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Ira Aldridge admires Taras Shevchenko's painting

photos by Waldemart Klyuzko


Ira Aldrige and Taras Shevchenko remember their mothers



Ira's mother sing him an African songs about a king


By the Rivers of Babylon



Katya wants Ira to come meet the rest of the guests



The road to Ukraine is covered with thorns



Why censor?



Wake Freedom up!


I will play a king

I'm trying to work!


Worky worky


Don't do that. That's the way they mock us.


And this is they way they mock us


We made paradise a hell


And wipe my weeping eyes


It's all the same to me


I will Meet You in the City of the New Jerusalem


Please sign it

 

DARK NIGHT BRIGHT STARS

In 1858 the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was set free after 10 years imprisonment. He met the great African American actor Ira Aldridge and drew his portrait.

created by Yara Arts Group
with Sean Eden, Julian Kytasty, Maria Pleshkevich, Mykola Shkaraban, Jeremy Tardy, Barak Tucker & Shona Tucker
conceived & directed by Virlana Tkacz
music: Julian Kytasty
projections & photographs: Waldemart Klyuzko
costumes: Keiko Obremski,
set & lights Yevhen Kopyiov
translations: Virlana Tkacz & Wanda Phipps
assistant director: Nadia Sokolenko

March 15- 16, 2014   La MaMa
April 28, 2014           American Festival, Odesa
May 1, 2014             Muzagraf Festival, Dzyga, Lviv
May 2, 3 & 4 , 2014     Les Kurbas Theatre, Lviv
May 5, 2014                150th Years of Ruska Besida, Lviv
May 9, 10, 11, 2014  Les Kurbas Theatre Center, Kyiv
May 18, 2014             Ukrainian Museum, New York


PRESS: NEW YORK

The simplicity of this story is one of its strengths.  It is an opportunity to focus on the meeting and intersperse it with poetry and song. Taras Shevchenko (Sean Eden) feels an affinity with Ira (Jeremy Tardy) and they become great friends.  They find they have many things in common. Ekaterina (Ms. Pleshkevich) acts as their translator and they bond through facial expressions as well as gestures. 
            The performance includes the poetry of Taras Shevchenko translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps.  One of the poems is “It’s All the Same to Me.”  The subject matter is timely, speaking about Ukraine’s struggles with Russia. Shakespearean monologues from “Othello” and “King Lear” are also important to the piece.  They bring out Jeremy Tardy’s talent as an actor.  Gospel music is sung softly by Ms. Tucker to accentuate the drama.  It is sung in harmony Julian Kytasty’s traditional Ukrainian songs. The painting of the portrait remains the focus of the meeting. The projection of the painting was provided by Waldemart Klyuzko.  Klyuzko created other projections that are displayed on the backdrop of the stage, such as a picture of Taras’s idealized Ukrainian home and idyllic nature scenes.
            “Dark Night Bright Stars” is a strong foundation for a future Yara performance depicting the relationship of the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko and the renowned African American actor Ira Aldridge.  Watch for more to come.
Olena Jennings, Ukrainian Weekly, April 27, 2014

