The star of Christmas Mystery, an international festival of puppet-shows, shone again in northwestern Ukrainian Lutsk, Volyn region. This time, 13 theaters from five countries that neighbor Ukraine presented their folk traditions for celebrating Christmas.
The star of Christmas Mystery, an international festival of puppet-shows, shone again in northwestern Ukrainian Lutsk, Volyn region. This time, 13 theaters from five countries that neighbor Ukraine presented their folk traditions for celebrating Christmas.
Scenes of daily life, introduced as interludes, give life and dynamic theatricality to the nativity scenes. The carolers carried a star and a stork and animate the puppets of the Angel and the Devil, Herod and the Three Kings, Mary and Joseph. Born in a humble stable, Christ will not enjoy the favor of the high and mighty. The divine baby will be seen only by people who are prepared to come to a poor manger.
The Puppet and Actor Theater of Lomza (Poland) presented yet another version of “Polish Folk Nativity Scene.” This began with a religious part: entry of the carolers, veneration of the shepherds, the crime and punishment of Herod. Then the spectators met a gallery of figures of various social classes and professions.
Spectators looked forward to the performance of Anatol Wertinski’s play “Rygorka, the bright star” by the Brest Puppet Theater (Belarus), because the play had been given the award “25 Stars” by a children’s jury at a festival in Slovenia in 2005. One of the oldest puppet theaters of Belarus staged it on the basis of folk fairytales. The premiere was in 1990, and, according to the guests from Brest, it was a bold experiment, as the theater returned to its roots and renewed the principles of ancient Belarusian folk theater. The play was revived in 2004 and given a new stage life. Its musical basis is constituted by carol canons. The plot is performed by four traveling players wearing traditional Belarusian masks of Angel, Devil, Old Man, and Horse.
“Ryhorka is the name of the main character of this story,” said Dmytro Nuianzyn. The Christmas play tells of an angel visiting an old couple whose children perished in war, to inform them that a son is to be born to them: “When the sun sets behind the hill, a star will appear in the sky, a light will roll down from above, and he will be your son.” The boy does good to people, fights with an evil dragon, and a lucky star appears above the village.
The Puppet Theater of Vitsyebsk (Belarus) presented the play “The Lost soul, or the punishment of a sinner.” With the help of puppets, they staged the book “Nobleman Zavalnia, or Belarus in fiction stories” by a classic writer of Belarusian literature of the 19th century, Yan Barshcheivski. In 1999 at an international festival in Yugoslavia, the play was awarded a grand prize and special awards for best production, scenography, and music.
The State Puppet Theater of Kursk (Russia) was notable for its “Tower-chamber.” In 2002, the play was awarded a prize by the Committee of Culture of the Kursk Region and an award from the Belgorod branch of the Russian Foundation of Culture for discovery of a new name in dramatic art and for a creative search for new forms in the field of traditional culture.
“Christmas motifs are present here, of course,” said actress Natalia Bugaiova. “Nevertheless, it is not about Christmas. It is a complicated philosophical parable about the worldview of man, where evil and good are combined. Everyone draws something of their own from the play. It contains also concrete subjects, particularly one of Russia, which is destroyed and renewed. It is a play for adults.”
“In my opinion, the play has every characteristic of a mystery,” added the director of the show, Valery Bugaiov. “It still contains some pagan traditions, but there is some internal connection with the Christmas play. There are different attitudes towards it, and I am interested in hearing the assessment of my colleagues.”
By the way, at the initiative of The Vagrant Booth in 2003 a guild of Christmas play performers was established in Russia. “When Christmas plays were becoming popular 15 years ago,” said the director of the show, Alexander Gref, “many people were confused to hear that word. Now it is understood by everyone. A strolling Christmas play implies that we always wish not to call the audience to ourselves, but to come to the audience. There are about a hundred Christmas plays in Russia, therefore one cannot say we are not a country with Christmas plays.”
