The art of the impossible. Theatrical report from Sumy – the city where the air anxiety does not subside – Publications
The city of Sumy, living close to the Russian border, in the tension of a constant threat of attack, in endless air alarms, has its own theatrical excitement. Spectator hall The Sumy National Academic Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy named after Mykhailo Shchepkin is almost always full. Two theaters operate on the stage here at once – the Sumy theater and the twice-relocated Luhansk theater.
So, a trip to the theater critic Olga Stelmashevska there is not just a gesture of support for colleagues, but also motivation. Especially for UP. Culture she recorded art on the border of life and war. Over time, it will surely find a worthy place in the history of the survival and struggle of artists during Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. Against her culture.
Aimed shooting
The Sumy Theater today is a kind of model of life in our country: two troupes, two theater families successfully cooperate and coexist on one stage. One – local Sumy. The second one has already been relocated twice. First from Luhansk to Siverskodonetsk. And then from there – to Sumy, the team of the Luhansk Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater.
The Sumy Theater is managed by the former head of the Luhansk Theater Serhiy Dorofeev.
“The Sumy Theater today is a kind of model of life in our country”
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
Serhiy’s phone contains a photo of the bombed-out theater building in Siverskodonetsk. Together with colleagues from Luhansk, they restored this building after relocation. And not only the building – Dorofeev built an interesting, modern Ukrainian theater in the post-Soviet and pro-Russian “artistic landscape”.
“With his associates, the troupe – Dorofeev built an interesting, modern Ukrainian theater with a spirit of healthy experimentation”
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
In one moment, all this was gone. There is a recording of a captured “Deneerite” who tells how he received the task to shoot up the theater from a tank, which he did with a dozen shots. The auditorium, administrative and other premises were burnt down. The theater cannot be restored…
It was the second of three Ukrainian theaters that was deliberately destroyed: Ukrainian culture was targeted.
“The regional administration completed the renovation of the theater building in Severodonetsk in 2017. In total, about 50 million hryvnias were spent on it, and almost half of the money was invested in stage equipment. Everything was very serious there. I still don’t feel anything about it. I don’t know why, but I have never been covered since February 24. I think that my subconscious is simply blocking this tragic memory for me. But one day it all has to break through“, says Serhiy.
Serhii Dorofeev headed the Luhansk Regional Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater in Severodonetsk for 8 years
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
So, in Sumy, Luhansk residents began to work with Sumy residents under the same theater roof. So, the Sumy troupe came to close its jubilee season with a new leader and unexpected reinforcements.
And the Luhansk Theater remained a separate legal institution headed by Oleksandr Hryshkov. For 8 years in Severodonetsk, together with the people of Luhansk, he created and rebuilt this theater, so this allowed him to resume the performances of his theater in a short period of time.
Nowadays, each theater has its own poster, but performances are played with mixed lineups. If the projects are joint, there are two logos on the poster.
Seasons and reasons
In their first season of 2022/23, Dorofeev and Grishkov released 16 premieres, opened “Scene under the circle” – “stage without censorship”, modernized the repertoire. Both directors gradually removed various taboos, turned the leaders of the region into a theatrical faith.
The main thing: they began to actively involve young directors Maksym Bulgakov, Dmytro Nekrasov, Vladyslav Pisarev and conductor/director Nikita Polyakov. So, the attention of a new, young viewer was won quite quickly, and even compared to 2020, the number of audiences doubled!
In their first season of 2022/23, Dorofeev and Grishkov released 16 premieres, opened “Stage under the circle” – “stage without censorship”
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
This is a real achievement, given the fact that the theater building, erected in the 80s of the last century, was intended not so much for the theater as for regional party congresses: 822 seats for a city of 300,000 is still too much, even for peacetime . In order to keep the audience, you have to put premieres literally on the conveyor belt.
After the threat of a border breach in May, the city’s population decreased to 180,000. Reach out to Russia – 40 kilometers.
However, the shelter of the theater can accommodate only 350 people – this is the number of spectators who play today. The ticket costs from 130 to 300 hryvnias. For the residents of Sumy, taking into account all the circumstances, it is quite tangible money. Despite this, the hall is always full.
The shelter of the theater can accommodate only 350 people
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
Last season was marked by 13 premieres, a 90% change in repertoire, tours in Kyiv, Lviv, and Uzhhorod.
The 2023/2024 season was marked by 13 premieres, a 90% change in repertoire, tours in Kyiv, Lviv, and Uzhhorod.
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
The Sumy theater is not completely bypassed by metropolitan processes – the search for an acceptable language to talk about the tragic events of this war, a new look at the classics, reflections on the future.
So, the new season at the Sumy Theater has a very balanced poster, which includes a little bit of the above. On the experimental stage in the shelter: the trash “Rainbow Family” (in the original play “Gay Parade”) by modern playwright Ihor Bilyts, the tragic farce “Orchestra” by the creator of modern intellectual drama Jean Anouy and the drama “Lungs” by modern British playwright Duncan McMillan; trending Serhiy Zhadan’s “Bread Armistice” in the format “scene on stage” and non-concert “Five Songs of Polissia” by contemporary dramatist Lyudmila Tymoshenko; the popular well-made play “Quartetto” by Oscar-winner Ronald Harwood on a small stage, the Western European classic “Peer Gynt” by Henrik Ibsen (winner of the prestigious all-Ukrainian theater festival-prize “GRA”) and “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Edmond Rostan.
