After the Lion

In 1989, we were in bovine oblivion of future disasters, boozing, meeting and losing sweethearts living through petty betrayals, and depression.

In 1989, our minds were astir with breath-taking utopian projects, and the battle-hardened Soviet nomenklatura veterans, sensing this, steered clear of us as though we were lepers.

In 1989, we were so drunk with ideas that we needed no alcohol and, as at the Steppenwolf magic theater, all the girls were there for the asking...

Inexperienced, conceited, and adventuresome, we gathered in Lviv. It was autumn, and this lent the whole thing a background that could be interpreted both literally and figuratively. The Soviet empire was in its last throes, as evidenced, of course, not by empty store shelves or hysterical political slogans, but by theatrical billboards advertising performances, each of which was planned as yet another slap in the face of socialist moral dictates (albeit childish, almost puritanical in view of what’s going on today), showing more and more naked flesh on stage. At the time the Golden Lion was not meant as a manifestation of our generation. It was just that we got together for the first time and arrived at the only logical conclusion: our cowed, downtrodden, drunken, degraded, and dilapidated country stood just the tiniest of chances to get better or, rather, try to nudge a little closer to civilization. We thought we could do this instead of bowing and scraping to pot-bellied nomenklatura bosses at all levels and stealing everything we could lay our hands on (for if we did not, someone else would surely do so) to liven up our dull, poorly furnished and equipped homes; instead of killing ourselves with vodka and sharing snatches of truthful information about what was actually happening in hurried whispers, looking over our shoulders. In Lviv, we discovered the existence of a group of people differing in character but united by the conviction that one had to stand up and face what was coming, rather than kneel and crawl away. This meant, of course, a manner of speech open and straightforward in a way that had been unthinkable all those previous decades. We were brimming with enthusiasm, discovering one another, paying little heed to the stinking lavatories at the theater or peeling rooms of the Hotel Lviv.

Nine years have passed. Another autumn and the Lion is still there, saved by the stubborn Slava Fedoryshyn, except that the company no longer snarls at the authorities; it just barks hungrily, looking imploringly at those same people do not give a damn, just like ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, or to various respectable foundations that make periodic injections into the arts. This pitiful creature does not resemble the regal animal, despite Slava’s dedicated efforts — carnivals held at the wrong place and time or by inviting prestigious guests from Europe. In a word, the Golden Lion is no longer its old powerful and proud self. Critics lazily lash out at the festival’s program and organization blunders, while tossing down shots of vodka and eating caviar on the house. Hotel Lviv has gotten even worse. And the children’s lavatory at the theater displays a heap of garbage of such dimensions and odor that foreign guests look at you with almost Slavic sympathy.

We proceeded to discuss festival performances and inevitably ended talking about the way we lived, with all the Soviet holdovers that nine years of independence had been unable to do anything about. Politely, they asked how come the audiences are so thrilled by Salome or why none of the Les Kurbas company’s brilliant renditions was included this time. Sadly I realized that we had been naive to take so much pride in what we believed was our singular culture. Suddenly, I was ashamed of my European manners — rather of going through the motions — and I thought that all those past years we had lived and moved backward, and that now we were trying again to put our points across to the 1980 jury, Thank God, the current jury had the presence of mind to hand the laurels to Vilnius’s Masquerade, a European standard performance of the late 1990s. Well, it looks as though, unlike our Lithuanian counterparts, we have failed to keep up with the times.