"kolo nas" by Virlana Tkacz

In 2002, I was in Kyiv for a half year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Karpenko-Karyi Theatre Institute. For several hours a week, I was busy teaching American theatre history and theory. The rest of the time I organized performances and poetry events.

During my first week in Kyiv, I organized a gathering of poets for an evening event with an iteresting twist. Seven poets read their works to an audience composed entirely of people who wrote about poetry or performed it. The reactions to each poem were immediate and visceral. Fascinated with the dynamics and the importance of presence in the arts, I convinced Svitlana Matvienko, then editor of Literatura Plus, to help me organize a series of events that would underscore these elements. We decided to hold our events in art galleries since these venues would allow us to retain the intimate atmosphere of the first gathering. We approached Oleksandr Musienko, of Dim Art Gallery in the Sofia Museum of Literature, about hosting an event for young poets to compliment his planned exhibit of young painters. He agreed, so I asked Serhiy Zhadan and Andriy Bondar, considered the hottest poets under the age of thirty, to take part in our next event. And so Yara Arts Group launched a series of programs presenting new poetry, drama, and music in Kyiv. We decided to call our series “kolo nas” or “’round us,” emphasizing the interaction of the arts and the intimacy of our events.

Although the Dim Art Gallery was not easy to find, a wonderful crowd of friends and poetry fans showed up for the event, including Askold Melnyczuk, editor of the renowned Agni Review literary journal published in Boston. After I opened the evening event with brief introductory remarks, poet Andriy Bondar read some of his poems. Following this, actor Mykola Shkaraban and I read my translations of Andriy’s work. The reading of Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry was again followed by translations. The two poets then read poems on similar themes in what evolved as a kind of poetic duel. Upping the ante, Andriy read some of his most controversial poems, including one written in Latin script (rather than Cyrillic) and another about the newly published literary encyclopedia. Serhiy then countered with some of his best poems.

The audience enjoined the jousting; press reviews were glowing. Natalka Fedushchak wrote in the Kyiv Post, “Cutting-edge. Determined. Critical. Those are just some of the words that describe the works of Ukrainian poets Andriy Bondar and Serhiy Zhadan. The two, both 28, are considered some of the brightest minds in Ukrainian literary circles, and they have been able to echo in their works the emotions of their generation.”

Later that fall kolo nas presented “In the Beginning Was Song,” a dialog of traditional songs in Ukrainian and Hebrew by Mariana Sadovska and Victoria Hanna. In January, we hosted an evening with Oleh Lysheha to celebrate the presentation of his new book To Snow and Fire. The following fall, we moved to new quarters: the RA Gallery run by Andriy Trylisky and located near the Kyiv Opera. RA Gallery has turned out to be a perfect venue for kolo nas, and we have been presenting our events there ever since.

In the fall of 2003, we dedicated a kolo nas evening to “Another Format,” a new series of books that consist of interviews by Taras Prokhasko with leading new writers and thinkers of Ukraine. To date “Another Format” had published interviews with Oleh Lysheha, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuri Andrukhovych, Yuri Izdryk, and Borys Gudziak. We were happy to introduce this innovative series to our Kyiv audience and were fortunate to have Taras Prokhasko, as well as several of the interviewees, present at the event.

Through its presentations kolo nas has made quite a name for itself among the young literary crowd in Kyiv. Recently, kolo nas has also started staging readings of new Ukrainian translations of American experimental drama. While teaching at Karpenko-Karyi, I realized how little my students knew about the best of American culture. It was a shock to see that their textbook on world theatre was printed in Moscow in 1979 and included ridiculous opinions about American theatre presented as fact. When I tried to have my students go to the source to form their own opinions, they told me that there were only seven translations of American plays in Ukrainian and most were out of print. Since it is very imporatant that these future theatre critics and historians be able to place Ukrainian theatre in a world context, I decided to take a step towards remedying the situation by organizing translations of American drama and presenting public play readings.

Last January kolo nas presented a reading of 49, a Native American play by Hanay Geiogomah, which I translated with Oksana Batiuk. Over fifty attended, including writer Oksana Zabuzhko, a number of theatre artists, and my students from the Theatre Institute. The play’s theme about preserving the essential of an embattled culture really rang bells in Kyiv and provoked a a very lively discussion afterwards. The audience loved it.

This spring, kolo nas events continued to present readings of new Ukrainian translations of American plays. The first offering was a translation of Sam Shepard’s play Angel City, a comedic and horrified take on LA’s film business. Reading the parts of the three main characters were Victor Morozov, Oleh Drach, and Serhiy Zhadan. The gallery was packed, with many people sitting on the floor. The response was enthusiastic, with the audience clamoring for more.

One of those attending the event was Valentyna Kyrylovna, the editor of Osnovy Books, which had recently agreed to publish a book with our translations. American Experimental Drama will be the first anthology of American drama in Ukrainian translation. Containing twelve plays, it will include a wide range of works from the earliest experimental works by such great American authors as Eugene O’Neill in the 1920s to Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer-winning play of 2002. The core of the book will be formed by theatre pieces from the 1970s through the 1990s, the heyday of American experimental drama. The anthology seeks to present both the depth and diversity of American experimental theatre to Ukrainian theatre artists, students, and audiences.

In order to create translations that will breathe life on stage, I chose to collaborate with translators familiar with the performing arts. A number of the translations will be by Oksana Batiuk, the foremost translator of American films into Ukrainian. The other translators on the project are Sofia Riabchuk, who has worked on theatre productions with Yara; Mykola Shkaraban, an actor who translates theatre theory; and Serhiy Zhadan, Ukraine’s best young poet, who has also written scripts for a Kharkiv theatre.

At the end of May, kolo nas presented another reading of a play, Maria Irene Fornes’ Conduct of Life, which I translated with Sofia Riabchuk. The play, read by Oleh Drach, Halyna Stefanova, and Maria Korotchenko, is set in a Latin American country. RA Gallery was again filled with an appreciative audience that listened to the short but very intense script about the choices we make in how we conduct our lives and the repercussions these daily choices have on the lives of other people. Afterwards there was a spirited discussion about ethic and politics.

This fall, kolo nas plans to continue presenting readings of both poetic and dramatic texts in translation. If you would like to read more about Yara’s kolo nas series, please visit our website www.brama.com/yara If you would like to be informed of our next event in Kyiv send us an e-mail yara@prodigy.net

Virlana Tkacz/Yara Arts Group article originally published in "Our Life" September 2004

Yara Arts Group
306 East 11th St., #3B
New York, NY 10003 USA

Phone/Fax: 212-475-6474
Email Virlana Tkacz at:mailto:yara@prodigy.net

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