The passionary act of the coryphaei of ukrainian theatre

Abstract

The article, dedicated to honoring this year's anniversary celebrants Marko Kropyvnytskyi (22 May 1840 - 21 April 1910) and Mykhailo Starytskyi (14 November 1820, according to Vol. Polishchuk on the basis of relevant documents, - 27 April 1904), not only addresses the illumination of their contributions to the formation of a professional Ukrainian theatre, the shaping of its repertoire, and the emergence of a new type of dramaturgy, but also substantiates their adequate response to the challenges of a reality unfavorable to national culture, literature, and art. Together with the Tobilevych brothers (M. Sadovskyi, P. Saksahanskyi, I. Karpenko-Karyi), Mariia Zankovetska, Hanna Zatyrkevych- Karpynska, I. Zahorskyi, A. Maksymovych, and others, they dared to undertake a passionary act of cultural and educational resistance. Borrowing the name from the leader of the chorus of ancient Greek theatre, having found a niche within the repressive Russification policy of the Russian Empire, they mounted a cultural and educational resistance to it, while at the same time elevating Ukrainian theatre from an amateur level to a world-class one, comparable to the Meiningen Theatre. It played a significant constructive artistic and social role in a devastated national life, "becoming the only hearth around which Ukrainian forces could gather," "feeling itself as a driving force of the Ukrainian movement" (Antonovych, 2003, pp. 146-147), and turning into a tribune of educational resistance. Despite the fact that the Kyiv Governor-General O. Drenteln, guided by an amendment to the Ems Ukaz, banned performances within Kyiv Governorate, the coryphaei successfully toured the Kuban region, Voronezh region, Saratov, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw. They represented socio-domestic theatre with elements of ethnography (M. Kropyvnytskyi), romantic-heroic theatre (M. Starytskyi), and socio-realist theatre (I. Karpenko-Karyi), which underwent certain changes, evolving into the "Theatrical Society of Russian-Little Russian Artists" (P. Saksahanskyi) and the stationary theatre of M. Sadovskyi in the Kyiv People's Trinity House, and later influenced Les Kurbas's experimental "Young Theatre," offering an alternative Ukrainian dramaturgy within the framework of modernism.