Virlana Tkacz
| Virlana Tkacz | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
June 23, 1952 Newark, New Jersey |
| Education | Bennington College and Columbia University |
| Occupation | Theatre director |
Virlana Tkacz (born June 23, 1952 in Newark, NJ) is the founding director of the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in theatre directing. With Yara she created twenty-nine original theatre pieces based on fragments of contemporary poetry and traditional songs, chants, myth, history and legends. Although grounded in traditional material, Yara's pieces are experimental in essence, employing projections and complex musical scores to explore our relationship to time and consciousness.
Ms. Tkacz has created twenty-one original theatre pieces that were collaborations with experimental theatre companies from Eastern Europe. These pieces were performed at La MaMa in New York, in major theatres in Kiev, Kharkiv and Lviv and at international theatre festivals, as well as in village cultural centers. They included A Light from the East, Explosions, Blind Sight, Yara’s Forest Song, Waterfall/Reflections, with legendary folk-singer Nina Matvienko,Kupala, Koliada: Twelve Dishes, ''Still the River Flows, Winter Sun, Midwinter Night, Winter Light, and Song Tree which Bob Holman called “a luscious experience, flowing from folk to avant-garde, from the bizarre to the holy -- jampacked and juicy.” Reviewing her production of Scythian Stones, Michael Bettencourt wrote: “The performance builds what good theatre should always build: an alternate world that allows us to re-learn and reflect upon the great questions at the core of our being human.”
She created three original theatre pieces based on the poetry of Oleh Lysheha, including Swan, Raven, and Dream Bridge.Reviewing Yara’s Raven, Kinoteatr wrote: “The most amazing thing about Raven is the magical and masterful way the poetry has been transformed into stage reality. If I had to provide examples of the most organic translations from one art form into another, Virlana Tkacz’s theatrical “re-readings” of modern poetry would certainly be on that list.”
In 1996 she began working with indigenous Buryat artists from Siberia. Together they have created six original Yara theatre pieces beginning with Virtual Souls. Based on traditional material, rituals and shaman chants these pieces were performed at La MaMa, in Ulan Ude at the Buryat National Theatre, and in the villages of Aga-Buryat Region, as well as at the Experimental Theatre Festival in Kiev. In 1997 she led a group of Yara and Buryat artists on a research trip to the Aga-Buryat Region. The folk songs, legends and stories they collected inspired Yara's theatre piece Flight of the White Bird. In 1999 she led the research expedition to the Ust-Orda Buryat Region to collect material for her new piece, Circle. In addition to premiering at La MaMa, Circle also performed at the International Festival of Mongolian Language Theatres in Ulaanbaatar and entered the repertoire of the Buryat National Theatre. The Village Voice wrote: “A stunningly beautiful work, Circle, rushes at your senses, makes your heart pound, and shakes your feeling loose.”
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