Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre from Kiev to present play in Moldovan capital

Chisinau, 20 September /MOLDPRES/ - A play titled, The Witch of Konotop, stage management by Ivan Uryvskyi, will be presented by the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre from Kiev, Ukraine, at the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre on 21 September at 19:00. The event is part of the Meeting of National Romanian Theatres, the eighth edition, held in Chisinau on 14-25 September.      

At a today’s news conference, the director of the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre, Petru Hadarca, said that, for the second year in a row, the Kiev-based theatre was an honorary guest of the Meeting of National Romanian Theatres. Attending the event, the wife of Ukraine’s Ambassador to Moldova, Olesea Shevchenko, conveyed a greeting message on behalf of the Ukrainian diplomat. The official noted that the friendly relations between the two countries, which go together on the European integration way, became ever closer and 2023 was declared Year of the Ukrainian Culture in Moldova.      

For his part, Ivan Uryvskyi said that The Witch of Konotop was a bright burlesque comedy, full of humour.  „For a long time, I has been dreaming of staging the play, The Witch of Konotop, after a story by Hrihorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko. The story told by the author, to my mind, is quite up-to-date, although it is made as a satirical comedy. There are here some accurate archetypes which interest me in my work of stage manager.      

For me, it was important the subject of choosing between two forces – Light and Darkness. And this in global sense, but this choice can be much vaster and much more diverse. The story contains a love story and an alert of an imminent war, just as one of the leit motifs of the work is the one that the centurion repeatedly receives letters in which he gets an order to march with his one hundred soldiers, in order to defend the state. The author put in this work a lot of political, existential, spiritual significances. To a certain extent, this is a fairy-tale with a terrible end. The personages give up the Faith and rely on the forces of Darkness. But the man without Faith is no longer Man, turning into a pawn which cannot change its life and cannot oppose the evils taking place around it,’’ Ivan Uryvskyi stressed.  

The cast is made up of: Olexandr Iarema, Andrii Saminin, Hrîstina Fedorak, Mîkailo Matiuhin, Oksana Jdanova, Maria Rudînska and others.