Theatre History Overview - Part 21 - Ukrainian Theatre

Ukrainian theatre can be traced back to pagan rituals that took place before the Christianization of Ukraine. Some of these elements can still be seen in Ukrainian weddings and the summer Kupalo festival. Once the Ukraine was Christianized, The Divine Liturgy took on theatrical elements. Pagan rituals were converted into ways to teacher or celebrate Christianity and adopted by the church.

1619 saw the first non-ritual Ukrainian theatre when two two short sketches that were comedic or satiric, known as intermedes, took place between the acts of a Polish religious drama. The subjects of the intermedes were not related to the play in which they were found. European medieval theatre influenced further development of Ukrainian theatre. At first theatre was found in schools. However, in 1765, Metropolitan (the head of an ecclesiastical province in the Ukrainian Catholic church) Samuil Myslavsky banned theatre in schools. This contributed to students helping to create vertep.

Vertep is a portable puppet theatre. The portable theatre represents the nativity scene A vertep theatre is a wooden box with one or two storeys. The floor had slits in it so that puppeteers could control the wooden puppets. If the box had two storeys, the upper storey was used for the nativity scene with the lower being used for interludes and other mystery plays. The plays consisted of both a religious drama and a secular drama.

In the 19th century, secular theatre in the Ukrainian language became popular. The first staged plays in Ukrainian were written by HryhoriiKvitka-Osnovianenko and Ivan Kotliarevsky. In 1876, more censorship came when Ems Ukase banned all theatre. Censorship eased after the failed Revolution of 1905. In March 1917, a theatrical committee was created. From 1922-1933, the Berezil existed in Kyiv. Les Kurbas's method of "transformed gestures" was developed. In 1934, socialist realism was applied to Ukrainian theatre. This was considered the most progressive method of portraying reality. It affected every element of the theatre and theatre education.

Today, there are both professional and amateur theatres located in Ukraine. A couple of the professional theatres are the Toronto Zahrava Theater and Avant-Garde Ukrainian Theater.

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