Author Timothy Snyder will Attend 1917-2017: TYCHYNA, ZHADAN & THE DOGS at La MaMa

On Saturday, June 10, historian and best-selling author Timothy Snyder will attend the opening of Yara Arts Group's new theatre piece with poetry, "1917-2017: Tychyna, Zhadan & the Dogs" at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. 4th Street. The performance is introduced by a live installation featuring New York poet Bob Holman performing his own poems inspired by Mr. Snyder's book, "On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century," which is now a NY Times Best Seller.

In this brief, pocket-sized paperback, Snyder, a Yale historian and scholar of the Holocaust, offers plain and doable lessons on how to preclude, or at least impede, a country-wide repression of our lives and souls. He argues that we must learn from the horrors of the past if we want to protect our democracy, advising such life strategies as "Do not believe in advance," "Defend institutions," "Recall professional ethics," "Believe in truth," "Be kind to our language," "Hinder the one-party state," "Give to good causes" and "Be as courteous as you can."

"1917-2017 Tychyna, Zhadan & the Dogs," directed by Virlana Tkacz, examines what individuals do when a society crumbles. In 1917, there was great hope in Kyiv as the Russian Empire disintegrated, but then a series of invasions led to twelve changes of government in three years. Pavlo Tychyna, Ukraine's greatest 20th century poet, watched people in Kyiv struggle with chaos and tyranny and wrote a collection of twelve poems, "Instead of Sonnets or Octaves." That collection, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, provides the main text of the piece. It is punctuated with songs by Zhadan & the Dogs, a Ukrainian nine-member rock group led by Serhiy Zhadan. Zhadan is famous for his poetry and songs about everyday people caught in today's conflict. The group hails from Kharkiv, a city close to the war zone in eastern Ukraine.

Timothy Snyder is an American author, historian and academic specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust. He is The Housum Professor of History at Yale and a member of Committee on Conscience at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He knows eleven European languages which enable him to use primary and archival sources. He is the author of several books including "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" (winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, Hannah Arendt Prize, and Leipzig Book Prize) and "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning." His latest book "On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century" is a New York Times Best Seller. In this pocket-sized paperback, Snyder offers plain and doable lessons on how to preclude, or at least impede, a country-wide repression of our lives and souls.

Bob Holman is a New York poet most often connected with the oral tradition, spoken word, hiphop, slams, and poetry films. He has published sixteen books of poetry, most recently "Sing This One Back to Me." He has directed Poets Theater productions including: "Girls on the Run" by John Ashbery, "Paid on Both Sides" by W.H. Auden (sets by David Hockney), "Clear the Range" by Ted Berrigan and "4 Plays" by Edwin Denby (sets by Elizabeth Murray). He created the award-winning PBS series, "The United States of Poetry," and hosted a documentary on endangered languages, "Language Matters," on PBS. He is founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and will be teaching at Princeton in the fall. He created the lead role in Yara's "Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine," performing it in Ukraine and at La MaMa in 2015.

Yara Arts Group's performance of "1917-2017: Tychyna, Zhadan & the Dogs" will be presented by La MaMa from June 9 to 25 in La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East 4th Street (near 2nd Ave., Manhattan), Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 PM and Sundays at 4:00 PM. For more info on the production, go to http://www.jsnyc.com/season/Yara_Tychyna.htm. For tickets, go to www.lamama.org.

Photo credit: Ine Gundersveen