“A true creator as a retranslator of higher energies remains lonely among ordinary people...” (Specific features of the embodiment of Luchytska’s character by the actress Valentyna Chistiakova, as it reflected in critical reviews of the 20th and 21st c
Background. The last 2017 year was marked by the 95th Anniversary of one of the oldest leading academic theater companies of Ukraine – Kharkiv State Drama Theater named after T. Shevchenko, as well as the 100th Anniversary of the Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts. These dates are a chance to address to the creative heritage of the coryphaeus of both these artistic institutions – an outstanding actress and educator Valentyna Chistyakova. Valentyna Chistiakova (April 18, 1900 – May 19, 1984) is the People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, the prominent actress of the Ukrainian theatre of the first half of the 20th century. She made her first appearance on the professional Ukrainian stage of the Youth Theater under the direction of a brilliant director-reformer Les’ Kurbas, who later became her husband. Since 1922 she was an actress of the Berezil Theater (since 1935 it renamed in the Kharkiv Drama Theater named after T. Shevchenko). Chystiakova’s art is one of the significant pages in the history of the Ukrainian theatre. The actress had perfect qualifications: an aristocratic appearance, manners, a deep dramatic voice, movements developed in the ballet school and broad-based knowledge of art. V. Chystiakova was an actress-creator. She performed heroic and lyrical characters, but at the same time, she was able to show off comedic elements of her talent. Objectives. The purpose of this research is to give a new estimate of a range of critical utterances and memoirs (in different aesthetic periods) about M. Luchytska’s character performed by the actress in the play “Talan”. The performance “Talan (Fate)” by the coryphaeus M. Starytsky was put on at the Kharkiv State Drama Theater named after T. Shevchenko in 1941 (directed by V. Voronov and L. Dubovik). The play “Talan”, written in 1893, is a melodrama. The plot covers the life and work of the actress of the professional Ukrainian theater of the late 19th century Mariya Luchytska. Mykhailo Starytsky dedicated his play to Mariya Zankovetska, a genius actress of the Ukrainian stage of that time, who became the prototype of the heroine of the melodrama. The drama of M. Luchytska’s life lies in the fact that she leaves the stage, to which she served due to her beliefs and where she gained large recognition among the audience, in the prime of life, only because she fell in love with a rich nobleman Kvitka. However, under the pressure of his environment, this man breaks his relationship with Mariya. The actress returns to the stage. However, theatrical intrigues (the presence of a rival on the stage from now on), as well as disappointment in big love, lead to premature death. The play has obvious parallels with “The Lady with the Camellias” by A. Dumas fils, and “Adriana Lecouvreur” by E. Scribe, however its main point is that this is the first play about the life of Ukrainian actors. Methods. The research methodology includes historical, typological, comparative, textual, biographical methods with the element of the role reconstruction. Research results. The reviews on the play of 1941 and the memoirs by R. Cherkashin and M. Cherkashina‑Hubarenko give the possibility to reconstruct of several valuable episodes of Luchytska’s character. The discrepancy in the evaluations of the stage work of the prominent Ukrainian actress is striking: from the correspondence to the art of “socialist realism” or “monumentality” (in the articles of the 1940s), or the dominating of lyrical and psychological components of the image (partially in the 1940s and 1970s) to the embodiment of Kurbas’ method of “transformation” (in the memoirs and analytical literature published in independent Ukraine). In particular, the actor of the theater Roman Cherkashin told about the use of the “transformation” method by the director L. Dubovik in an important scene, when the actress-deity who has just perceived the enthusiastic proposal from the passionate nobleman Kvitka, must go onto the stage to play a miserable servant girl: “Together they made an important scenic episode extraordinarily clear and expressive. Here, Luchytska, by her will (this is apparent) puts aside her personal life before entering to the stage. Immediately, she becomes much younger (this is apparent); humbly cringing she turns into a servant-girl who is afraid of the owner” [12, ð. 169]. If the Soviet papers highlighted the work of the actress using the notion of “conformity to the socialist realism”, “creating the image of a woman from the people”, then in the independent Ukraine the internal conflict and dramatism of the image became relevant. From the viewpoint of genre the character of Luchytska performed by V. Chistiakova was described by critics as dramatic (mostly by reviewers of the 1940s), lyrical and dramatic (by S. Kryzhanivsky in the 1940s and A. Horbenko in the 1970s) and even tragic (a separate view of a critic V. Gaidar in the 1940s). Conclusions. In modern theater studies literature, artistic peculiarities of the actress’ work in the play “Talan” are emphasized: the prolongation of the Kurbas’ method of “transformation” banned in the early 1930s, sophisticated aristocraticism and, at the same time, simplicity, restraint expression of emotions (a new view of V. Chistiakova on the play of the “theater of coryphaeuses”). The role of Mariya Luchytska was the last significant work of V. Chistiakova in the classical repertoire. In a sense, it was an autobiographical role for the actress, because, like Luchytska, V. Chystyakova was forced to leave the stage early (since 1960s, she was a professor of acting skills at Kharkiv Theater Institute). Like Luchytska, V. Chistiakova was unhappy in private life, as her husband was repressed in 1933. These circumstances give the key to understanding of existential drama of V. Chistiakova, embodied by her in the character of actress Luchytska, as the part of the general tragedy of the “Berezil” theater. The “Talan” performance summed up the activities of the famous theatre team before the Second World War.