“Always tell people the truth”

Bohdan Kozak is a creative personality, a wonderful actor at the Maria Zankovetska National Academic Ukrainian Drama Theater in Lviv, director, pedagogue, theater expert, academician of the National Academy of Arts, professor at Ivan Franko Lviv National University. Recently the list of Kozak’s numerous titles has been supplemented by another, perhaps the most important, one: he has become a winner of the Shevchenko Prize. The actor received the high artistic award for the concert performance of the poetic composition Yevanheliie vid Tarasa (Gospel of Taras) based on Taras Shevchenko’s works and literary-music composition Dumy (Thoughts) based on Shevchenko’s verses. The interview below is about the influence of Shevchenko’s personality on Kozak’s creative activity, his theater, Lviv’s code, different generations, and other things.

Says KOZAK: “Shevchenko has taught us to love our land, and he teaches us to be truthful before ourselves, God, and the people. I know no other poet who would speak in such an open way about his native people and strangers. He is a kind of prophet who tells God what he thinks about the enslavement of his people and when this people achieves freedom.

“I was a ninth-grader when I recited Shevchenko’s ‘To Dead and Alive’ at a school soiree. Afterwards I frequently recited Kobzar’s works as an actor and took part in the performances based on his works. To honor Shevchenko’s Days, I each time reread Shevchenko’s oeuvre, looking for a work that would be in harmony with the present day. Yet the message ‘To Dead and Alive’ is a universal work. This is like a song from which one cannot throw out a word.”

You can be called a veteran of the Lviv stage. How long have you been working at the Zankovetska Theater?

“I came to the theater’s studio in 1961. But I had been seeking a profession before coming to the theater. When I was a schoolboy, I intended to enter a theological college. Then I wanted to become a journalist, but became a student in a technical college. Later I graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Lviv University. I have never had regrets about my choice of becoming an actor. I breathe freely in this profession, like in the open air. Being an actor means having contact with various people, different directors. It is a kind of an academy of human nature, where you get to know people’s life and discover it – through plays and characters, while at the same time, you should be attentive, intelligent, and tactful in live communication with people.

“I will remember to the end of my days my first performance on stage. After my first year of studies at the studio, I played the role of Don Juan in the play Don’t Joke with Love. This play by the Spanish playwright Calderon was staged by Serhii Smiian, and my partners included Domian Kozachkovsky, Liubov Kahanova, Kateryna Khomiak, Oleksandr Hrynko, Bohdan Kokh, Yurii Yaremenko, and Taisia Perepelitsyna — the best actors. By the way, I took turns with Bohdan Stupka in playing the role of Don Juan.”

In your opinion, what is the strong side of the actors’ company of the Zankovetska Theater?

“They play in ensemble and are nationally oriented: determined to tell people the truth, preserve our classics and language, while at the same time cognizing the world culture. There can be no other roads for the theater of such scale as ours.”

How many plays have you performed in?

“I record something, but I also forget other things. On the whole, I have played about 140 roles, both big and small.”

Can you compare the audiences of the 1960s and 1970s and the contemporary ones? Which is better and more emotional for you? How have the tastes of the audiences changed?

“Apparently, the form tends to change. Forms change everywhere, in literature and architecture, like fashion in clothes. The same is true of the theater. It depends on how the director and actors understand the needs of The Day. For nowadays television is filled with music videos; it is digital, which cannot but influence the arrangement of performances and the play’s rhythm.

“Apparently, the youth that comes to the theater is versed in computers. They like popular music and have a different rhythm, and this should be taken in account. And the theater which takes this into consideration is lucky: in this case it is modern and keeps pace with society.

“I don’t know how Sarah Bernhardt, Maria Zankovetska, or Konstantin Stanislavsky would be playing now. From them we borrow the most precious things — things that are eternal in art. What does the following fact indicate: in order to go on tour to Moscow, Maria Zankovetska pawned her necklace? It indicates her high civic position of an artist who wants to develop another branch of the Ukrainian theater. It is not important how she played – Zankovetska now belongs to history. She taught Borys Romanytsky and many other young actors, who later became the masters of the Ukrainian stage. And these are things we should be picking up: we should help our artists become masters of the stage, not like us, but different. This is our mission.”

Do you have any favorite sites in Lviv?

“Of course! I love Lviv; I was born here. Our ancient architecture tells me what Lviv has witnessed. And it has seen a lot. And nothing disappears. Maksym Rylsky once said: ‘Every sound is living in the air, and in a thousand years someone will catch the white handshake of yours.’ Even in a century we will be able to catch certain energy which is encoded in Lviv. The city center is the most precious for me, although I was born on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Str., near Lviv’s castle.

