Theaters in Kiev Kiev Academic Young Theatre


Foto 1. Capricious love of Thrush-beard	Foto 2. Kiev Academic Young Theatre	Foto 3. Empty Trash, L. Rebrik and K. Bin

Address: 17, Proreznaya, Kiev
Phone: +38044 224-62-51

Site: http://www.molody.kiev.ua

Name “Young” doesn’t have to confuse the reader. Theatre’s active more than 30 years now. When in 1979 the decision of it’s founding was taken, it was named “Youth Theatre”. The Party and government wanted to create Komsomol theatre, which had some determined “liberties” comparing with classical stage performance. Meanwhile the quantity of ideologically “right” performances, intended for breeding the successors of Komsomol ideals from post-soviet youth, was strongly regulated. Therefore in the theatre repertoire you could always find Pavka Korchagin, young guards and other soviet heroes…

Alexander Zabolotnyi became first stage director of the theatre. In autumn of 1979 the first set of actors was recruited. During the second season their number increased to 36 people. 14-th of December 1979, the date of the first gathering of troupe is considered as theatre’s birthday. The “Youth Theatre” opened its first theatrical season on 26-th of April 1980 with the premiere of “…I will come back to you with spring!”

Performance-legend and visiting card of the theatre throughout its existence is “After two hares”, which was shown more than 800 times during last 30 years.

The first performances showed the wide range of creative potential of the troupe. The spectators were amazed by the bright, unusual form of artistic style of theatrical performance, acuteness of problems, fresh look on life and art. For the first time in Ukraine the “Youth Theatre” made a performance “Adventures of Alice in Wonderland” by B. Zahoder after L. Caroll, comedy of E. de Philippo “Cylinder” and a play of Y. Scherbak “Little soccer team”.

During the existence of “Young Theatre” a lot of famous stage directors worked there, such as Nikolay Merzlikin, Les Tanyuk, Vladimir Ogloblin, Viktor Shulakov, Valentin Kozmenko-Delinde, Valeriy Bilchenko, Mark Nestantiner, Dmitriy Bogomazov, Vitaliy Malahov, Dmitriy Lazorko. And everyone of them left a part of their energy inside the walls of the theatre.

In 1995 theatre changed its name to “Young” – allusion on theatre of the same name, created by famous Les Kurbas and functioning in 1920’s in the same building at Proreznaya, 17. That’s how the parallel with the biggest theatrical coryphaeus of Ukraine of XX-th century was made. New name meant new obligations for the theatre, boosting up the bar of inner demands to the art: now the shadow of Kurbas seemed to observe bold descendants, who decided to use the name of his child.

Next year, Stanislav Moiseev begun to rule the theatre. With him the repertoire was renewed and theatre finally stepped up to the new level of going on international tours. S. Moiseev started cooperating with the composer Yuriy Shevchenko, fantastic costume designer Elena Bogatireva, playwright Yanush Glovatskiy, scene-designers Sergei Masloboyschikov and Andrey Aleksandrovich-Dochevskiy. The repertoire of the theatre was enriched with new genre – one-man show of Alexei Vertinskiy “Blue automobile”, which was awarded with numerous European theatrical prizes. In the same time the collaboration of the theatre and master of Ukrainian literature Yuriy Andruhovich starts. The performances “Perversion” and “Moskoviada” were staged after his works.

“Young theatre” reconsiders famous classical works, breaking the conceptions about genres, about “necessary” and “right”. That’s the way its “Hamlet”, “Uncle Vanya” and “The Inspector General” are staged. Today the troupe of “Young theatre” consists of 60 actors, all of them are known among Ukrainian spectators not only by performances of the “Young theatre”, but also by numerous tv-projects and movies.