Author: Admin

The Theatre na Zhukah partnered with Doc Kino Transformatsiya Studio in making a TV movie after L’Étranger by Albert Camus. This movie de facto opens the new cycle of TV program Metanoia where Victor Marynchak, a renowned scholar and a minister, shares his thoughts about the outstanding literary works.

Actors of the Theatre na Zhukah took part in the fragments illustrating the storyline and the thoughts of V. Marynchak.
“For us, this is a totally new experience that is fundamentally different from the theater. In fact, we have tried ourselves in the filming and now we are beginning to understand what it’s like. We all had an interesting and productive time. We are grateful to Doc Kino Transformatsiya for the cooperation and hope it will carry on. I think, eventually, it may evolve into a truly solid fiction film project”, points out Dmytro Ternovyi, director of the Theatre na Zhukah.
The movie had its premiere on September 22 in Kharkiv Philharmonic.

The idea of the Metanoia cycle belongs to Volodymyr Chistilin, a Kharkiv journalist and public activist, and Dmytro Konovalov, the founder of the Doc Kino Transformatsiya Studio.

The first part of the Metanoia cycle comprising of ten TV programs was made in 2016-2017. The shows were dedicated to “Master and Margarita” (Bulgakov), “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (Hemingway), “Crime and Punishment” (Dostoyevsky), “Doctor Zhivago” (Pasternak), “Faust” (Goethe), “Hamlet” (Shakespeare), “Sin” (Vynnychenko), “The Stone Host” (Lesya Ukrainka), poems by Vasyl Stus and “Student” by Anton Chekhov. The entire cycle was presented last spring on the national TV channel “Espresso TV”.

The main idea of the program was to tackle the most topical issues of contemporary life through the prism of the literary works and to try rethink the ways of modern life, find the answers to the questions set by the authors and move on to handling the new questions.

Metanoia 1.0 was presented as an interview with Victor Marynchak who remained the main character in Metanoia 2.0 cycle, thinking over the widely known stories. However, the authors of the cycle abandoned the interview format and now the storyline is presented along with fragments of fiction films.

V. Marynchak is a scholar of language and literature who has been working as the lecturer in the Karazin National University of Kharkiv for about 50 years; senior priest of the Church of St. John the Evangelist (Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate); founder of the first Ukrainian parish in the Eastern Ukraine whose first service took place on August 19, 1991 (the day of the Soviet coup d’état attempt).

The Doc Kino Transformatsiya Studio was founded by Dmytro Konovalov in 2007 with the intent of making the indie films. Movies made by the studio were presented at the international film festivals and on the national TV channels: “Homeward” (2017) earned the Audience Award and finished No. 2 at the Public Projector Festival; “War and the City” (2015) was No. 2 movie at the Kinodoc Fest and passed the official selection at AFFI DOCS in Washington D.C. (USA); “The Displaced Ones” (2014) was No. 1 at the Heart to Heart contest of the movies about volunteers; “Kharkiv” (2010) won a special prize of the jury at the AT Films Festival Warsaw (Poland).

With the support of the Polish Consulate General in Kharkiv and the Instytut Polski in Kyiv, the Theatre na Zhukah will hold its regular project in the series of the Theater Window to Europe on September 14 through September 21, with Marek Kościółek, director and manager of the Teatr Krzyk (Poland), together with actor Marcin Pławski will give training classes to the Ukrainian theater students in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Kyiv.

Marek Kościółek is a prominent representative of the Polish theater school and an active participant of numerous projects around the world who regularly gives master classes. He honed his skills under the guidance of Włodzimierz Staniewski, the founder of the famous Polish Teatr Gardzienice, whose tutor was none the other but the great Jerzy Grotowski. Following the traditions of his predecessors, Marek Kościółek works with the actors, bringing his own ideas into the process, so his training courses are largely based on the original methods.

