Theaters

The culturally unique Hutsul Theater was organized in Lviv by Hnat Khotkevych – a poet, writer, playwright, historian, folklorist, musician and public figure from the Slobozhanshchyna region of Ukraine who emigrated from the Russian Empire for political reasons. There he became friends with the famous ethnographer and folklorist Volodymyr Hnatiuk, whose research inspired Khotkevych. In […]

As Iryna Volytska wrote, “The two years (1912–1914) Les Kurbas spent with the Ruska Besida traveling theater, directed at the time by Yosyp Stadnyk, were a productive school of his professional skills.” Ruska Besida can also be called the theater where Les Kurbas was born, literally. His parents, Stepan (Kurbas) and Vanda (Teicher) Yanovych, were […]

Ternopil Theatrical Evenings was the first professional theater founded by Les Kurbas in Russian Army-occupied Ternopil in the fall of 1915. According to Teofil Demchuk’s memoirs, Kurbas came to the city in early September 1915 and “quickly gathered actors of the Ruska Besida Theater who were caught by the war in the town of Borshchiv, […]

Mykola Karpovych Sadovskyi invited Les Kurbas to his Kyiv theater, better known as the first Ukrainian resident theater, in autumn of 1915; however, Kurbas and his mother didn’t arrive in Kyiv until March 28, 1916. The young actor from Galicia was invited to replace the theater’s previous leading actor – Ivan Marianenko. Kurbas played thirteen […]

The Young Theater, originally called Society of Faith, officially opened in Kyiv in September 1917, but Les Kurbas had started the Young Theater studio when he had just arrived in Naddniprianshchyna Ukraine back in May 1916. Its members included actors of the Maria Sadovska Theater, students of the Mykola Lysenko Music and Drama School, and […]

Les Kurbas’s relationship with the Taras Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was not simple: on the one hand, this is where he staged one of his best shows – Haidamaky; and on the other, it was this theater that absorbed his brainchild – the Young Theater. By government decision, in autumn 1918 […]

In spring 1919, while working at the newly established Taras Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian SSR, Les Kurbas also began working at the Ukrainian Musical Drama (Ukrmuzdrama). This company – the first Ukrainian opera theater – was formed on the initiative of director Semen Butovskyi in spring 1919, under the auspices of the People’s […]

The Maria Zankovetska Theater was the only theater where Les Kurbas guest directed a show. The company’s roots can be traced back to September 1917 and the opening of the Ukrainian National Theater (UNT) in Kyiv, which Les Kurbas was involved with at the beginning. In 1918, the UNT, which performed at the Trinity People’s […]

In late June 1920, a group of young actors led by Kurbas left Kyiv and headed southwest. This is how Les Kurbas recalled the journey that would be the start of the new Kyiv Drama Theater, or Kyidramte for short: “Our group (15-16 actors), which worked in Kyiv during the period of Soviet rule, decided […]

The Berezil Artistic Association was established in Kyiv on March 30, 1922 by Les Kurbas. Kurbas borrowed the association’s name and credo from Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s poem “I Choose March,” and Berezil was seen as the concentration and realization of all the most advanced creative intentions of Ukrainian theater at the time. Berezil creative […]

Berezil Theater was the official name of the Berezil Artistic Association starting in spring 1926. According to the decision of the All-Ukrainian Theater Council, the Berezil Theater moved to Kharkiv (the then capital of Ukraine) and was under the directorial leadership of Les Kurbas from 1926-1933. Berezil opened its first season in Kharkiv on October […]

The theaters at the Medvezhyegorsk and Solovetsky Islands prison camps were the last places of Les Kurbas’s creative expression. The Solovki special camp (SLON in Russian – Solovki Camp of Special Significance) set up in 1923, along with other camps and theaters in them, was under the control of the Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor […]