Shakespeare’s tragedy united non-professional actors from different cities who found a new home in western Ukraine.
Shakespeare’s classic play “King Lear” will be performed on the stage of the Actor’s House in the capital by the team of the theater studio “UZhIK”. It originated in the city of Uzhgorod, on the initiative of the local director Vyacheslav Yehorov.
Immigrants from different parts of our country, who were forced to find themselves in the west of Ukraine, escaping from the horrors of war, play in the theater studio.
They decided to show the production in cities that sheltered a large number of internally displaced persons. The tour starts from the capital.
The goal of the project is to tell how, despite loss and despair, you can start life with a clean slate and find yourself in a new, inspiring business.
The theater studio currently has several plays in its repertoire. The first was “King Lear” based on Shakespeare’s classic play, which will be presented to the people of Kyiv.
“This performance was supposed to be my thesis, which I could not stage due to the restrictions of the Covid-19. With the beginning of the war, I still decided to return to the idea, although there were many skeptics who refused, did not believe in the possibility of realizing this idea, – he told “Vechirnyi Kyiv”directed by Vyacheslav Egorov. –I chose “King Lear” then because there were mostly girls in the educational institution and the main roles in the production were female. This is a translation of Ryadnov from the 2000s, very high-quality. We took two storylines from the original play: the jester and his comments and the daughters’ relationship with their father. The only thing is, we gave the role of the jester to a woman. The text was used in its entirety, nothing of its own was added.
We held the casting in March in 3 days. We had to find 5 actors. A total of 60 people came to the casting, including residents of Uzhhorod and immigrants. It turned out that all the main roles went to the immigrants who performed well and read the proposed passages.
Rehearsals began in April, and on May 26, the play premiered in PADIUN (Uzhhorod). We have already had 15 performances, 10 of them – “King Lear”. In general, about 3,000 spectators in the western regions have already managed to see our performances.”
Thus, the play features Oleksiy Dashkovskiy (an English teacher from Irpen), Ruslana Tymofiy (housewife, Katerynivka village, Kharkiv region), Yuliya Gorielkova (co-owner of a small family business; moved to Uzhgorod from Chuguyev, Kharkiv region), Olena Alyab’eva (artist from Kharkiv), Sofia Almaz (student, moved from Kryvyi Rih).
Joined the projectdirector Dmytro Greshko, who made a film about the creation of the theater. The tape, which is currently in post-production, was called “King Lear: How We Searched for Love During the War.” It is about the interweaving of the ideas of tragedy and life trials of these actors, and about the power of art that helped these people find a new meaning and motivation to live and develop further.
“When Russia launched a full-scale invasion, I evacuated from Kyiv to Uzhhorod. I have known Slava for a long time, and once he shared his idea of making a film about the play and the settlers, King Lear. I liked the idea and agreed, – recalls Dmytro Greshko. — There was almost no preparation for the shooting. I had all the equipment myself. And as soon as we agreed on the approximate concept of the film, we began to implement it. The filming itself lasted about 5 months.”
“King Lear”
When:February 20 at 5:30 p.m
Where:Actor’s House, st. Yaroslaviv Val, 7
Admission is free subject to conditionspre-registration.Confirmation will come on February 18.
Maria Kataeva
