Watch a new Antithesis broadcast from the Society Foundation to learn about the new reality and art’s role in it.
The program’s guest was Rostyslav Derzhypilskyi, a director heading the Ivano-Frankivsk Drama Theater and a Shevchenko National Prize winner.
We are highlighting key quotes from our conversation in the shelter.
“Theater is about this synthetic, natural production, where we’ve got everything, including the sewing shop where we’ve been making items needed by our army, our soldiers instead of costumes. Other shops also went through restructuring to start producing what the army needed.
We opened a center on the chamber stage to collect humanitarian aid. Our actor volunteers had won a USAID grant for family kits: they bought food and hygiene items every night to distribute them among the temporarily displaced persons the following morning.
Besides, we haven’t stopped acting. We’re now receiving our spectators daily: those willing to buy tickets and those who can see our performances for free (there’s a certain number of tickets for migrants; you can register on our website to get them).
So today, our theater gets lines twice a day: for humanitarian aid in the morning and our performances in the evening”.
“Our theater has always taken a clear political, patriotic, and nationalist position. I never hid it, I said we’re this kind of Western Ukrainian nationalist theater, and our repertoire has long had many performances with a clear message to society. Plays like “Nation,” “Sweet Darusia,” “Aeneid,” and “She is the Earth” by Stefanik, and other plays are very relevant today. They are perceived in a new way now, with new faces, unfortunately, and get a response, find a resonance with the audience’s souls.
After seeing “Nation,” a woman (from Bucha or Irpen) wrote, “I didn’t cry when I first heard the explosions outside my window. I understood I had to get my family and children and dash to the bomb shelter to hide. I didn’t cry when I realized I had to flee, and we escaped under the bombs. I didn’t cry on the way when we had to spend a night in the field with the children (we had nowhere to go) because I knew that I was there for my children. I didn’t cry when we arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk and had nowhere to settle and no proper accommodation. But when I came to see the play, “Nation,” I burst out crying from the first seconds and cried through the entire play, and then I felt better.”
“That’s catharsis, purification. Art in general and theater, in particular, have this miraculous ability to purify a person – people become clean and can continue to carry on and win. Such a nation can win.”
“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that we’ve been deliberately and artificially divided and destroyed for decades. South, east and west collided. You had muscovites there (in the east) and Bandera followers here. This propaganda hasn’t gone anywhere.
But I’m convinced that in the difficult moments of the history of our nation and our state, Ukrainians (and we’re all Ukrainians) bring out superpowers and super efforts at the genetic and mental levels to forgive, love, ward off trouble and get united to win.”
“Those who had a different position in russia have already left the country. But they aren’t many, those friends. Well, I mean really: one, two, three, four… As for the rest, that’s it: no more russian culture, no more russian language, no more russian arts or sports. All of it is an evil carrying dangers and destruction for Ukraine. Sheer evil that has no right to touch us in any way.”
“Perhaps these are such mystical things. I once read an article by Karl Jung. He was interviewed in 1945 about what to do with the German nation (such an educated, formidable nation suddenly became an epicenter of evil producing evil on the planet). It explained that there is such a thing as a collective devil who can possess a nation. It’s very obvious to me that now the entire nation (russians) is just a collective devil who is doing his wicked deeds.
The collective devil can possess those nations that are prone to collectivism. Ukrainians are bright individualists.
Even when there were primitive communities, russians did everything together because they felt comfortable that way while Ukrainians all had their own place even within a community.”
You can watch the broadcast on Souspilnist Foundation’s Facebook page and our partner media platforms: KURS, Reporter, and TRK RAI.