As a production director, Marek Kościółek is known in Poland thanks to his endlessly honest and tough plays staged in the Teatr Krzyk as they always resonate with the pressing problems in public life, be it the conflict of generations (the Exhale), or political problems (street performance Nord Stream about the gas pipe as a weapon wielded by the Putin regime that helps corrupt the Western society). Krzyk staged its plays at the most important festivals of alternative theater in Poland, much to the enthusiastic acclaim of the public, earning positive reviews of the critics. The theater brought home the awards of the Malta International Festival (Poznan), Theater Encounters in Łodz, Art Festival of the Academic Youth in Swinoujscie, etc.

“Marek and our team have know each other for years. We have attended to his training courses and we know full well that each class with this professional is an exciting adventure. It was Marek who we started our “Window” project with. Unfortunately, back then he was able to give just one master class – and only in Kharkiv. It earned him a standing ovation from the theater students: to get a hands-on experience of a different school under the guidance of such an Energizer coach as Marek, that was truly mind-blowing. Ever since, we have completed a lot of similar projects but our biggest dream was to make a grand tour in several cities with the maestro. Luckily, the stars aligned this year: the Polish Consulate General and the Instytut Polski provided their assistance, and now Marek and his assistant and actor Marcin Pławski will give classes in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Kyiv”, says Dmytro Ternovyi, project manager of the Theater Window To Europe.

The project is scheduled from September 14 and through September 21, with two master classes, each three hours long, to be held in each higher education institution. Students of the Theater Department of Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts (September 14 and September 17), Dnipro College of Theater and Arts (September 18 and September 19), and Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts (September 20 and September 21). There will be an additional training class at Kharkiv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre (September 15) and joint classes in the Theatre na Zhukah (September 15) and the Verim! Theater in Dnipro (September 18).

Launched by the Theatre na Zhukah in 2011, the Theater Window to Europe program aims to acquaint the Ukrainian theater students with the contemporary European theater schools by way of practical classes provided by the professionals representing these schools. The program involves theater schools of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv. The program also promoted prior projects involving representatives of theaters in Poland, Germany, France, U.K. and Georgia.

A play by Dmytro Ternovyi, actor and manager of the Theatre na Zhukah (Kharkiv, Ukraine) made it to the short list of the first radio plays contest organized by the Mystetskyi Arsenal, the British Council and the Ukrainian Radio. The winner of the contest will be broadcast nationwide in January of the coming year.

According to the official statement of the organizers, the jury picked Top-10 works out of 192 submitted to the contest, including “Ward No. 7” – a radio play by a playwright from Kharkiv.

The finalists were drawn by the jury comprising of Hanna Veselovska (theatre historian), Natalya Vorozhbit (playwright), Nelya Danilenko (Radio Culture producer), Bohdan Zholdak (writer), Yaroslava Kravchenko (theater producer) and Oksana Shchur (academic advisor with the Literature Laboratory of the Mystetskyi Arsenal).

On the next stage, the authors are expected to finalize their works during the 4-days’ master class late in September, given by Mrs Frances Byrnes (U.K.), a playwright and author of plays made for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. After the final brush-up, the jury will once again review the texts and decide the winner.

Joint British-Ukrainian project aims to promote the radiodrama genre in Ukraine. It includes training course by the radio producer Matt Thompson (UK) for directors and producers of the Ukrainian radio stations and online platforms willing to try the radiodrama.

In 2013, Dmytro Ternovyi won the main drama contest in Eastern Europe “Talk about borders. Living in the age of change”, as his piece “Detalizatsiya” was published in several European languages and staged in Germany and France. In 2016, the author and his piece “39 or the Bus of Apocalypse” won the national literary festival “Kalmius” (nomination – “dramatic art”).

The Zhuki will take part in the 9th Zhivi! festival for design and theater lovers, which resumes its work in Kharkiv this year.

Theatre na Zhukah will present “Detalizatsiya” – a piece written by the actor and manager of the theater Dmytro Ternovyi.

“Thanks to the Zhivi! Fest, our new theatrical season starts real early: we will go on stage as soon as August 25 in a quaintest of places – the ArtArea – a popular site right in the center of the city. We were really pleased to hear that the festival resumes its work in Kharkiv and we have successfully qualified for participation”, says D. Ternovyi.
He went on to point out that the Zhivi! takes special place in the history of the Zhuki, because it was the very first fest where the Theatre na Zhukah participated.

