Les Kurbas's Tradition in Ukrainian Shakespeare

European Stages https://europeanstages.org Les Kurbas’s Tradition in Ukrainian Shakespeare Productions The appropriation of Shakespeare by different nations, as well as the discussions about his works in various cultural contexts, lead to the emergence of unexpected interpretations of his plays and inspire creative experiments in the domain of theatre. As the American scholar Dennis Kennedy points out, "Shakespeare abroad is often much more political and polemical than in his motherland: he demonstrates things we lack most in our English theatres – the cruelty of power, the power of dangers, real hopes that dead English drama is still able to shock the audience, enrage the censors, and drive the actors to imprisonment." (Kennedy, p.302). For Ukraine as well as for some other countries from the former socialist camp, Shakespeare has turned into a touchstone in the search for national identity and political independence - the Ariadne’s thread helping to find a way out of the labyrinth of cultural colonialism. These metaphors reflect the whole essence of the process that took place in Ukrainian theatrical Shakespeareana which was crammed with the highest flights of creativity and the deepest chasms of despair. The Bard’s plays were used as a platform for bold theatrical experiments that not only produced great aesthetic achievements and undermined totalitarian ideological clichés, but also sometimes led to personal catastrophes for engaged artists. Though staging the Bard in Ukraine is a relatively young phenomenon in comparison to the long and fruitful traditions of such productions in other European countries, it is marked with a large number of peculiarities deserving the attention of both Shakespeare scholars and theatre practitioners. The first and foremost specific feature of the Ukrainian theatrical reception of Shakespeare’s dramaturgical legacy is that not all of the Bard’s plays have been represented on the stage so far. For instance, there is a dramatic lack of performances for such popular plays worldwide as Julius Caesar, Pericles or Cymbeline which needs immediate remedy. Thankfully, the first Ukrainian version of The Winter’s Tale presented on the stage of the Lviv Academic Theater, named after Les Kurbas on March 27, 2016, is definitely a positive sign of progress in this direction. It was made possible as a part of the global campaign called Shakespeare Lives which is aimed at celebrating the Bard’s 400th death anniversary. The issues of jealousy, women’s position in society, class differences and the unlimited power of monarchs are extrapolated from the Ukrainian history. Perdita’s story symbolizes the fate of our country from a historical perspective - from the reign of the great prince of Kiev Russ Yaroslav the Wise till modern times. The director Evgen Khudzyk raises the question of whether those in power are capable of returning the country its lost position and identity. Kurbas’s approach lives not only in the whole concept of the performance where Perdita in her embroidered shirt, traditional shoes, and with her clear voice and a sincere open smile is Ukraine itself. Kurbas’s sophisticated technique is also evident in synthesizing the impressive acting, the decorative art, the folk music, the symbolic language of body and the costumes into one rhythm of the play that shapes reality rather than reflecting it. The center-piece of the stage is a huge clock surrounded with a circle made of salt. The clock’s hand moves from time to time and changes the chaos of human traces into a system of organized, concentric stripes - just like the fates of nations as well as the destinies of individuals are milled into salt, powder 1 / 10 European Stages https://europeanstages.org and dust. The clock is under the control of Cronos who deliberately speeds up or slows down the course of history - reign of great princes, reign of the Cossacks, reign of the Russian tsars, the modern era and contemporary times. The stream of time is represented through the changes in clothing always covered in polyethylene. The costumes made by the Chinese theatre designer Minglu Vong are very impressive - all the characters appear on the surface of the big clock which serves as a podium. Time as a fashion designer reveals itself through their attires. Wrapped in polyethylene, the bodies of the characters look as if they are frozen by eternity and detached from the spectators. The image of Leontes is built on archetype traits of rulers - narcissism and hot temper, blindness and tyranny. Thus, the change in clothing doesn’t change the essence of the character. The scenographic laconism awakens our imagination. The lack of distance between the audience and the stage, the occasional interaction between the cast and the public create an unforgettable atmosphere of teatrum mundi. The vocal score of the play as well as the choreography is truly in Kurbas’s style. The sound track is formed with Ukrainian folk tunes, jolly melodies of Lviv city folklore and the tragic melody