Life as a rehearsal
Modern Japanese drama becomes a new gem of theater in Kharkiv
Oksana Stetsenko’s directorial debut, the premiere of the play Actor’s Dressing Room at the small stage of the Shevchenko Kharkiv State Academic Drama Theater has been a success for the staff and spectators. It was a production of a play by the modern Japanese writer Kunio Simidzu. It impresses by the combination of the deep drama, fresh direction, sophisticated actors’ play and the elegant Ukrainian language (translation by Stepan Pasichnyk). The play tells about the theatre backstage and great dream, about real dramas and tragedies, thoroughly hidden from spectators behind the scenes.
The characters have no names. We can see four actresses and four destinies: A, B, C, and D dreaming about great roles and able to do everything to make their great dreams come true (even to commit a murder). The heroines are in the non-contiguous worlds, reality and their imagination, and are so carried away by their images that sometimes the world and the anti-world interlace in their minds into something inseparable. One of the most mysterious roles in the world drama is the role-mystery, role-dream.
The actress C (Maya Strunnykova) is successful and talented. The role of Nina Zarechnaya from Chekhov’s play The Seagull is the theater premiere’s dream that has come true. The actress D (Oksana Cherkashyna) is only dreaming about the role of Zarechnaya and all her future is still ahead. The actress A (Larysa Lunina) and actress B (Oksana Stetsenko) also dream about performing this role which is one of the most mysterious in the world drama. All four women are united by the theater and Chekhov, his great drama (quotes from The Seagull and in the end, when one of the actresses goes to the otherworld, three actresses perform The Three Sisters) is adorned with succulent masks of the modern drama canvas by Kunio Simidzu.
Larysa Lunina has painted her image into pastel colors of despair and deep inner fatigue. She has absolutized the tragedy of her character and made spectators sympathize with everything happening on the stage. In contrast to Lunina’s character, actress B is a person able to reflect and comprehend, assess the developments with detachment and act according to the new circumstances. The actress C is the theater premiere, conqueror of the scene, talented actress and intelligent woman. She knows that the price of actor’s success is sometimes too high and spectators’ love can be fickle. The actress D passes to the otherworld during the performance. The subtle verge between the reality and dream is very difficult to be performed.
The set design is exact and symbolic. Constructive and functional stage scenery involved into the action, combined with the color and space laconism make the spectators perceive the sense and not the form of the developments (set design and costumes by Tetiana Medvid). The outlines of piled costumes and dusty properties can be only guessed in the silky backstage. The lightning director Volodymyr Minakov who brilliantly creates new grounds and horizons of visual perception is trying to create the whole theater behind the transparent walls of the small dressing room.
Oksana Stetsenko’s performance is full of love to the theater: endless and exhausting rehearsals, long and painful waiting for new roles, everyday disorderliness, and gray routine hiding the real stories of great actresses. These are stories of women and not roles, personalities – not images.