“To date, we have already taken part in almost two dozen international festivals and projects, but it all really started in 2009 with the Zhivi! in Crimea where we presented “Go ye?!” and the unique international project “Over-the-Town”. Now we are looking forward to seeing the fest again, to present our new production and to watch what other participants have in store. The theater program promises to be really rich this year”, he added.

“Detalizatsiya” is a new production by the Zhuki. Its release in December last year marked the tenth anniversary of the theater. The production is based on the same name piece that won the drama contest in Eastern Europe “Talk about borders. Living in the age of change” in 2012. The piece is translated into German, Polish and French, and has been staged in several countries, never once in Ukraine though. Written a year before the Maidan, the piece proved to be prophetic in many ways.

This year, the Zhivi! offers a most diverse program of 34 plays for children and adults. Its participants include private owned theaters and famous teams and theaters, such as the Verim! (Dnipro), Dakh, PostPlay, Raydo and Black O! Range Dance project, quartet DEKRU (a pantomime theater from Kyiv), the Garmyder Theater (Lutsk), etc.

The Zhivi! Fest for Design and Theater Lovers was first held in 2006 in Kharkiv and evolved into an annual event in Crimea. Following the Crimea annexation by Russia, the festival took a pause and now resumes its work in Kharkiv. One of its special features is that it engages young designers in the theater arts and all throughout the forum they will have a chance to learn from famous professionals. The designers would make posters for the plays they have seen and the best graphic art pieces will be exhibited at other theater festivals all over Ukraine and abroad. In addition to the laboratory of designers, this year the Zhivi! will present the laboratories of photographers and the theatre critics.

Olga Ternova, the Ukrainian director, staged yet another play in Paris, working in conjunction with En Details Theatre Company. On April 28, the stage of the Pixel Theater hosted the premiere of The Rehearsal of the Past after “Detalizatsiya” a piece by Dmytro Ternovyi. This is one of the first contemporary Ukrainian drama plays staged in France.

The producing director points out that, according to the comments provided by the spectators after the premiere, the play hit home.

“The Parisians would share their impressions, saying they know nothing about the events in Ukraine, because the European mass media are now focusing on some other countries. The play, however, makes them curious about what’s going on in our country. The goal of staging in France was to make people aware of the recent and the current events in Ukraine”, says O. Ternova.

She maintains that “The Rehearsal of the Past” is a totally new experience for her.

“This is the first time that I produced two plays in a row after the same piece – one in Ukraine and the other in France where I had to keep my mind totally clear from the Ukrainian production. The net result was to profoundly different plays. En Details has an absolutely different stage design, different costumes, background music, visualization, mise en scene, and even the number of actors and acts. Unlike the production in the Theatre na Zhukah, here we ran a video of true events on the Maidan, because our task was to promote the emotional immersion of the French audience in the atmosphere of what came to pass”, pointed out O. Ternova.

The play proceeds in the form of a rehearsal with the actors breaking into spontaneous, improvised dialogues between the acts. They would talk about what’s happening in Ukraine or share the latest news about their country. Incidentally, in addition to the French actors, there are two actresses from Ukraine, and they answer to the questions from the Frenchmen and share their emotional experience of the past and ongoing events.

Most of the work was done in 15 days.

“It took about half a year for the participants to learn their parts. The common table was held by Skype. But all directing was actually done in 15 rehearsals. Part of the time was taken by the training courses, to help my actors get the hang of my work system. The language barrier went down pretty fast. In just few days we would finish each other’s sentences. Theoretically, one would expect some cultural divide between the Ukrainians and the Europeans but in fact there was none. We said our goodbyes, willing to keep on working together in the future”, said O. Ternova.
After the April premiere, the next performance is scheduled for June. Early in January, O. Ternova and En Details released the French version of Dorothea, the play scheduled for staging in the Perekryostok (Crossroads) Theater in April-May.

