Author: Admin

a literary-musical composition
When actors chose their favorite poems and prosaic passages, it became clear that the texts are somehow interconnected. So we connected the dots, and the performance appeared. Scenic speech and acting trainings resulted in creating this literary-musical composition.
You’ll hear poems and passages written by Federico García Lorca, Richard Bach, Mikhaíl Bulgakov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Yelizaveta Zhdanova, Sergei Yesenin, Boris Pasternak, Sasha Sokolov, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. This performance will spark the interest of those who likes poem readings, literature, music and theatre improvisation.

The performance lasts for about 1 hour.

Actors who read poems and prosaic passages written by
Boris Pasternak – Olga Korol and Anatolii Baikov
Marina Tsvetaeva – Galina Babak
Sergei Yesenin – Gordey Klochko
Mikhaíl Bulgakov – Tatyana Bushenyova
Federico García Lorca – Natalia Firsova
Yelizaveta Zhdanova – Olga Korol
Richard Bach – Oleksandr Tymchenko
Sasha Sokolov – Dmytro Ternovyi
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Oleksandra Rybina

Light – Ievgen Pedin
Sound – Dariya Saharova

Stage director – Olga Ternova

Dmytro Ternovyi, playwright and co-founder of the Theatre na Zhukah, came second on the Korneychukovsky Award – the biggest literary contest for children in Ukraine – in nomination “Dramatic Art for Children and Youths” with his piece “A Butterfly Wing”.

“A Butterfly Wing” was written the year before within framework of the first Ukrainian laboratory of dramatic art for children under the auspices of the National Union of Theatre Artists of Ukraine.

It’s a story of a fragile world where our deeds can affect the environment, where anyone can make mistakes and has to make amends. Nikita, a boy aged 9 or 10, is out hunting for butterflies, inadvertently triggering a most bizarre chain of events: a torrential shower begins and keeps pouring for days on end, bringing misery to many countries. Meanwhile, Nikita is down with a fever and in his slumber he keeps seeing a butterfly whose wing he had accidentally broken. The butterfly is complaining about the pain it has to suffer and says the shower will continue until Nikita let’s her out of the jar where it had been trapped for days. Despite his sickness, Nikita decides to take action immediately.

“I am very happy and I believe “A Butterfly Wing” will have a great future. To me, it is quite telling that the book first attracted several theaters where children pick the stuff for staging themselves. I am very pleased that the adult jury saw the merit as well”, points out D. Ternovyi.

The Korneychukovsky Award literary contest for children and youths was first held in 2014. The contest has 4 nominations.

Olga Ternova with her “Tale about Fairy Tale” won the same contest in nomination “Prose for the Younger Kids”.

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.

A new project – the “Theater Window to Europe” – started in Kharkiv. The cycle aims to bring the Ukrainian and European theatre cultures closer together.

With the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the Institut Français of Ukraine, Georges Gagnaire, director and instructor, will give master classes “Dialogue between the actor and a digital avatar” for two weeks this year in Kyiv. Theater professionals and students of theater institutes from Kharkiv and Kyiv are very welcome.

Georges Gagnaire is adapting modern IT technologies, such as “motion capture”, which is widely used in the cinema and the industry of computer games, to the needs of the theater, and seeks to make it available even for low-budget theaters.

He talks about the application of this technology at his presentations for professionals in Kharkiv and Kyiv, as well as during the master classes for the students of theater departments of Kharkiv National University of Arts and Kyiv National University of Arts and Culture.

“This is the first time that we bring a project of such technical complexity but it really will help the Ukrainians feels that our theater is right on the tip of the cutting edge technologies, for such technical ideas are only finding their way into the art of theater in Europe. We know how Cumberbatch created Smaug the Dragon in The Hobbit. Georges Gagnaire is looking into the possibility of carrying this technology over to the theater”, says Dmytro Ternovyi, program coordinator of the Theater Window to Europe.

All these opportunities are presented in The Shadow – a play after the same-name fairy tale by H.C. Andersen. Scheduled for the first run in Ukraine rather than elsewhere, it will be staged in the Ukrainian language in Kharkiv (Theatre na Zhukah), Kyiv (the Dakh Theater) and Dnipro (at the Gogolfest). A product of the French-Ukrainian cooperation, it will feature Pavlo Chirva – one of the leading actors of the Academy Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy of Mykolaiv. Anastasiia Ternova, technical assistant to Georges Gagnaire, made the first-ever translation of the fairy tale of the Danish author into Ukrainian. The play will only be staged in France after the Ukrainian tour.
“Theater Window to Europe” was launched by the Theatre na Zhukah (Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 2011. The program aims to facilitate the Ukrainian students of theater departments in their studies of various theater cultures and schools from all over Europe, giving them the opportunity to try the latest technologies in direct contact with representatives of most diverse schools.

