Full houses, daily productions and new stars – the Ukrainian theater is experiencing a new stage of development and is becoming a therapy for artists and spectators in the hour of war. Vogue Ukraine took a look at the leading theaters of the region: the first material on our map is the legendary Ivano-Frankivsk Drama Theater.
I will do my route from Bukovel in the darkest way so that it goes to the Frankivsk Drama Theater (to be honest, I will now do all my routes this way myself). The plan is “Approach and Khanty” for Schiller: at the request of the general director and artistic director Rostislav Derzhipilsky, the Kiev director Ivan Urivsky was appointed in 2023, and he will be appointed as director Kiev, – with free access.
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The open door concept was here from the beginning: the famous Lithuanian Aimuntas Nyakroshus, the famous Lithuanian Aimuntas Nyakroshus, the Kiyan Stas Zhirkov and Maxim Golenko, the Frenchman Jules Audry, the Romanian Mihai Tarna, and the Lithuanian Jokubas Brazis showed their shows here. Derzhipilsky completely eliminates creative zealousness (“it’s funny to think: “I’m one box in a half”), he constantly asks for the brightest ones to come back – it seems, otherwise I’m not at ease. In this manner on stage Ivano-Frankivsk presented the production of Kharkiv Oksana Dmitrieva’s “Medea”, Czech director David Zelinka’s “Absolutely free”, Slovenian director Tomi Janezic’s “1975”, mallet, choreographer Olga Semioshkina “Bila” Тінь” тощо.
The splashes quickly subside, Levchenko calls to support the car collection for the actor Bogdan Romanyuk. After the main roles in French director Jules Audrey's “Caligula” and “Marriage on Goncharivtsi” staged by Oleksiy Gnatkovsky, they reached the Third Assault. Maria Stopnik cannot hold back her tears, Bogdan himself, who is present in the spectators’ room, is not, and the audience gives me a standing ovation.
Activism is such a fragment of the DNA of the Frankish drama theater, like openness and cosmopolitanism. On the façade, instead of posters, there is a giant inscription “Be the voice of the poor.” After the show (and there are more than 60 of them in the theater’s repertoire, with six premieres in 2025), the actors and the director with a short promo stick call to go to rallies in support of the Ukrainian military those civilians who stay with the Russian population. At the onset of a large-scale invasion, the French were forced to volunteer – for the first few months, the theater functioned as a humanitarian hub, hoping to help people who were in the midst of the war. At the same time, they collected money for cars, medicines and military equipment.
The media presence of the actors was a good help here: everyone is involved in Ukrainian cinema: Oleksiy Hnatkovsky (“Dovbush”), Roman Lutsky (“Under the Volcano”, “The Watchtower”), Nadiya Levchenko (“Transportation”, “Sex, Insta and ZNO”), Ivan Blindar and Maria Stopnik (“Me, Victory and Berlin”). “If we are not at the front, we are for the front,” Rostislav Derzhipilsky repeats the mantra.
Vіn herself is the same person who has always transformed Frankivska’s local theater into an institution, an international cultural hub. We meet in his office, where the table is littered with posters for the Shakespeare Festival, which will now take place in the theater all of a sudden. Stiltsi instructs Mittevo to be filled with rumors: team, actors, colleagues – the power of Derzhipilsky’s charisma attracts like a magnet. The interview is being re-created in public, but I take it as a given: everything that Derzhipilsky does will kill people.
Until 2008, the art of the Frankish theater, which had the status of regional de jure and provincial de facto, shared space with small business: in the premises, where a small stage was now installed, you could buy plumbing equipment, and in Belarusian knitwear was sold in the church, decorated with a hundred-meter-long bas-relief with braided ceramics, a UNESCO luminous treasure.
Derzhipilsky grabbed the right hook. They appointed him firmly – by terminating commercial contracts (“That was the biblical expulsion of traders from the temple,” laughs Lesya Ziola, head of the literary department of the Theater). Requesting a glimpse of the Kiev theater stage of Ukraine by Yuri Odinoky with guest direction. For the local theater, the situation was approximately the same as what Ingmar Bergman and Derzhipilsky imagined. However, the plan was not completed: the capital’s production failed miserably: people emptied the hall. “Theatre can make you think, stimulate you to development, take you out of your comfort zone,” Rostislav says sadly.