of the song “????? ????” which, after the funerals of the Heavenly Hundred in 2014, became a tragic symbol or requiem for those who scarified their lives for the motherland. However modern and daring this production is, it did not emerge out of nothing – on the contrary, it is tightly rooted in the authentically Ukrainian theatrical traditions which managed to survive through all the tempests and wrecks. Besides, the production of Khudzyk demonstrates obvious connections with the scenic technique of the outstanding Ukrainian theatre director Les Kurbas whose efforts and experiments washed off the taint of provincialism from the Ukrainian theatre and helped it launch the long and painful process of overcoming the country’s cultural minority complex. Thus, in order to make a clear vision of Shakespeare appropriation on the Ukrainian stage, we should take into consideration the general atmosphere in which the national theatre on the Ukrainian lands was born. In accordance with the Ukase of Ems (1876) signed by the Russian tsar Alexander II, all stage performances and song lyrics to musical compositions were prohibited in the Ukrainian language. The governor-general of Kiev claimed that it is in Saint-Petersburg where theatre is art, but in Kiev it is politics (?????????). In the terms of the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz that is shared by the literary scholar Angel Rama, such type of situation can be treated as a partial deculturation which is the first phase of transculturation (Ortiz). The process of deculturation was aimed at forcing the Ukrainians to lose their two-hundred-year tradition of school, liturgical and political drama, and to devaluate their ethnographic theatre rooted deeply in ritual ceremonies and folk arts. Moreover, it intended to create the image of a typical Ukrainian as an illiterate, stupid and uncivilized person who is unable to appreciate cultural achievements and benefits of the progress. At a time when the Russian Empire was doing its best to incorporate the elements of metropolitan culture on to the Ukrainian ground, there was a strong resistance to this politics from the representatives of the Ukrainian intellectual elite. One of the most prominent individuals among them was Les Kurbas, a gifted director who founded avant-garde theatre in Ukraine. Kurbas is that very person who like the biblical Moses drew his people out of the cultural slavery of the 2 / 10 European Stages https://europeanstages.org metropolis. In his early years, he was an actor in the Hutsul folk theatre in the Carpathians, and then studied at the University of Vienna and Lviv University. So his outlook was greatly influenced by his European experience which provoked a strong desire to struggle against provincialism which was the main characteristic of the Ukrainian culture of the time. Being aware of all the devastating consequences of cultural colonialism, he saw his mission in reconstructing the aesthetic fundamentals of authentic Ukrainian theatre and in enriching them with the most up-to-date tendencies of the European art of performance. In 1917, he established the Molodyi Teatr in Kyiv, then in 1920, organised the so-called KyiDramTe touring company, and in 1922, he created the experimental theatre studio of Berezil. The last project, which comprised 400 actors and staff members, a director’s lab, a psycho-technical committee, a design studio and a theatre museum, was meant to develop new training methods for actors and directors. As a result of its fruitful activity there appeared a special directorial approach that is now famous all over the world as Kurbas’s System. He defined the essence of his method of transformation as the coordination of many components such as poetic elements, imaginative thinking and the high psychotechnics of acting in order to reveal to the audience the depth of the image or event, as well as their philosophical and social implications, and internal rhythm. He stated, "The method of transformation has such a name because it doesn’t create the illusion of reality, but reflects the action on stage in such a form which evokes the largest number of associations." (??????, ??? ????????????…, ?. 127) This artistic strategy activates the spectators’ imagination that enables them to decode metaphors, allegories and images. By involving the audience into the process of shaping the reality and senses, Les Kurbas tried to create a new type of theatre-goer whom he called ”a new, non-passive person” (??????, ????p…, ?. 139). Shakespeare’s plays turned out to be a brilliant space for Kurbas’s experiments and almost all key principles of his method were approbated and polished on the Bard’s Macbeth. He produced it twice – in 1920 in KyiDramTe and in 1924 in Berezil - but during these years, he never stopped improving his directorial concept and performing techniques. His vision of the main message of the play was also altering because of the growing threat of political tyranny in the Soviet Ukraine.

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