Yara Arts Group's new production takes troupe to distant Buryatia
by Virlana Tkacz
CONCLUSION
"Sacred sea"
I felt it was very important that we rehearse our piece on Lake Baikal, where the mythic sections take place. We waited for the rest of our company, which included Cecilia Arana, Zabryna Guevara, Eleanor Lipat, Andrew Pang and Watoku Ueno. Once all the Yara actors arrived, we piled into a tiny bus and left for what the Buryats call the "sacred sea."
Lake Baikal is the deepest body of fresh water on earth; it contains one-fifth of the earth's freshwater supply. The water from its center is so pure that it becomes contaminated by the glass of the laboratory beakers. The lake is renowned for its sudden changes in weather. An American wrote: "It is only on Baikal in the autumn that a man learns to pray from his heart."
But the Buryats pray to the Baikal and to all of nature throughout the year. As we rode to the lake we often stopped on a hill, or in a spot where the steppe suddenly opened up, to sprinkle milk and vodka and to thank the masters of the landscape. The Buryats say, "People ask us where is your church architecture, and we say we pray in a church where the dome is the sky and the foundations are the earth." Nature is spectacular there, truly awesome.
We rehearsed our show on the shore. In one scene the actors say their own addresses starting with their present address and stepping back to say the previous one. They experience the place and themselves at each address. After reciting their place of birth, every actor stepped into the waters of the Baikal. Yes, we were all floating in water before birth, and life on earth began in the seas. We still feel its pull today.
Our bus driver was very appropriately named Bayar Timur, which in Buryat means "warrior of steel." Not only did he know how to get us out of incredible jams on the road, he actually managed to lift the bus without a jack to fix a flat. As we all stood in the freezing night, Tom and Andrew suddenly started performing a section of Lysheha's "Swan" poem to the moon:
Moon, come here...
I come out from under the pines - you're hiding...
I go back under the pines - you shine...
I start running - you're at my back...
I stop - you're gone...
Only dark pines...
I hide behind a pine - and you come out...
I come out - you're not there...
Not there...
Not there...
There...
Not there...
There.. not there...
I can't move that fast...
Wait.. I want to
Stand in your light...1
Lysheha must have been writing about this very moon, this very spot.
I learned about Lysheha's connection to Buryatia only on the day I was leaving for Siberia. Serhii Proskurnia, who had produced our shows in Kyiv, arrived that morning and we talked as I tried to pack. At one point I asked him if he thought I was crazy for going off to Ulan Ude. "No," he replied, "it makes perfect sense. After all, Lysheha had been there and was very influenced by the art and philosophy." I couldn't believe my ears. Lysheha had been to Buryatia? "Yes," Serhii answered, "Didn't you know that?"
No, I didn't know that. It was only due to a ton of research that I happened upon the Buryat material. At first Serhii thought I was kidding. Then he realized that I had indeed made this connection on my own. He told me what he knew.
In the 1970s Oleh Lysheha was involved with a college literary magazine called Skrynia (The Chest) that published translations of Western modernist poets such as Ezra Pound. During the purges of 1972 the police decided that this was a nationalist publication and Lysheha was expelled from Lviv State University. He was forced into the Soviet army and sent to Buryatia. I don't think the actors knew about Lysheha's stay in Buryatia, but obviously they, too, felt a deep connection in this poem as we stood there shivering in the Siberian night.
The return of the swan
The last section we developed for our piece in Buryatia had the actors play themselves in a rehearsal. In this scene the Buryat actors tell local variations on the swan story as they teach the Yara actors to play a traditional Buryat game with sheep bones. When Erzhena told of how every dawn Buryat women still sprinkle milk into the sky, a white offering, a prayer for the return of the great white bird, Tom asked her if the swans ever appear at that moment. "Oh no," said Erzhena, "there are no swans here."
We couldn't believe it. Swans are the symbol of Buryatia. Their pictures are on everything. Then Erzhena told us there haven't been any living swans in Buryatia for hundreds of years. "These are dark times, but we believe that when the time is right, the swans will return to Buryatia."
We performed "Virtual Souls" at the Buryat National Theatre on September 7. Many of the actors from the troupe came, as did the present and the past artistic directors. There was also a large group of students from the Technical Institute who were studying English. Valentina Dambueva was there and afterwards told us how wonderful it was to hear our actors sing her songs in English.
Tsyden Zhimbiev, people's writer of Buryatia, also saw our show that night. After the show Sayan told me Mr. Zhimbiev wanted to see me the next day. I agreed and asked Sayan and Tom to come with me. The next morning we met the old writer in his office. He said he thought what we had done was very important. We had placed Buryat culture in a modern context. He liked the show and told us we only had to change a few slides, since the ones we used were not of Buryat petroglyphs. He gave us the very book on Buryat petroglyphs we'd been looking for.
Then he turned to me and asked, "Why are you here?" I told him that we wanted to do a piece about swans, and the Buryat swan legends were so beautiful. He nodded and asked, "Why are you here?" I told him I worked at La Mama, an experimental theater that works with world theater. One day in Lviv Ellen Stewart, the founder of La Mama, had told me to go to this area. He nodded and asked, "But why are you here?" I took a deep breath and told him that the first piece I made with Yara was about a Ukrainian director... "Who?" he asked. "Les Kurbas." "Oh, that's why you're here," said Mr. Zhimbiev.
I sat there stunned. This man knew about Les Kurbas? "Oh, yes," he replied. He was working on a book about the great Buryat actor, Valerii Inkizhinov, who had worked with Kurbas in Kharkiv. "And it's about time we re-establish the great Buryat-Ukrainian theater tradition, don't you think?"
* * *
"Virtual Souls" will be playing at La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York on January 16-26, 1997. For tickets call (212) 475-7710.
The Yara Arts Group, may be reached at 306 East 11th St. No. 3B, New York, NY 10003; phone/fax; (212) 475-6474; e-mail; Y[email protected]
1 "Swan" by Oleh Lysheha, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 12, 1997, No. 2, Vol. LXV
| Home Page |