“I had a drem to stage Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko's novella, “The Witch of Konotop”. The story, in my opinion, is quite relevant, despite being a satirical comedy. I am interested in working with its archetypes as a theater director. I had an intention to preserve the style and atmosphere of this piece, well-known among many people. The play had a big success after its premiere in 1982, thanks to director Bohdan Zholdak and composer Ihor Poklad,...
“I had a drem to stage Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko's novella, “The Witch of Konotop”. The story, in my opinion, is quite relevant, despite being a satirical comedy. I am interested in working with its archetypes as a theater director. I had an intention to preserve the style and atmosphere of this piece, well-known among many people. The play had a big success after its premiere in 1982, thanks to director Bohdan Zholdak and composer Ihor Poklad, and has been performed in Ivan Franko Theater for many years with consistent success.
I created my own version, focusing on the choice between Light and Darkness, a theme that can be interpreted in many different ways. The play contains a love story and the sense of an impending war, as well as sub-themes relevant to our problems, such as the misuse of power and the consequences of laziness and misunderstanding. The author embeds many political, life, and spiritual senses in this work, making it a kind of fairy tale with a terrible ending. The characters renounce faith and turn to dark forces, and people without faith lose their humanity, becoming a pawn unable to change their life or oppose what's happening around them. The novella also explores the theme of natural cataclysms, such as droughts caused by witches stealing rain and dew that serves as a metaphor for today's global powerful natural phenomena like earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis.
This may also be linked to the loss of faith and the death of the planet, prompting us to consider what's happening to us all.
As a director, I wanted to offer the theater audience something different after staging “Caligula” by Camus. We need performances that evoke different emotions and thoughts while also provoking thought. “The Witch of Konotop” is a bright burlesque comedy infused with humour that always inspires Ukrainians to action and self-improvement”
Ivan Uryvskyi