Dmytro Ternovyi and Olga Ternova are the co-founders of the Theatre na Zhukah (Kharkiv, Ukraine). “Detalizatsiya” was written just a year before the Maidan and proved to be prophetic in many ways. In 2012, it was found to be the best play of the main drama contest in Eastern Europe “Talk about borders. Living in the age of change”, which opened way to the foreign audience. Translated into German, Polish and French, and staged in Austria, Germany and France, the first production of “Detalizatsiya” in Ukraine was made by the Zhuki in December 2017.

For more details about the event, visit the Website of the cultural and information center of the Ukrainian Embassy in France.

“Detalizatsiya” of the Theatre na Zhukah is chosen for participation in the International Festival “Melpomena Tavrii” – the most representative theater forum of Ukraine that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

“Melpomena Tavrii” will take place in May 17 through May 26. Traditionally, it is held in Kherson but this year the organizers return to the format originally set by the first festival when the plays were presented in two southern cities – Kherson and Mykolaiv. Therefore, in addition to the Mykola Kulish Kherson Region Academic Theatre of Music and Drama, there will be two more stages this year in Mykolaiv: the Ukrainian Theatre of Drama and Musical Comedy and the Academic Art Russian Drama Theatre.

“Detalizatsiya” will be presented on the small stage of the Academic Art Russian Drama Theatre (Mykolaiv) on May 21.
“We have been dreaming of going to the Melpomena Tavrii for years, but every May there would be some project or the other, which we simply could not move. However, this year our theater celebrates its 10th anniversary and the festival – its 20th, so the stars must have finally aligned: we applied and passed the qualification”, says Dmytro Ternovyi, producer of the Theatre na Zhukah.

He went on to explain why the theatre picked “Detalizatsiya” for the festival.

“This is a new play. It only premiered in December last year. And it is a contemporary Ukrainian drama that has never been staged in this country until recently. Meanwhile, Melpomena Tavrii seems to be increasingly interested in contemporary drama arts. Then there is the topic – the play is about the events that happened in Ukraine not so long ago. We do hope the public and the critics will like it”, says D. Ternovyi.

Written in 2012 by Dmytro Ternovyi, the co-founder and actor of the Theatre na Zhukah, “Detalizatsiya” won the main drama contest in Eastern Europe “Talk about borders. Living in the age of change”. Translated into German, Polish and French, it has never been staged in Ukraine so far. After the premiere in the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in 2014, the play had several readings in Austria. Written just a year before the Maidan, the piece proved to be prophetic in many ways. All of its acts are played in different genres and the actors play several roles, including the role of inanimate objects. The Theatre na Zhukah first presented “Detalizatsiya” in this country on December 10, 2017, dedicating the premiere to its 10th anniversary.

“Melpomena Tavrii” will host this year theaters from 12 countries: Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Portugal, Germany, Belarus and Moldova. Over its history, the festival hosted 122 theaters from 16 countries. The record number of plays was staged last year – 35. This record is expected to be broken this year and the audience of the festival is expected to expand considerably.

The Theatre na Zhukah will bring it meditative play Ex Nihil to Zelyonka FEST – the international festival of modern dance and performance which will take place in Kyiv from April 16 to April 22.

Ex Nihil (Latin for “Out of nothing”) is an unusual production that is based on no literary material – it is all about the figurative and dramatic forms, with very few words uttered. The name is a representation of the approach to work when the action originates from the space, which many cultures refer to as the divine “nothing”.

Directed by Olga Ternova, the production is staged as a series of images that would draw the attention of the audience, as if in a kind of meditation where each would be able to experience one’s own, profoundly unique associative flow, thereby seeing one’s own – individual play.

Following its premiere in 2014, the play has undergone several revisions and keeps changing, to reflect new ideas and emotions related one way or the other to the times we all are living in. The play was staged in Krakow, Paris, Munich and Nuremberg.

Zelyonka FEST is the only international festival of modern dance and performance in Ukraine. Since its inception in 2010, it has brought over a hundred plays to the Ukrainian theatre enthusiasts. In April, the festival will present grand total of 18 plays – it’s all-time record. Choreographers and producers from Estonia, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Austria will present their projects.

