Kharkiv and the Stage: Experiments of the 1920s, Repressions of the 1930s and Their Contemporary Reception
5.6.2025, 18:30
Conference Room of the Center for Urban History
In 2017, Prof. Mayhill Fowler presented her new book, Beau Monde at Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine, at the Center. In 2025 the book comes in Ukrainian, in a revised format with a new foreword, fresh illustrations, and begins a new life for a new readership. We invite you to the book presentation and a conversation around the themes it raises, as well as the changes in the reading of the book over places, languages, and time of its publishing.
At the center of the book are artists, the milieu around Berezil, and their city, Kharkiv, the first Soviet capital and the site of an extraordinary flourishing of creativity in the early Soviet years. Place matters in history, and Kharkiv as a place shaped the way culture was produced. But people shape the place, and it is this particular collection of individuals that made this city, and made Soviet Ukrainian art in the 1920s. Thus, this is a book about Soviet Ukrainian culture, and our discussion will focus on what we can, and should, do with Soviet culture today, in a time of full-scale war. But ultimately this book is a story of postwar and of artists emerging from a devastating war to make innovative art–so it offers lessons and ideas for artists–and officials and audiences–today. Thus, together with readers in Ukraine, we would like to explore and discuss the questions the book raises today: How do questions about art and politics change in a new time of full-scale war?
The presentation will be held in Ukrainian.
The book is available for order at our online-shop.
Participants of the presentation
Mayhill Fowler
Historian and associate professor in the Department of History at Stetson University, an associate professor at the Department of Culture and Arts at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and affiliated researcher at the Center for Urban History. She currently works on two new book projects: War Stories: Theater on the Frontlines of Socialism and Comrade Actress: Soviet Ukrainian Women on the Stage and Behind the Scenes. Her research interests include theater history, cultural history, cultural infrastructures, Jewish history and culture, gender history, borderlands, transnational teaching.
Mykola Naboka
Actor, lecturer at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and founder of the artistic collective “Khvylya.” Mykola worked on new editions of “Philosophy of Theater” by Les Kurbas and “Mimogrammar. The Mastery of the Actor” by Stepan Bondarchuk. He was a co-creator of the exhibition “Kurbas. Workshops” exhibition and a host of the documentary audio series “Kurbas Horizons” by the Les Kurbas Theater. In 2024, Mykola defended his master’s thesis on the role of movement in the methodologies of Les Kurbas and Jacques Lecoq.
Roman Lavrentiy
Associate professor of the Department of Theater Studies and Acting at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. He is an editor-in-chief of the theater studies journal “Proscentium,” chairman of the Theater Studies Commission of the National Science and Technology School, co-developer of the virtual museum “The First Ukrainian Hamlet (Lviv, 1943)” (2023, author of the idea—Maya Harbuziuk). Beyond academic work, he gives public lectures on the history of theater and creates city walks promoting the theater landscape of Lviv.
Sofia Dyak
Moderator of the presentation, historian, director of the Center for Urban History
Credits
Gallery: Iryna Sereda