The charm of the working format

The festival that has been held for the third time proved competent, making itself known as a significant event in the cultural life of not only Kyiv, but entire Ukraine. “Inspiration” differs from numerous theater forums not only in terms of scale (the audience had an opportunity to see works of theater youth from ten countries), but also because its organizers (a highly-qualified team headed by the rector of the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema, and Television Oleksii Bezghin) turned out to be free from the traditional temptation of establishing award categories, which distinguish some plays and their participants.

The Olympic principle, “The most important thing is not the triumph, but participation,” was dominating here. It was theater without losers or winners, as all are equal in the theater of youth. In this festival format the plays were not prepared specially for the show, were not glossed with an aim to win the jury’s attention. At “Inspiration” it was not the glamour-competitive principle reigning (to come into the spotlight by hook or by crook), rather it presented a truly creative potential of students, on whom the theater’s future will depend.

A distinguishing feature of the Kyiv festival is that the main directions that shape the portrait of the theater of the future can be easily guessed there. And this predicting function also determines its special place in the overall festival context. The third forum outlined the vectors of most varying scenic explorations and artistic-aesthetic likings: from the conventional psychological play to post-neoclassical and synectical spectacular forms, which united things that seemingly could not be combined. This makes the special creative potential of theater schools’ get-together.

The “Inspiration-2012” had one more feature, which goes beyond its conceptual character. The actors-to-be showed this year’s course and diploma projects. This entirely working format adds special charm to the festival, as it objectively shows the creative state in which theater youth remains now.

Part of the shows, including Lviv’s Natus based on Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s work, Kyiv’s The Date Has Taken Place, However… based on Anton Chekhov’s short stories, Bulgarian Andante by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Hungarians with Aleksandr Vamilov’s Provincial Anecdotes were shown based on the canons of traditional scenic poetics: the elements of psychological drama prevailed here and there, and a number of productions showed naturalistic theater.

Those were different plays, in terms of production level and the mastery of performance. Hungarians from Bekescsaba were represented by first-year students from the Theater College at Mor Jokai Theater, who had only started to learn the fundamentals of performing arts. The inexperience of youth, as foreseen, was obvious. In artistic terms, the production of students from Sofia turned out somewhat indistinctive, with its form resembling rather public performing exercises rather than an accomplished work.

Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba staged by the students from the Karpenko-Kary University and the University of Galati (Romania), was quite professional performed and looked better due to the presence of ensemble performance in the production and the sense of performing culture.

In the number of productions oriented at psychological-naturalistic expressiveness the production One-Act Comedies by Anton Chekhov from Beijing stood at a distance from the others. Here the attempt of mastering the poetics of the Slavic theater by the representatives of an ethos with principally different theater culture was quite interesting. The Chinese students managed to maximum approach the Slavic tradition in the version of A Bear, not without the help of copying the methods used in the eponymous old short film with Zharov and Androvskaya.

The Karpenko-Kary University showed three student works, among which Mad Blood by Turk N. Rpulat, who resides in Germany, staged by Reznykovych’s course deserves a special mention. Since the very first scene the performers managed to recreate the atmosphere of aggression, the rebellion of the “cruel and meaningless” of marginal youths, who weren’t understood by either the people with whom they settled, or their own parents failing to reach a mutual understanding with each other. The course is a strong and promising one, as for the multiple finals, they can be explained by the desire of the young actors to prolong at least for a short while the communication with the audience, yet it did not brake the pace and rhythm of the play.

The productions of Portugal and Slovak students (one can add here three very interesting Polish performers of Game by Slawomir Mrozek) showed the impudent desire of the youth to turn to complicated post-neoclassical forms, specifically post-dramatic theater. The impudence in this case did not turn into a risky venture: the plays Two Captivated Men staged by the students from Banska Bystrica and The Travel by Gilles Vicente, performed by the students from the School of Arts from Porto proved that the young performers perfectly oriented in the synthetic nature of theater. They are able to express themselves not only in the language of traditional vocabulary, but non-verbal scenic vocabulary as well, showed the knowledge of plastique and other methods of expressivity, typical of the theater of the 21st century.

The working program of the “Inspiration” was framed with astonishing in their beauty and presentation actions of opening and closing the festival, which included the performances of not only theater, but other creative schools of Kyiv, Ukraine, as well as the countries represented in the festival.