“I spent my young years there, up to 30 years. But as I walked from there to the center, I passed the churches of Good Friday, St. Onuphrius, St. Nicholas, and John the Baptist. The churches protected the way I was following. Those are places where many people have prayed – people become better when they pass them. When I come back on some business to the district I was born in, I feel better and more comfortable. This is on the level of instincts. They say for good reason, ‘Return to your well.’ Sometimes people want to drink water from the well that stands in their yard.”

P.S. For the first time the awarding ceremony of the Shevchenko Prize was not held in the National Opera House of Ukraine, but on the Chernecha Hill (Monk’s Hill, now Taras Hill) in Kaniv. Ten Ukrainians became this year’s winners of the prize (on the whole, the Shevchenko Committee had received 51 nominations, and the final included 31 nominees): writer, culture expert, and The Day’s contributor Oxana Pachlovska, actor Bohdan Kozak, writer Halyna Pahutiak, poet Dmytro Ivanov, journalist and publicist Mykhailo Andrusiak, artists Kost Lavro and Viktor Kovtun, folk craftsman Stepan Hanzha, and the artist and icon collector Mykola Babak in co-authorship with the art expert Oleksandr Naiden. The details of this year’s awarding ceremony of the Shevchenko Prize were given to The Day by the head of the Shevchenko Committee, head of the NANU Institute of Literature Mykola Zhulynsky.

Incidentally, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration Hanna Herman recently told the journalists that all the money from the deposits of the Shevchenko Fund was allotted for the event. “Shevchenko himself lived a modest life; he lived in poverty, and Russian intelligentsia raised 2,500 rubles in order to buy him out of serfdom,” Herman said, as reported by UNIAN. At the same time, she promised that the financial dimension of the prize will be increased if the country’s economic situation improves.

“Let me remind you that the edict on the Shevchenko Prize winners is signed by the  president of Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko signed the Shevchenko Prize regulations, which stipulate that the prize should be awarded on March 9 at the National Opera House, whereas the current head of state, Viktor Yanukovych, resolved to award the prize on the Taras Hill in Kaniv. He went to Kaniv, where he wanted to see personally how the Shevchenko National Preserve on Chernecha Mountain is being reconstructed. Therefore, the Presidential Administration decided to hold the awarding ceremony in Kaniv.”

Previously it was expected that the prize would make 200,000 hryvnias, but it has been rumored that the prize size will be cut down.

“This year’s winners will receive 130,000 hryvnias each, although last year the winners received 170,000 hryvnias each. The Shevchenko Committee, taking into account the inflation and in order to raise the prize’s prestige, asked Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko to increase the sum to 200,000 hryvnias. There was a corresponding agreement, but because the government has allotted 1,300,000 hryvnias for prizes in this year’s budget, Viktor Yanukovych’s Presidential Administration has resolved not to exceed this figure and set a 130,000-hryvnia prize this year.”

The Day’s FACTFILE

Bohdan Mykolaiovych Kozak is an actor, director, pedagogue, and theater expert. He was born on Nov. 27, 1940, in Lviv. In 1963 he graduated from the drama studio at the Zankovetska Drama Theater in Lviv. Since then he has been working in this theater. He has played over 100 roles, which indicates a wide range of his creative capabilities in plays taken from both national and worldwide dramaturgy. Among the roles he has played is Briansky in Praporonostsi (Flag Bearers) by Oles Honchar, Mozart in Mozart and Salieri by Pushkin, Tartuffe in Tartuffe by Moliere, Mykola in Stolen Happinness by Ivan Franko, Vozny in Natalka Poltavka by Ivan Kotliarevsky, Iago, Macbeth, Polonius in Othello, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Pilatus in Jesus, the Son of Living God by Bosovych, Peter I in Pavlo Polubotok by Burevii, and Maecenas in Orgy by Lesia Ukrainka. His works of a director include Orfeus’ Miracle by Lesia Ukrainka, Natus by Vynnychenko, Nora by Ibsen, Zhabusia by Zapolska, etc. and have became the adornment of the Zankovetska Theater’s current repertoire.

Kozak contributed to the opening of the Department of Theatrical Studies and Actor’s Skills at the Faculty of Philology in Ivan Franko Lviv National University in 1999. This department was headed by Kozak and later evolved into the Faculty of Culture and Arts, with Kozak as its dean. The graduates of this establishment are working successfully in theaters in Lviv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Drohobych.