Yara Arts Group celebrates 15 years of international theater (10/16/05)

Yara Arts Group celebrates 15 years of international theater

by Olena Jennings

NEW YORK - On Saturday, September 24, the Yara Arts group celebrated its 15th anniversary at La MaMa Theater in New York City. The festivities included the premieres of two short documentary films featuring Yara artists and a performance of poetry translated and dramatized by Yara throughout the years under the direction of Virlana Tkacz.

Both film-makers experienced the technical and emotional challenges of making films in which they were central characters.

The making of the first film, "The Whisperer," directed by Andrea Odezynska and edited by Kathryn Barnier, began when Ms. Odezynska accompanied the Yara Arts group to Ukraine. Yara traveled to Utoropy, one of Ukraine's oldest villages, located outside of Kolomyia, to record folk songs in danger of becoming extinct. In the film, the group's exploration of Ukrainian culture brings them to Baba Anna, a healer who calls herself "sheptukha," or the whisperer. Baba Anna forever changes the way that the Yara artists view their lives.

Amy Grappell traveled to Ukraine in 1991 to participate in a Ukrainian-American theater collaboration that focused on the life of experimental theater director Les Kurbas. In "Light from the East," Ms. Grappell learns about herself as she discovers a Ukraine that unfolds before her eyes with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's declaration of independence.

A Ukrainian theater critic, Natalia Shevchenko, accompanies Amy through the city, translating as the film-maker Ms. Crappell asks Ukrainians questions about their daily lives and happiness. She discovers that happiness is different for everyone: old women on the street are happy despite the political turmoil in their lives; the Ukrainian theater critic's mother is happy because she has a daughter; and an artist is happy because he has the freedom to create. The film includes excerpts from Kurbas's diaries, emphasizing art's power to bring about both happiness and political change.

One of Yara's specialties is promoting Ukrainian, Buryat and Japanese poetry through translation and performance. Yara artists Nina Arianda, Marina Celander, Sean Eden, Amy Grappell, Allison Hiroto, Jennifer Kato, Julian Kytasty, Tom Lee, Olga Shuhan, Shigeko Suga, Vera Slywotzky and Meredith Wright gathered together to perform "In Verse," a collage of music and of poetry translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps.

Their performance was composed of excerpts from the 16 original theater pieces that Yara has created since its founding in 1990. It included "Koliada: Twelve Dishes"; "Blind Sight" inspired by the work and travels to Japan of blind poet Vasyl Yeroshenko; "Swan" based on Oleh Lysheha's poetry; and "A Light from the East" about Les Kurbas, in addition to theater pieces with Buryat artists in Siberia and pieces created in workshops conducted at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer School.

Ms. Arianda and Mr. Lee's performance of Serhiy Zhadan's poem "Paprika" was especially poignant. The interweaving of their voices invoked the quiet desperation of a teenage couple in the supermarket. In stunning solos, Ms. Wright sang excerpts from Mr. Lysheha's "Swan" to music by Genji Ito and Pavlo Tychyna's "Semiramis" to music by Roman Hurko. Bandurist Julian Kytasty accompanied the performance of Mr. Tychyna's truest pre-socialist realism poetry.

Yara's 15-year celebration set the tone for years to come, emphasizing the power of collaboration between various genres and cultures. This collaboration has always been Ms. Tkacz's vision. It is a source of inspiration that promises the creation of rich, emotionally fertile and politically relevant art.

| Home Page |