PRESS IN LVIV
Yara Arts Group from La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York came to Lviv. Yara showed us its own Shevchenko, the Shevchenko who met the famous American tragedian Ira Aldridge in 1858 and created his portrait which today hangs in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.
               This was not Shevchenko the icon, but a portrayal of Shevchenko as a living, emotional and fierce artist, who wants to create and who also dreams of returning home. Director Virlana Tkacz looked beyond the stereotypes that usually encrust this artist. The memoirs of Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy fell into her hands, allowing her to create a real, unpretentious, but elegant, flower to add to our anniversary bouquet.
As Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy noted, she witnessed the meetings between Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge when she was 14 years old. “They had so much in common: both were pure, honest souls, both were real artists, both had suffered greatly in their youth. One had to hire himself out as a lackey to able to enter the theatre which he loved, but which barred dogs and Negroes. The other was beaten for burning a candle for light when he drew. They could not speak without a translator, but they communicated by singing songs from their own cultures and understood each other.”
In his portrayal of Taras Mykola Shkaraban, who has worked with Yara Arts Group since 1991, managed to avoid the stereotypes and allowed him to touch us, to whisper to us – “It’s me.” His Shevchenko is an artist and poet -- inspired and hungry for knowledge. He dreams of Ukraine. Jeremy Tardy, a young graduate from Julliard, showed us the rich palette of his talent and his wonderfully organic acting, as he transformed into Shakespeare’s Othello as portrayed by the great tragedian.
In Dark Night Bright Stars, the young Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy is played by Maria Pleshkevych with appropriate lightness for a girl, full of childish enthusiasm. Ira’s mother is portrayed by Shona Tucker, who filled the stage space with a powerful energy and a deep voice. Barak Tucker, her 9 year old talented son, also appears on stage.
Special mention must be made of the musical arrangements by Julian Kytasty, which intertwine traditional Ukrainian songs with African American Spirituals. Julian, a third generation bandurist, is on stage throughout the show. His presence works even when he is not playing his bandura and singing. Perfect projections for the show were created by Kyiv artist Waldemart Klyuzko, who had been nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award for his work on Yara’s Raven. The set and light design were by Yevhen Kopiyov, the resident designer at the Les Kurbas Theatre Center in Kyiv. New York designer Keiko Obremski did the costumes for the show.
The show has a very warm, cozy family feeling. There is no pathos, no overwhelming acting or directing tricks, but it is full of talent. It is about eternal values, about communication between human beings. They speak different languages, but they really try to understand each other. Both artists also dream of going home, but neither succeeds. Ira Aldridge toured for ten more years and died in Poland. Taras Shevchenko was allowed to visit Ukraine for a few months. Then he was arrested for the third time in 1859 and forced to spend the rest of his life in St. Petersburg. Today we feel he finally has returned, quietly opening the door and inviting his good friend into his Ukraine.
Anastasia Kanarska, Artopinion.blogspot, September 21, 2014.

PRESS IN LVIV
Yara Arts Group from La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York came to Lviv. Yara showed us its own Shevchenko, the Shevchenko who met the famous American tragedian Ira Aldridge in 1858 and created his portrait which today hangs in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.
               This was not Shevchenko the icon, but a portrayal of Shevchenko as a living, emotional and fierce artist, who wants to create and who also dreams of returning home. Director Virlana Tkacz looked beyond the stereotypes that usually encrust this artist. The memoirs of Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy fell into her hands, allowing her to create a real, unpretentious, but elegant, flower to add to our anniversary bouquet.
As Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy noted, she witnessed the meetings between Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge when she was 14 years old. “They had so much in common: both were pure, honest souls, both were real artists, both had suffered greatly in their youth. One had to hire himself out as a lackey to able to enter the theatre which he loved, but which barred dogs and Negroes. The other was beaten for burning a candle for light when he drew. They could not speak without a translator, but they communicated by singing songs from their own cultures and understood each other.”
In his portrayal of Taras Mykola Shkaraban, who has worked with Yara Arts Group since 1991, managed to avoid the stereotypes and allowed him to touch us, to whisper to us – “It’s me.” His Shevchenko is an artist and poet -- inspired and hungry for knowledge. He dreams of Ukraine. Jeremy Tardy, a young graduate from Julliard, showed us the rich palette of his talent and his wonderfully organic acting, as he transformed into Shakespeare’s Othello as portrayed by the great tragedian.
In Dark Night Bright Stars, the young Katerina Yunge-Tolstoy is played by Maria Pleshkevych with appropriate lightness for a girl, full of childish enthusiasm. Ira’s mother is portrayed by Shona Tucker, who filled the stage space with a powerful energy and a deep voice. Barak Tucker, her 9 year old talented son, also appears on stage.
Special mention must be made of the musical arrangements by Julian Kytasty, which intertwine traditional Ukrainian songs with African American Spirituals. Julian, a third generation bandurist, is on stage throughout the show. His presence works even when he is not playing his bandura and singing. Perfect projections for the show were created by Kyiv artist Waldemart Klyuzko, who had been nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award for his work on Yara’s Raven. The set and light design were by Yevhen Kopiyov, the resident designer at the Les Kurbas Theatre Center in Kyiv. New York designer Keiko Obremski did the costumes for the show.
The show has a very warm, cozy family feeling. There is no pathos, no overwhelming acting or directing tricks, but it is full of talent. It is about eternal values, about communication between human beings. They speak different languages, but they really try to understand each other. Both artists also dream of going home, but neither succeeds. Ira Aldridge toured for ten more years and died in Poland. Taras Shevchenko was allowed to visit Ukraine for a few months. Then he was arrested for the third time in 1859 and forced to spend the rest of his life in St. Petersburg. Today we feel he finally has returned, quietly opening the door and inviting his good friend into his Ukraine.
Anastasia Kanarska, Artopinion.blogspot, September 21, 2014.

