A play about a Soviet-era dissident trying to make his way in independent Ukraine has drawn the ire of the Culture Ministry, prompting one Kyiv theater to cancel its run before it even started.
The production of “UBN” by Lviv’s Maria Zankovetska Theater was due to be shown at Kyiv’s Ivan Franko Theater in April, but the plans were scuttled after meeting opposition from former Culture Minister Bohdan Stupka.
However, the play did eventually find a home at Kyiv’s Operetta Theater on May 20-21, where it was shown as part of the May Kyiv theater festival. It drew full houses on both nights.
The three-hour drama is packed with political humor and innuendo about public figures. UBN stands for “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist,” a label under which the play’s central character, a former dissident called Zenon, was sentenced to 28 years in a Soviet prison camp.
In one speech, Zenon identifies the country’s “rulers”: Yukhim Zvyahilsky, a coal baron from Donbas who served briefly and notoriously as acting prime minister in the early 1990s, and the oligarchs Hryhory Surkis, Viktor Medvedchuk and Oleksandr Volkov.
After “UBN” premiered in Lviv on Jan. 19, the Culture Ministry invited the Zankovetska theater to present it at a national festival in October. The play was also supposed to start a run at Kyiv’s Ivan Franko Theater in mid-April.
Because of funding problems, however, Zankovetska turned for help to then-Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, who signed a resolution granting financial support for the performances at Ivan Franko.
But things took a turn for the worse after a copy of the play’s program ended up in the Presidential Administration in March. The booklet contained transcribed extracts from the scandalous Melnychenko tapes (which purportedly implicate President Leonid Kuchma in crimes including kidnapping) in small, faint letters as a background to the main text.
Culture Minister Stupka ordered the play’s director, Myroslav Hrynyshyn, to write an explanatory note, saying that the use of the Melnychenko text was in no way politically motivated.
At the same time, Yury Bohutsky, who was head of the Culture Department of the Presidential Administration (and who has recently been appointed culture minister), called up the play’s producer, Andry Batkovsky, to express his concern.
“We spoke for 10 minutes, and he continually asked me, ‘Do you realize that you’ve masde a mistake?’” Batkovsky said.
The content of the play probably didn’t win it any friends in official circles, either. “UBN” is set in present-day Ukraine, and centers on Zenon’s decision whether to help a general in his parliamentary election campaign. In the end, he refuses, despite pressure from his son, his best friend (a former dissident and now a parliamentary deputy) and a former concentration camp psychiatrist.
Zenon’s character is partly drawn from the late Zynovy Krasivsky, a Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet-era political prisoner, and partly from the late Vyacheslav Chornovil, leader of the national-democratic Rukh, who died in a car crash in 1999. The play ends with Zenon burning down his house and running away from his village.
“This is Ukraine’s first contemporary play based on modern material and written by a Ukrainian playwright,” Batkovsky said. “It is real, poignant and vital, and it talks about things that worry all people today.”
But poignancy and vitality ended up taking second place to politics. After the phone call, the Franko Theater administration instructed the Zankovetska theater to ask the Culture Ministry for permission to stage the play in Kyiv. Stupka refused to give the nod.
“[Stupka] did not allow or forbid the play, he just said he wouldn’t sign anything,” said Halyna Telnyuk, author of “UBN.” “He also said ‘Yushchenko and [Deputy Prime Minister Mykola] Zhulynsky are brave guys, so let them take the responsibility.’”
Meanwhile, the Lviv actors were told by the ministry, which finances the theater, that their salaries might be withheld.
“On May 18, we were still convinced the play was not going anywhere,” Batkovsky said.
But the next day, the theater received a fax from Zhulynsky inviting them to bring the play to Kyiv for the May Kyiv festival. Batkovsky believes Zhulynsky dared to take such a decisive step because he knew he would be leaving his position anyway.
UBN has already had 14 performances outside Kyiv, drawing a total audience of more than 15,000 people, and is still playing to good reviews in western cities like Lviv and Ternopil. But it’s still not certain when and if Kyiv audiences will have the chance to see it again.
