Yara Arts Group to present “Hitting Bedrock”

NEW YORK – With battles surging daily in eastern Ukraine, Yara Arts Group has chosen to replace its scheduled spring production “Dark Night Bright Stars” with “Hitting Bedrock,” a new work inspired by interviews with people from Donetsk over the last year. The piece, performed primarily in English, will run from February 20 to March 8 at La MaMa Theater, 74A E. Fourth St. in New York. Yara’s Artistic Director Virlana Tkacz and the artists of Yara Arts Group felt compelled to respond to the current situation by mounting a new theater piece inspired by interviews over the past two years with young people from Donetsk. Initially dreaming of an optimistic future, they now describe the harshness of war and life as refugees. “Hitting Bedrock” combines these interviews with recent poetry and monologues by Serhiy Zhadan, the most popular writer of the post-independence generation in Ukraine. “Hitting Bedrock” began in Ukraine in the fall of 2013 as “Underground Dreams.” Over 20 Donetsk residents, mostly young people, responded to an invitation by Yara Arts Group to talk about their dreams, for themselves and for their city, for a theater piece at the Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives, housed in an old factory complex in Donetsk. They were overwhelmingly positive about their future. Some 200 people attended a workshop performance in October 2013 and a full production was planned for June 2014. But war intervened. Like Ukrainians around the world, Yara Arts Group spent the winter watching as protests in Kyiv led to the ouster of a corrupt president, who happened to be from Donetsk. But hopefulness was soon replaced by violence. Ms. Tkacz returned to Ukraine on June 8, 2014, to resume “Underground Dreams,” only to have the Izolyatsia complex captured by terrorists the next day. The staff were allowed to leave with some artwork, but the premises were mined. Ms. Tkacz rendezvoused with Izolyatsia director Luba Mykhailova in Kyiv to continue their project in exile. Ms. Tkacz and Mr. Zhadan re-interviewed many of the original Donetsk residents via Skype. Some were now refugees in other Ukrainian cities, and others were still in Donetsk. They described their new daily realities: searches at checkpoints during morning commutes, trying to concentrate at work while armed men run past your window, the terror of walking through a totally abandoned city, cold sweats induced by loud noises. The theater piece created at the Les Kurbas National Theater Center in Kyiv juxtaposed earlier dreams with their present lives. The upcoming La MaMa production presents new interviews and an entire new cycle of poetry written by Mr. Zhadan and translated by Ms. Tkacz and poet Wanda Phipps. The theater piece, directed by Ms. Tkacz, has been renamed “Hitting Bedrock” to describe the situation of many residents of the former mining town. En route to the theater, the audience will be guided through a basement passageway where the photos of the Donetsk interviewees will be displayed and their recorded voices will be heard. The music for the new production is composed by well-known bandurist Julian Kytasty. The cast includes Marina Celander, Andrew Colteaux, Sean Eden, Chris Ignacio and Maria Pleshkevich. The set and lights are by Watoku Ueno. Costumes are by Keiko Obremski. Projections are by Volodymyr Klyuzko, nominated for a New York Innovative Theater Award for his work on Yara’s “Raven.” This year, Yara Arts Group celebrates its 25th anniversary. “Yara at 25: Looking Back/Moving Forward” is an exhibition running through March 8 at The Ukrainian Museum in New York. Since 1990 Yara has created 31 international collaborative cultural projects with contemporary and traditional artists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia. For tickets go to www.lamama.org.