King Lear

The history of the Ivan Franko National Drama Theatre goes back eighty years. It has had its moments of triumph and disappointment, yet it has invariably remained an academy of Ukrainian dramatic art. Among the names associated with this theatre are those of Gnat Yura (its founder and Artistic Director for many years), of Natalia Uzhvyi, Amvrosy Buchma, Yuri Shumsky, Dmitry Milutenko and Marian Krushelnitsky. There is nothing fortuitous in the repertoire, nothing transient: it features masterpieces of world drama and national classics. Among the playwrights whose names are on the playbill are Mikhail Bulgakov, William Shakespeare, Pedro Calderon, Sholom-Aleihem, Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, Lesya Ukrainka, Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Ivan Franko.

Sergei Danchenko - Artistic Director of the company. For over thirty years his name has been a synonym of good taste and creative originality. The distinctive feature of Danchenko's gift as a director is his ability to create an atmosphere of spirituality, something that Stanislavsky called «the life of human spirit». Danchenko's productions have launched several generations of actors who have become pride and glory of the Ukrainian theatre. He was the first to introduce Durrenmatt and Ibsen on the national stage, and the first to direct Ivan Kotlyarevsky's Aeneid. The director of over 50 different plays, whose contribution to the first Chekhov Festival was Sholom-Aleihem's Tevie-Tevel, Sergei Danchenko now presents his produc­tion of King Lear.

Bogdan Stupka is a brilliant actor, well-known outside Ukraine. His talented performance has been applauded in Poland and Bulgaria, Russia and Germany, America, Canada and Israel. Gogol's Poprishchin, Chekhov's Voinitsky, Sholom-Aleihem’s Tevie, Ibsen's Rosmer and Brecht's Arthur Ui - even this incomplete list of Bogdan Stupka's parts is enough to see what a versatile actor he is.