From 22 to 25 September, on the experimental stage, the Frank Theater hosted the light premiere of the play “Galicia” by the American director and artist Richard Maxwell. We saw the premiere and can't help but marvel at how it all happened.
The play “Galicia” is a continuation of Federico García Lorca's song “The House of Bernardi Albi” (1936), a tragedy that breaks out in a small Spanish village. The production was created on the basis of “Faktura 10”, a key initiative of “Ribbon International” under the curation of Marty Kuzmi, artistic curator and head curator of “Faktura 10”.
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For the words of Marty Kuzma, one of the first decisions at the meeting of the curator of “Factory 10” was to ask director Richard Maxwell. “This luminous approach is like a playwright, theater director and artist who follows the infusion of a specific space and context into the creative process,” determined the plan for the project that flares up in the minds of the war, says Marta Kuzma. “Richard’s last road to Ukraine became the inspiration for the architecture of the project, which consists of ten mutually interconnected parts.”
In “The House of Bernardi Albi” Lorca explores love, family ties and the ways in which men control the lives of their wives. Bernarda Alba, obsessed with external decency, rubs her Lord's slimy hand. Vaughn plans to marry the eldest Donna Angustias to Pepe El Romano, who wants to have a secret romance with Adela, the younger Dona Bernardi. The production of Lorcina's Song, staged by Maxwell in 2024 in New York, ends tragically: Adela, respectful that Pepe shot her mother, lays hands on herself.
In Galicia, Maxwell continues the story of the homeland disaster, exploring how the family finds joy in the wake of the tragedy that befell the huge war in Spain. He is focused on his homeland, which is lost immediately after Adele’s suicide, considering the influx of tragedy and war on the family, as well as the underlying causes of the conflict.
Maxwell is a pottery artist of the famous New York City Players, a group whose performances have been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Vienna Biennale. As a theater director, he knows that he works with non-professional actors with a variety of everyday knowledge. For the Kiev production, the actors were chosen based on the results of an open casting: all of them are non-professional artists. Working on the selection took nine days in Kiev, Kharkov, on trains and online. Together with Baby Prod (Sonya Kvasha and Sasha Krivosheya) Maxwell collaborated with around 200 people and listened to over 35 candidates in several stages. The set design was created by the team of the Forma architectural bureau.
Performing on stage are Ksenia Boychenko, Oksana Bryukhovetska, Anke Cristodorescu, Dmytro Kraschenko, Bogdana-Valeria Kornienko, Alina Lyanga, Evgenia Nesterova, Maria Noshchenko, Yana Kissul, Oksana Valentinivna Saboldash, Natasha Hodos, Hilal Tufekcioglu.
“Galice” presents to viewers a new space in the Frank Theater – an experimental stage, and here it is planned to create a third stage for the theater – “Scenes under the Chimeras”.
Photo: Yuriy Yatskulich
