The next performance of the first-ever Ukrainian adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale (1623) is on on Friday 15 February 2017, at Lviv’s Les Kurbas Theatre, as part of the British Council/GREAT’s Shakespeare Lives programme.
The project is also part of the British Council’s Ukraine annual theatre programme, which in 2015 supported co-productions of UK plays. To commemorate the Bard’s 400th death anniversary, we offered local theatres the opportunity to bid for support to co-produce, in cooperation with the UK’s Linbury Prize (the UK’s most prestigious Stage Design award), a Shakespeare play yet to be premiered in Ukraine.
We selected and supported Les Kurbas Theatre’s proposal to work in tandem with Director IevgenKhudzyk and 2015 Linbury Prize-nominee Minglu Wang.
In his adaptation, Khudzyk seeks to re-contextualise the play’s central themes (jealousy, women, class and absolutism) within Ukraine’s own history: Perdita, the exiled princess living in a rural community, embodies Ukraine’s past, from its origins during the Kievan Rus to the recent 2014 revolution. Are those in charge of the state able to restore a country’s lost identity? What is the role of society in this complex and traumatic process?
The premiere will take place at Les Kurbas Theatre (3, Les Kurbas Street, Lviv) at 19:00. Tickets are available at the theatre’s box office and online at http://ticketclub.com.ua
The project is a collaboration between the British Council Ukraine, the UK’s Linbury Prize, Les Kurbas Theatre and NGO Drabya as part of the British Council/GREAT’s global Shakespeare Lives programme.
About Shakespeare Lives: http://www.shakespearelives.org/
About the UK’s Linbury Prize: http://www.linburyprize.org.uk/