PRESS: KYIV

The poster for Dark Night Bright Stars created by Yara Arts Group from New York which performed at the Les Kurbas Theatre Center in Kyiv, describes the show in two brief sentences. These two sentences indeed describe all the events of the show: “In 1858 the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was set free after 10 years imprisonment and returned to St. Petersburg. There he met the great African American actor Ira Aldridge and drew his portrait.” In terms of events on stage, this is really all that happens. But the play of images in the show is so rich that it is impossible to describe the production in a few sentences… it is about the power of words and the power of art.
Ira Aldridge – was an African American born in New York, who in 1831 started to tour Western Europe and eventually also performed in Eastern Europe. His repertoire included mostly Shakespeare; Othello was his most popular part. When he arrived in St. Petersburg in 1858, he met Taras Shevchenko at the home of Count Fyodor Tolstoy. We know about the meetings between the two artists from the diary of Tolstoy’s fourteen year old daughter Kateryna, who served as translator for Aldridge and Shevchenko. She mentions that at one point she no longer needed to translate because the two artists seemed to understand each other without words. This “communication without translation” is at the heart of the show created by Virlana Tkacz.
This communication without translations, paradoxically, places great focus on the word, providing it with great depth and multidimensionality. The characters exchange only a few important words – revealing the multidimensionality of meanings which usually escapes us in ordinary speech. Words like “mama” “Ukraine –Little Russia” “home” “portrait” and “friend” acquire the kind of depth of meaning which can usually only be found in poetry. Our two heroes discover that both their mothers died when they were nine years old, that they both lost their motherland and cannot return “home,” that they both understand what it means to be a slave/serf, a person of lower caste who is the object of derision. They both “speak” in terms of art, and understand what “censorship” means.
Art becomes an additional means of communication. The sensitive selection of poetry by Taras Shevchenko deeply resounds with a contemporary audience in the context of the “discussed” yearning for the homeland. So do Aldridge’s monologues and Shevchenko’s paintings. The main event of the show is creation of Shevchenko’s portrait of Aldridge. This portrait tries to capture both the outer reality and the inner world of the actor, his fears, memories and joys.
Another form of artistic expression is the music played on the bandura by Julian Kytasty, who is always present on stage. The music includes traditional songs (both Ukrainian and African American), as well as spirituals – the sacred folk tradition of African Americans. In the context of the greatly desired but constantly unrealized dream of returning home for both characters the spiritual “I Will Meet You in the City of the New Jerusalem” – in the Heavenly Jerusalem or in Heaven becomes an outstanding moment. This song-promise which is performed by all the actors in harmony becomes the culmination of the show. Afterwards we learn that Shevchenko died in a foreign land a few days before serfdom in abolished in the homeland. And, Ira Aldridge died six years later, shortly before his own planned return home.
Sofia Riabchuk, Kino-teatr (Kyiv) #4, 2014

In Dark Night Bright Stars, a multicultural production that is staged in two languages, director Virlana Tkacz wanted to show how people can communicate beyond language, how they find those threads that can connect heart to heart, soul to soul, mind to mind and create a strong, tight and honest friendship. The Yara artists showed this very successfully, using the poetry of Taras Shevchenko, old church hymns, and excerpts from Shakespeare. The artists included: Jeremy Tardy (Ira), Mykola Shkaraban (Taras), Maria Pleshkevych (Katya) Shona Tucker (mother and vocalist), Julian Kytasty (music and vocals) and 9 year old Barak Tucker who played young Aldridge. In “…Bright Stars” there are moments of real drama and ironic humor. No matter how many times you read Shevchenko’s poetry it still speaks. Jeremy Tardy, a recent graduate of the Julliard School in New York, is talented and resourceful in portraying the sheer depth of Aldridge’s gift. Aldridge was a famous tragedian, but no slouch in comedic roles. When at the end of the show Taras – Mykola Shkaraban completes the portrait we believe that the arts part as real friends.
Nadia Sokolenko, Kultura i zhyttia (Kyiv), May 9, 2014.

Dark Night Bright Stars in Ukraine - April 28 - May 11, 2014
photos from Kyiv
photos from Lviv
photos from Odesa
photos from our visit to Shevchenko Museum in Kyiv
photos from La MaMa


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