The Theatre na Zhukah now makes records of its plays open to public and initiates a flash mob among the theaters of Kharkiv

The Theatre na Zhukah is the first theater in Kharkiv to make its records freely available to the publicе, calling its colleagues to follow suit.

The Zhuki announced on their Facebook timeline that they intend to share archive records of the theater’s plays online all throughout the quarantine.

“Go ye!?” is the first play made freely available online. Staged after the same name piece by Nina Sadur, the record was uploaded to the theater’s channel on Vimeo. This play was first released in 2008, made a major splash on the Live on! Festival in 2009, and earned the awards for the acting and for the best debut at the Rampa-2011 International Festival (Dnipro). The staging was highly praised by the playwright who came to Kharkiv for the first shows.

“Quarantine caught us as we were staging a new play. The first show was scheduled for early April. Naturally, everything has to be rescheduled. However, it is vital for us to keep in touch with the spectators, to support them somehow in these hard times, so we decided to make some records of our plays public. Those who had seen them live might enjoy watching them on the video. And those who had never been to our performance might get curious. Indeed, theater is a live art, however fleeting, so no camera will be able to capture and convey the atmosphere of the acting. This is exactly why theaters hate sharing their video records. Anyway, in times like these, a compromise of this kind is totally justified. We are living in the times when one needs to take unorthodox actions”, points out Dmytro Ternovyi, producer and playwright.

He went on saying that the theater will upload the plays caught on the video of acceptable quality.
The Zhuki urge the other theaters in Kharkiv to join this kind of a flash mob, sharing their records under a common hashtag – all for the convenience of spectators.