Despite all this, Rostislav nevertheless ventured to present to the public the first director’s work – “Licorice Darusya” based on the work of Maria Matios. Having read the book overnight, I was in awe; I can still remember how the neighbors in the compartment marveled at him, filled with tears of denunciation. The plot became familiar: Baba Anna told us how in a Hutsul village a child for a tsukerka suddenly saw a crook, where the UPA soldiers were boasting. The brilliant Levian Natalya Polovinka performed over the score, which is difficult to convey the inner light of the silent Darusya, and the leading roles were played by students of the first acting course, who studied at the Kurbasiv school, – minor stars: Oleksiy Gnatkovsky, Olesya Pasichnyak, Galina Barankevich. The show in the “scene on stage” format turned out to be completely authentic: live sleep, a healthy hedgehog, what steams and smells; sokovita, repeated Hutsul govіrka of the village of Snіdavka, where until 5 rokіv Rostislav is alive with his grandmother and grandfather. Life's props.
After “Sweet Darusya” Derzhipilsky became famous, and people found out that the theater was sold out. Then there were “Hutsul Ksenia”, “Hutsul Vesile”, “Kolyada ta i ples” – you see that Mittevo got into the Hutsul culture, which apparently seemed to be the case with Parajanov’s version of “Shadows” forgotten ancestors.” Derzhipilsky, a Hutsul behind the mother’s line, had the means to earn material, distinct in color and gusto: the actors played in authentic scenes worthy of a museum (which Google suggests is called the 1920s rocks at the “Hutsul Vesili”), they said with my help, which they still gather in the mountains; on stage appeared an important volume “Hutsulshchina” by Volodymyr Shukhevych – ethnographic research of 1897–1908. “I understand why this is so important for people,” they immediately understand their importance to this land, to this nation, to this people,” Rostislav said. Frankivsku was sick of the fashion for going to the theater.
Despite all its glory, the Drama Theater could lose its local significance as a theater. We just decided to transform ourselves into an international cultural hub. Derzhipilsky is no stranger: he has always had great ambitions and strived to expand his horizons – “The more you move forward, the bigger the picture will be.” Having gone to festivals, showcases, Master Classes, you can see which actors yourself. In 2011, when the repertoire was still small, and the team was fast, promising, and less bright, tours began – from Poland to the USA and Canada to Germany.
Near Frankivsk, which until 1990 was closed as a place, and for a long time deprived of tourist and cultural routes, people began to leave. The multidisciplinary Porto Franko GogolFest, which was curated by Rostislav in collaboration with the Kiev “Gogol Fest” of Vlad Troitsky in 2016, has spread throughout Ukraine. Derzhipilsky has mastered new locations and formats: the decadent Pototsky Palace, which was in the abandoned, destroyed plant, the Promprylad plant, which for a year gave up a new life and began to transform from a newly constructed industrial giant into an innovation center with co-working spaces and art spaces, basement stage in the Theater, de they staged the neo-opera “Hamlet” in a brilliant translation by the Frankish Yuri Andrukhovich. Michael Dobson, a great scholar of Shakespeare and the world, said that this is one of the most beautiful productions that I have ever seen on the theatrical map of the whole world.
In 2017, “Hamlet” was taken to Gdansk, to the Shakespeare Festival. Derzhipilsky began to dream about such a Ukraine. 7 years later, the world came to an end, and in 2025, Frankivska’s events began again suddenly: Uzhgorod, Kiev and Lugansk brought their productions, and speakers came from Ireland, Britain and Poland. Frankish people rightly respect it as a tool of public diplomacy and social and political change.
Derzhipilsky is thinking strategically: instead of going abroad with tour hits, as the Ukrainian diaspora is pleased with the arrival, he should not ask foreign directors to come to him. “It’s logical that the director would want to bring this product for his audience,” explains Vin. “I respect that we need to fight for their souls, because the Ukrainians are ours too.” This is what happened with the work of the Polish director Maja Kleczewska for Adam Mickiewicz’s song “The Count”. Vistava, which mercilessly dissects the theme of Russian imperial culture, was first successfully released in Ukraine, and then won five sold-out shows in Warsaw.
Today, the Frankiv Drama Theater employs several generations of actors: from the 60-year-old patriarchs who played back in the 90s, to the dawn of the new Ukrainian cinema and TV series, and theater students faculty. Derzhipilsky enthusiastically indulges in headhunting: thus, he lured Irma Vitovskaya from Kiev, and Yuri Khvostenok from Lvov. At the same time, the kerivnik regains the freedom of the team, who often lives in tensions between Frankivsky, Kiev and Warsaw through constant employment in the cinema, and then returns to the real stage.
A new identity is emerging around the Frankivsky Drama Theater today, which brings togetherness, stimulates investment, and brings development to the place. An example of how culture is designed to change reality.
Photo: Vasylyna Vrublevska