And of course, the “Konotop Witch”. Here it is in the musical genre: the theater has its own orchestra, singing actors and actresses. The orchestra regularly gives concerts-performances on the mountain.
Three more premieres are currently in rehearsals: “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll for family viewing, the grand “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by Mykhailo Kotsyubynskyi, and a completely fresh play by Oleg Mykhaylov “The Bird in the Attic” – the story of a girl from Mariupol who was taken away to Russia and who was able to keep Ukraine in her heart.
The play “Stolen Happiness” by Ivan Franko
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
A special performance
The premiere of “Stolen Happiness” by Ivan Franko, staged and directed by Dmytro Nekrasov, is a good example of the director’s sense of the all-Ukrainian theatrical wave of modern interpretations of Ukrainian classics.
In Sumy, theater tickets sell out very quickly.
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
Tickets for the performance are sold out in advance. The audience reacts lively to each bright or provocative mise-en-scène, discusses the various cast members, takes a photo with the director (!). In Sumy there is the same theater boom as in the capital. With its nuances, of course.
The most impressive moment of the visit to the Sumy Theater: five minutes before the finale, when the irreparable was about to happen, and the director skillfully twisted the emotional spring to the limit, a loud, deafening explosion was heard: the anti-aircraft fire was working. Of course, the performance was stopped and they were asked to go down to the shelter, but the audience literally began to beg to play on, because the anxieties in Sumy continued. They lasted twenty minutes and still persuaded to finish the game: not a single person left.
Five minutes before the final, the work of air defense could be heard in Sumy
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
What is so attractive about this “provincial drama” for the audience of the border, restless city, where, it would seem, not for the theater?!
The action is transferred from 1870 and the mountain village of Nezvanychi – in the 90s of the XX century, to the conventional town of Slobozhansky with all the “peculiarities” of those years. The events take place in the garage of some generalized sleeping area with all the recognizable object and costume world of an average, impoverished, gray life to the hits of the band “VV”.
The action was transferred from 1870 to the 90s of the 20th century.
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
However, the director-producer does not even think of flirting with the audience: this deliberately chosen move makes it possible to emphasize the “classics of the genre” and at the same time the relevance of the French plot. Every detail of this modernization is justified and adds real, not literary authenticity to the love triangle surrounded by gossip, the uncontrolled possibilities of a person in power, social and everyday conventions and eternal human passions and dilemmas.
It is not for nothing that Nekrasov (musical arrangement) interweaves the hits “Vopliv Vidoplyasova” into the entire tempo-rhythmic canvas of the play: the story begins to live in a modern rhythm and is not only an “insert” musical number – a literal quote from the band’s clip “There will be dances in the club”, but also a color , which adds contrast to the drama unfolding somewhere in the district.
The story begins to live in a modern rhythm and responds not only with an “insert” musical number a la tik-tok.
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
Everything is cleverly played: instead of a horse, Mykola Zadorozhny (Vitaly Khomenko) has an “iron horse”: a rusty motorcycle with a cradle: his fetish and treasure. Mykhailo (Yuriy Kulyk) is a people’s deputy, a “tracker” and a charismatic “solver”, who went through Afghanistan (“his mother’s only son was pushed out to war”) and has PTSD.
In the first minutes, Anna (Kristina Zohrabyan) serves pearl barley to the table: a symbol of desperate poverty and at the same time “women’s porridge”, as it is called in the people. She feeds it not only to an unloved husband, but also to three grandmothers – the personification of a deeply prejudiced old world.
These colorful actresses (Olga Bogomolova, Nonna Zhuleva and Tamara Korinna) are a find and a bright semantic accent: they are three everyday beggar neighbors in lush clothes (costume artist Lyubov Medvid) – ardent workers of the ancient OBS (one-grandmother-said), then Shakespearean witches or fortune tellers from nearby Konotopus, or a fragment of an ancient Greek chorus commenting on events.
These colorful actresses-grandmothers (Olga Bogomolova, Nonna Zhuleva and Tamara Korinna) are a find and a bright semantic accent.
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
The apotheosis of the play is the lovers’ “desecration” of a motorcycle-cradle and material evidence of a semblance of a decent life, “like everyone else”, of the unfortunate wage earner Mykola. We couldn’t do without erotic cinema in the style of “Nine and a half weeks” – a parte to the video salons of the 90s. Sex, smoke, rock and roll. But the scene is too beautiful, contrived, choreographed, expressive. Well, because the Theater!
Actually, the understanding of the nature of the theater, its feeling, the talented possession of its secrets, hooks, lures and gives Nekrasov the opportunity to use the entire director’s palette.
“Interest in the theater is conscious and subconscious self-healing and self-cleansing from fears of war”
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
His colleagues, each with their own special director’s handwriting, also use it fully and freely in their artistic expressions. This is the main guarantee of creativity and audience success. The Sumy public can always count on an interesting, quirky theater without the prefix “provincial”. Because it is in context and trending.
It’s just a pity that the war is trying to throw the Sumy Theater out of its borders: not everyone dares to go to this city for theatrical impressions.
Culture is a weapon!
Yaroslav Isaev, courtesy of the Sumy Theater
The interest of the city’s residents in the theater is conscious and subconscious self-healing and self-cleansing from the fears of war. These one and a half to two hours in the theater are a return to pre-war life, a restoration of mental health and a demonstration of the strategically important place of culture in the nation’s self-affirmation.
