Category: News

“Ward No. 7”, a piece by Dmytro Ternovyi that won him the second place at the national radiodrama (broadcast play) event, was picked for reading by the actors at the Next Stage Europe Festival in Potsdam (Germany).

Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Russia present just one dramatic art work each in Potsdam every June at the annual festival organized by Hans Otto Theater Potsdam, Lit: Potsdam and the Goethe Institute. All events this year are held online.

“It makes me happy to no end that this piece will be read. And I hope it will help the German public to better understand what goes on in Ukraine. It is very important to bring information about it in every manner available, including theatric tools”, says D. Ternovyi.

He went on saying that he was pleased to find out that the book had been translated by Lydia Nagel, a translator and a Slavonic scholar renowned in Germany, and a good acquaintance of his.

The piece is dedicated to the relationship between Julia – a girl residing within the occupied territory, and Roman – a Ukrainian soldier, two heavily wounded youths who meet each other in a hospital.

“Ward No. 7” made it to the finals of the Radiodrama UA / UK in 2018 one of about 200 stories submitted for the contest organized by the British Council, UA: Ukrainian Radio and the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The radio piece was first broadcast by the UA: Radio Culture in September last year.

Radio edit was recorded, featuring Olga Ternova, director of the Theatre na Zhukah (as Julia); Oleg Korotash, a famous Ukrainian poet and the ATO veteran (as Roman); and Dmytro Ternovyi, the author (as Sergiy Mykhailovych, the Doctor). Record produced by Svitlana Svyrydko-Serova, Special Projects Producer at the UA: Radio Culture.

Dmytro Ternovyi – playwright, theater manager, co-founder and actor of the Theatre na Zhukah (Kharkiv). His earlier piece, “Detalizatsiya”, translated by Lydia Nagel, was staged in the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and printed in the Theater Heute (Germany).

Watch live and records at:

https://www.hansottotheater.de/spie…/…/next-stage-europe-20/

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.

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.

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.