“The theater window has long turned into a real portal for many people. Our program has yielded over a dozen international projects, implemented by the students all by themselves, just using their new knowledge and contacts”, points out D. Ternovyi.

On 14-15 September, the Theatre na Zhukah will open its new season by staging “Because the Butterflies” – a play first presented to the public in June – right at the end of the previous season.

The play is staged after “Butterflies are Free” by Leonard Gersche, an American playwright, which used to be a roaring success on Broadway. The plot revolves around a heartwarming and touching story of the growing attraction between the two neighbors – Donald and Jill.

It’s a chamber play that involves just four actors. Incidentally, for Kateryna Dyomina and Vlad Torsky who played the two main characters, it happened to be their first serious experience on stage. The other two actors are Anton Sherbak (the Theatre na Zhukah) and Olga Ternova (production director).

In September, the theater will present to its spectators “The Shadow” – a play based on the fairy tale by Andersen, directed and staged by Georges Gagnaire (France), the director and instructor. This production aims to demonstrate how the latest information technologies (“motion capture”) can be used in the theater. The event is scheduled within the framework of the Theater Window to Europe and will happen with the support from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the Institut Français of Ukraine. The play will be staged twice on September 21 in Kharkiv, whereupon the team will travel to Kyiv (the Dakh Theater) and Dnipro (the Gogolfest).

All in all, until the New Year’s Eve, the Zhuki plan to stage the plays from their repertoire, including “Sboy Sistemy” (System Failure), “Tuman” (The Mist), Romeo and Juliette and Amour de Trois or Three Etudes with a Gun. The team also intends to engage its new lineup in the remake of the Plastilin Mira (The Global Putty) – a play after a philosophical fairy tale by Evhen Klyuyev “Between the Two Chairs”, and premiere “Hamlet. Show” – a new play by Dmytro Ternovyi.

The Theatre na Zhukah makes its debut in crowdfunding to raise money for “1919 – 2019: Kulish. Kurbas. Shakespeare” Festival which will take place in Kharkiv on June 13 – June 18. It will be a joint project by the Zhuki, the Arabesques Theater and the Night Train Theatre Company (London, UK).

Crowdfunding started at Spilnokosht.

According to Dmytro Ternovyi, the Zhuki producer, the main idea of the project is to show the European roots of the Ukrainian theater and to promote the new ties between the Ukrainian and European theaters.

“It all began last year when Night Train Theatre Company first staged the Ukrainian classic translated into English – “Maklena Grasa” by Kulish, and the production earned very positive reviews from the critics. We contacted the Company, thinking about bringing this play to Ukraine. The Arabesques Theater joined the negotiations and a very significant historical context came up: a hundred years ago, Kurbas started working on Romeo and Juliette by Shakespeare. We happen to have this play in our repertoire. So do the Arabesques. And in both cases it’s a “modernist” rather than traditional presentation of the classic piece. And so, step by step, we all arrived to a most daring idea – organize a festival to present contemporary productions of the Ukrainian classics, including the European vision thereof, and the contemporary Ukrainian vision of the English classics. This way, we will be able to refresh our memory of the theater existing in the age of the executed generation, simultaneously demonstrating the European roots of the Ukrainian theater, pointing out how these roots keep growing nowadays, thereby giving the opportunity for the fresh offsprings to come through. This is very important for Kharkiv.”, explains D. Ternovyi.

He went on saying that his project was highly praised by the Culture Bridges experts but he fell just one point short of winning the funding.

“Nonetheless, we have almost found the alternative sources. If the crowdfunding raises 65,000 UAH within 25 days, the International Renaissance Foundation will triple the amount, which will cover most of our expenses on the festival. We call out to everyone to support this project, donating just any amount by clicking on the link to Spilnokosht”, points out D. Ternovyi.

The Festival offers an extensive program (to be published shortly), comprising of plays and lectures, an open-air exhibition (organized in conjunction with the Literature Museum, themed street art, master classes for the students of theater departments and for those who learn the English language, etc. In addition, it will the Night Train bring its production to the stages in Kyiv and provide master classes to the students of the theater university in the capital city.
The Festival will feature the Night Train Theater (London, UK), the Luhansk Academic Theater of Music and Drama (now evacuated to Severodonetsk), the Kimnata T Theater, TO Inakshe, the Arabesques Theater and the Theatre na Zhukah (Kharkiv).

Venues: the Arabesques Theater, the Pushkin Academic Drama Theater (Kharkiv) and the Theatre na Zhukah.