#  “Show the people we see” — Ivan Franko on how to make the Ukrainian National Theater competitive 

 





September 05, 2024

 

 

 Vincent Hoyer 

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   ![Vincent Hoyer](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/hoyer.jpg?itok=pNSN60_y) 

 

## by Vincent Hoyer

*Vincent Hoyer (HUSI 2024) wrote this piece as part of his work for Dr. Dibrova’s course“Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge.”*

   ![Narod, the biweekly magazine of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/huri/files/narod_header.png?itok=8xPzxk67) 

 

### “The stay of the Ukrainian national theater in Lviv began quite nicely and ended in a total disaster \[…\].”

With these words, writer Ivan Franko opened the 1892 article “Our Theater” he published in Narod, the biweekly magazine of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party, based in Lviv and Kolomyia. He took the opportunity to generally disparage the Ukrainian theater and to map out how the theater could be successful.

What had happened? First of all, the performances had lost quality over time. Not only Franko but also a journalist of the Ukrainian daily “Dilo” uttered his disappointment over the last staging of Mykola Lysenko’s “Rizdvjanoi Nochy.” Another play was canceled even because no visitors had shown up, a financial disaster for the theater group. To make matters worse, five actors Franko considered among the best left the group and joined the Polish theater in Lviv even though they received lower salaries and less attractive roles there.

The main problem of the theater, however, was not the performance but the availability and choice of apt plays, according to Franko. Referring to the widespread idea of theater as a “school of life”, he argued that the Ukrainian theater in 1892 was not able “to show us our life the way it is.” Instead, most plays were translations of German, Polish, or French works to which Franko ascribed “purely esthetic significance.” Pieces dealing with the life of the Ukrainian lower classes or the intelligentsia merely fulfilled decorative roles in the repertoire, he went on.

   ![The Ruska Besida Theater, 1908, in Lviv, Ukraine](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/huri/files/the_ruska_besida_theater_1908_lviv_ukraine.jpg?itok=qiBcSSVk) 

 

To preserve the Ukrainian theater, Franko postulated that truly national theater should show the “people we see, the interests and dramatic twist we witness, that take place on our own skin.” He envisioned a theater not only catering to certain milieus but to the whole society. The article points to a debate not only the Ukrainian theater in Lviv was involved in by the end of the 19th century. How could theater with the ambition of providing a nationalistically tinged “school of life” keep up with the increasing competition in the field of popular entertainment? Circuses, variety theatres, amusement parks, etc. continuously adapted their offerings to the taste of the audience whilst also creating demand for new trends, often regardless of political fissures, simply because their financial survival depended on paying visitors. In this business field, theaters such as the Ukrainian National Theater were less flexible because of their educational mission and could often survive only due to generous donations or subsidies.

Dr. Dibrova’s class “Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge” equipped me with all the tools to work with Ukrainian sources on popular entertainment at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. This skill that I owe to the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute allows me to embed Lviv into the broader framework of urban popular entertainment and nationalism in Central Eastern Europe in my doctoral dissertation.



 

 

 



 

 

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