the popular Gogol short story. The play was performed in a grotesque style, with appropriate changes to the plot, which resonated with the modern realities. One critic wrote: “The play Vii was an exceptionally spectacular performance even for Kyiv, which knows Berezil’s works well.”

THE RIGHT TO CREATIVITY

The 1930s and 1940s, rather than the 1920s, were the most trying period for the company. Beginning in the first half of the 1930s, the Ivan Franko Theater, like a number of other companies, switched almost entirely to a Soviet repertoire. Only one classical play out of thirty was staged in 1930- 34. Aware that the cast and company could lose everything that had been gained over the years, in 1933 Yura staged The Marriage of Figaro (and played the lead role), one of the company’s favorite plays, which had saved the company during various critical periods.

From the vantage point of our current knowledge of history in general and the theater in particular, we can only imagine how Yura felt in the whirlpool of the Soviet system. The numerous ideologues of the theater applied Jesuitical methods to make him into a living idol, a model carrier of ideas that were being translated into life by Soviet ideology. Beginning in 1925, when Yura was awarded the prestigious title of “Merited Artist of the Republic,” he and his colleagues continued being showered with awards and prizes in conjunction with various important anniversaries and productions on Soviet themes. The only thing he could do was thank the government for its attention to his drama company, thereby “buying” pardons from authorities for his colleagues and the right to creativity.

His inborn wit, intuition, and wisdom accumulated over the years and inherited from his parents, and his absolute dedication to the theater dictated realistic ways of escaping the repertorial deadlock. In trying to expand the company’s creative scope, he often acted contrary to his own interests and preferences as a stage director. He invited Borys Sushkevych to stage Pushkin’s tragedy Boris Godunov in 1937. In 1939, V. Vilner staged Ostrovsky’s The Last Victim. Yura marked the company’s 20th anniversary by producing Ivan Franko’s legendary play Stolen Happiness. In 1946 Kostiantyn Khokhlov introduced the Ukrainian public to Anton Chekhov’s dramaturgy with The Cherry Orchard on Yura’s stage. Classical works continued to save the theater from degradation. Yura worked on updated versions of Martyn Borulia, The Government Inspector, and Schweik. The latter had been his talisman since 1928. The entire company seemed to be protecting this wise, resourceful, and talented man, who was capable of accomplishing anything for the sake of the theater. Then he was hit directly in the heart, when his dearest treasure, the theater, was taken away from him.

One of Hnat Yura’s last productions was Ivan Kocherha’s play Svichka’s Wedding. This tragic legend dating to the 15th century recounts how the Lithuanian feudal lords prohibited the people of Kyiv to use candles to light their homes, allegedly for reasons of safety. Considering what Yura was so painfully experiencing at the time, the plot not only acquired a special dramatic depth, but also seemed to reflect his personal tragedy. “Madman, what do you want? /Light / What are you saying?” /”Yes, I want the light /That you deprived us of without fear of God or shame...”

THE FRANKO COMPANY TODAY

In rereading the history of our theater, turning in our thoughts to those who are no longer among the living, we seek to recover what has been lost and to bring to life the dreams that were cherished by Hnat Yura and his like-minded colleagues. Following his laws, we are experimenting, questing, and inviting various stage directors to cooperate with us; we are discovering new actors and gathering the best creative forces under our roof. There is nothing coincidental about the titles of the plays advertised on our posters: Stolen Happiness, Schweik, Martyn Borulia, The Government Inspector, and Oedipus the King. Immersing ourselves in the world of the heroes of these plays, which for years excited Yura’s directorial imagination, we are trying to catch the sense of a genuine theater, for the sake of which one can endure as much as Hnat Yura.

Nearly 80 years after its first premiere we staged The Marriage of Figaro in loving memory of Hnat Yura. It was a matter of principle for us to perform the play in Yura’s Ukrainian translation and produce a memorable spectacle sparkling with life, where the past meets the future (directed by Yurii Odynoky; production designer: Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky). Apart from the company’s leading actors, the cast includes young students enrolled in an experimental Ivan Franko-Company- based training course at Karpenko- Kary National University of Theater, Cinema, and Television. Life continues, and so does our belief in constant rejuvenation and the eternal evolution of the art of the Theater.

Bohdan Stupka is the artistic director of the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater.