Experimental theater director talks of her creative work in Ukraine and abroad
Walking briskly, Olga Danylyuk approached me on the steps of Kaffa cafe, where we had agreed to meet and talk about her life and work as an experimental theater director. After ordering some “Mexican style” coffees, Olga, a native of Lviv, jumped right into the story of how she went from working as a costume designer on Broadway to becoming the director of a critically-acclaimed experimental theater piece shown recently at the Edinburgh International Festival.
New directions in life and art
After studying design at the Lviv Academy of Arts, Olga experienced an unexpected shift in her life. She moved to New York with her husband, who was he working on his MBA. There she started her career as an assistant to Broadway designer Ann Hould-Ward. Tired of assisting, she wanted to design on her own, and branched into other genres of performance arts. She moved off Broadway, to projects involving experimental theatre with Yara Arts Group at La Mama theater, modern ballet with the Gleich Dance Contemporary Ballet company, and even an independent film project.
She did this to broaden her resume, and she appreciates the fact that working as a designer gave her a chance to work in a broad range of performance genres.
“When I started thinking about my biography, I realized that due to the fact that I started to work as a designer, I worked in very different genres of theater that maybe gave me different experience than if I started work as a director,” Olga explained.
After New York, Olga took a small break from theater work and moved back to Ukraine. Living in Kyiv and having just given birth, she decided to take a year off and focus on being a full-time mom.
“I started to get back in theater world … at that time we were in Moscow,” Olga said. She started to work as a designer for projects in drama and musical theater at the International Center for Creative Initiatives.
“I started to feel that I would like to do more than just costume design,” she said. Olga wanted to have more control over the way her creations were used. “I was sometimes disappointed that directors didn’t use the whole potential of [my] images … I don’t like when somebody screws with my work,” she laughs. “I want to do everything myself.”
She decided to apply to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the Scenography program, studying experimental and non-orthodox forms of theater. The college, located in central London, is known for pushing the boundaries of performance arts. “I think it’s one of a kind because it doesn’t have much theory yet … it’s in the process of developing. You don’t have this classical base like an orthodox theater,” Olga explained. “This course was based on visual, physical theater, [it was a] new direction in experimental theater, by trying to put the designer as the key figure in production … We communicate more and more with symbols,” she said.
Impressing the critics
Olga has since completed her masters degree and worked on several experimental performance projects around the world, most notably directing her own performance piece at the Edinburgh International Festival, which garnered rave reviews. The piece, entitled “When We Were Gods,” by Nova Rasa, depicts a Ukrainian mythological legend told through movement and music rather than text and dialogue. “Nonverbal theater is not based in text. It’s based in movement, in expression, in visual images. In physical theater, everything becomes more important, how you move, what you are doing with your hands … You have to think carefully about how you express your character physically because there are no words,” she explained.
The Edinburgh Festival put her education in theater and directing skills to the test. Critics loved her use of non-verbal performance. A critic for the publication “Three Weeks” praised her theatrics, writing, “[T]he most poignant physical artistry was when the company mimicked animals, from birds to caterpillars, their movement was both so beautiful and abstractly realistic that it was genuinely thrilling. … This show is a real testament to the capability of the human body.”
Unorthodox movements
Olga said that moving back to Ukraine in January was another “unexpected shift in her life,” as she had been planning to continue work in London. “My husband accepted an offer from the Prime Minister to become an adviser, he decided it’s the right time to come to Ukraine and try to support changes,” Olga said. She is happy to be back in Kyiv and has noticed many changes here, although she is not impressed by Kyiv’s arts scene. She really wants to start her own projects here and find other artists to work with—hopefully, for theater lovers in Kyiv, she will direct a piece soon.