Festivals of Christmas plays are held in Vladimir, Kolomna, and St. Petersburg. The Russian Christmas play is of course based on mixed Ukrainian and Belarusian traditions. There are no particular national specificities. The Ukrainian Christmas play [“vertep”] is probably more simple, because in Russia it was not a village art but a town one. It was practiced in areas around cities. The characters of the play as well as the content are traditional. The only thing is that there is no comedy part. It is not clear how to perform them in Russia today. They do not know, they lost the art. No new funny text or new approach has been invented. We [Ukrainians] add, for instance, a big musical part instead.
The Yaroslavl State Theater Institute (Puppetry Department) performed “Christmas in the village of Ostashkovo.” The play engaged children in games on the stage as much as possible and, therefore, resembled performances for the morning of New Year’s day. The plot is based on a compilation of folk legends and ancient youth amusements of Central Russia, when young men and women gathered on Christmas eve in the village hut of an elderly woman to sing carols, tell fortunes, perform scenes with a dressed up she-goat and bear, and watch a puppet play “A Drama about King Herod.”
“Today in Russia there is no live tradition of caroling and Christmas plays like in Ukraine,” said art director Vadim Dombrovsky. “About 15 years ago, it began to revive thanks to the efforts of a theater worker, historian and painter Viktor Novatsky. In Yaroslavl, I tried to interest students in this. The students show interest for the Christmas play tradition, but sometimes are not sure how to respond to this phenomenon. These traditions of folk life are somehow more destroyed in Russia. When we began to study it, details of pagan rituals came up. What the students saw here was a good lesson. They are delighted with Lutsk, with the fact that conductors on the train sang carols, that they sing and glorify Christmas in churches, as if the whole world celebrates the birth of Christ. It is different in Russia. The revival of lost traditions is exactly what we are trying to do.”
Ukraine’s Luhansk Regional Puppet Theater performed “Bull, donkey and star.” A simple yet at the same time deeply evangelical story is told by animal characters. The main characters, the holy family of Nazareth, are present, but keep significant silence. The mystery of the Bethlehem star is revealed not to everyone, despite the fact that the key to it is so easily found.
The one-man show KUT from Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi presented a radically different, though not less mysterious plot, “Magic of a soul,” based on a book by Lev Sylenko. Despite the fact that the play did not “fit” in the customary Christian orientation of the festival, the organizers decided to use it to broaden the subjects and, incidentally, stimulate a discussion. The director of the theater, Volodymyr Smotrytel, calls it an experimental work which offers a different view on such a substance as the soul. It is ridiculous to talk about an influence of “unnatural forces,” but the fact is that none of the photos from “Magic of a soul” developed well.
“Lev Sylenko’s book offers an interesting view on the micro- and macro-world,” said Volodymyr Smotrytel. “What happens to a person, to their soul, what eternity is. The festival Christmas Mystery touches on these issues. Lev Sylenko knows about this production. He was given the video recording. The play was first presented in 2000 and was received very well by the public.”
“It employs folk tradition from the aspect of a philosophical worldview,” said Oleksa Oshurkevych. “Popular humor, which helps one to survive in any circumstances, is brilliantly presented.”
“The invariable subject of the Ukrainian festival,” summarizes the director of the festival, Danylo Poshtaruk, “can vary in us, in personalities. But the very idea, the birth of Christ, does not change. There can be new ways of expression, new forms, different interpretations. When we prepared the first festival in 1993, we were afraid to diverge from the canonical word ‘vertep.’ [This literally means a cave or manger, though it has also become the name of a traditional form of Christmas play.] Then, we were visited by a French company from Bezancon, who presented their own version of ‘vertep,’ where Christ was born not in a manger but in a garage. Instead of wise men with gifts, the mayor of the town comes in a dirigible. We then thought it was a terrible version. Today, we freely handle this subject and broaden the limits of the mystery’s action.”
Olha Khariv is RISU’s correspondent in northwestern Ukraine’s Volyn region.
The Ukrainian-language original of this text was posted on RISU’s Ukrainian-language site on 11 January 2006.