This spring, Parisians will have an opportunity to watch Dorothea – a play produced by the Ukrainian director Olga Ternova.

The En Details actors played this piece in a quite unorthodox manner. Activities on the stage are deliberately off-synch with the speech the spectator hears, and the reality developing before one’s eyes merges with the memories of the characters.

“The sincerity of feelings of the main characters combines with the relativity of slow, mesmerizing motion which rather metaphorically conveys the unfolding events and the turmoil deep inside the actors”, says Olga Ternova, the director. “It is as if the reality is being fused into some kind of a dream, conveying the thoughts and feelings of the characters stunned by the tragic but somehow miraculous events”.

Premiere on the stage of Théâtre La croisée des chemins is scheduled for March 23. Afterwards, the show will carry on each Friday up until the end of May.

En Details is a modern theater company with the core team of several young French actors and two actresses of the Theatre na Zhukah who currently reside in Paris.

Dorothea is based on “Barrier” – novella by the Bulgarian written Pavel Vezhinov (staging by Dmytro Ternovyi).

Theatre na Zhukah, Kharkiv has turned 10 years.

In December 2007, in suburbs of Kharkiv, in a building of Ochag private grammar school, there appeared a small theater, a chamber hall for 46 spectators. Geographically, this is the most Eastern theater in Eastern Europe. It is located 30 km away from Ukrainian-Russian border. This project has fulfilled the lifelong dream of theater director Olha Ternova and journalist Dmytro Ternovy, who were the ones to found the theater.

The theater was constructed due to Hennadiy Khmelnytsky (Opta company) and Yevheniy Medresh (Ochag grammar school).

The Zhuki Theater started with its first performance “The Choice” from the play “Forget about Herostratus” by Grigoriy Gorin. The first night took place on December 16th, 2007.

In 10 years time, the director Oha Ternova has presented 13 performances both from classical (by Shakespeare, Beaumarchais) and from modern pieces (Sadur, Ternovy). She has also mounted a number of productions from original dramatizations of works that previously had not appeared on stage (by Cortázar, France, Vezhinov, Klyuyev). Since she started working in Theatre na Zhukah, Olha has directed a number of music and literary compositions and contributed to a variety of unique international projects that were shown at festivals in Ukraine and abroad. In all those years Olha Ternova has created an authors method of actors training and gained great experience in carrying out acting workshops for different target groups (Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Germany). Despite the non-commercial staging policy of the theater and the theater being geographically far from the city center, the performances are usually sold out from day one.

Being registered as an NGO, Theatre na Zhukah is known for its proactive stance and a number of initiatives aimed at alignment of Ukrainian and European theaters. In 2010-2012 the Zhuki were co-organizers of an international workshop-festival of “Hartenberg”, Czech Republic, which had been initially designed as a meeting point of different theater schools and cultures.

In 2011 the theater started a program “A Theater Window on Europe” in Ukraine. As part of it, representatives of different European schools conduct training for students of theater universities of different cities (Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Mykolayiv). Since the project was launched, 8 projects have been organized and supported by European institutions. As part of the project, Ukrainian students got to know the schools of Grotowski and Staniewski, commedia dell’arte, Lecoq’s physical theater school, documentary and musical theater, Georgian dance, modern opera art. Dmytro Ternovy is the program’s curator. After quitting journalism, he’s got known as a play writer. One of his plays has won a prestigious international drama competition in 2012. It was also staged and published in Germany and Austria, translated into several European languages, and awarded the best drama piece at “Calmius” literature contest in 2016.
The team took part in 14 festivals and 6 international projects in Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, awarded several prizes, including the silver and golden mask of “Masks of the South” festival (Mykolayiv), diplomas in different nominations at “East-West” (Krakow), “Zhyvi!” (Crimea), “Homo Ludens” (Mykolayiv), “Rampa” (Dnipro) festivals.
Traditionally, the theater celebrated its 10th birthday with a cheery actors’ party, which was as usual friendly and warm.