Yara Arts Group To Bring THE MAGIC OF LIGHT To La MaMa In March

From March 7 to 16, La MaMa and Yara Arts Group will present Yara's "The Magic of Light," an innovative theater piece that interweaves puppetry, languages, music and poetry to illustrate the cultural and spiritual awakening of an artist in the 1870s.

A young man, inspired by the haunting epic songs of Ukrainian blind bards, embarks on a lifelong quest to record, preserve and illuminate Ukrainian traditions against the tremendous pressures of history. Presented in La MaMa's Downstairs Theatre,  66 East 4th Street, the production will be performed by bandura master Julian Kytasty and puppeteer Tom Lee using a transforming puppet stage. Virlana Tkacz directs.

"The Magic of Light" is a story of art told with beautiful music, ancient texts, poetry, and mesmerizing visuals  to illuminate a lost past, see the harsh reality of the present and look toward a brighter future. The piece was created by director Virlana Tkacz, performer/designer Tom Lee and master bandura player Julian Kytasty with poetry co-translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. It relates an account of a concert that introduced Ukrainian epic songs and the bandura to an international urban audience in 1875. That performance featured drawn images that were projected using a magic lantern while the epic was sung.

The bandura, the national instrument of Ukraine, is string instrument held on the lap of the performer and is related to a harp or lute. Originally, it was the accompanying instrument for epics performed by itinerant blind singers. Ethnographers started collecting these songs (called dumas) in the 19th century, popularizing the texts and eventually the instrument.

Yara's “The Magic of Light” begins at an 1875 concert that featured the epic singer Ostap Versai (1803-1890), who is often described as the last bard in the Homeric tradition. Julian Kytasty has said that the epic songs of Versai opened for him the deep tradition of the bandura and the possibility of creating a new music for this instrument. Widely acknowledged as the greatest bandura master today, Kytasty will perform songs of Veresai in this theater piece as well as his own music.

The story of “The Magic of Light” centers on the young artist who draws the images that were projected at the concert. Porfiry Martynovych (1856-1933) is a student at the Imperial Art Academy with amazing drawing skills who becomes totally fascinated with these ancient songs and their performers. For the Epic Concert, Martynovych creates images with the new media of the time -- magic lantern projectors lit with limelight.

Tom Lee, who brings the young artist to life, is a performer, a master of many different puppetry traditions, and a leading American video projection designer. His recent puppetry piece, “Sounding the Resonant Path,” was called “mesmerizing” by the New York Times. The reviewer added, “There is, at show's end, a clear and lingering consciousness of being minuscule in the universe, and terribly, beautifully human.”

In the 1875 concert, Ostap Versai sang an epic song of three brothers fleeing captivity, two on horseback and one on foot. It poses questions of mercy and survival, as well as the importance of staying true in hard times. This song is re-created in "The Magic of Light," allowing us to look at a moment 150 years ago and let it speak to us today. Its vision of the past and future remains steadfast, even if the harsh realities of the present have changed. Then the empire declared a total ban on all performances, books and lectures in Ukrainian, and now Russia seeks to destroy Ukrainian culture through its full-scale invasion.

"The Magic of Light" is performed in English and Ukrainian and is easily understood by all. Its English translations are by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, who last year were finalists for the PEN America Poetry Translation Award for their book “How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poetry by Serhiy Zhadan,” published by Yale University Press. A poem by Serhiy Zhadan becomes the final song in “The Magic of Light.”

Director is Virlana Tkacz. Music is composed and performed on bandura by Julian Kytasty. Puppetry is by Tom Lee. The production is designed by Tom Lee and Andreea Mincic. Shadow puppet design and video are by Linda Wingerter. Puppet design and carving are by Kevin White. Lighting design is by Kat Zhou.

Bandura master Julian Kytasty sings the epics of Veresai, as well as voicing many of the other puppet characters. He is a third-generation bandura player. He is both a keeper of traditions and an innovator who has opened new paths for his instrument. He has worked frequently with Yara Arts Group creating and performing music for theatre. His work on Yara's “1917-2017 Tychyna, Zhadan, and the Dogs” earned him a NY Innovative Theater award for best original score. He continues to teach bandura in North America and Ukraine, to record, to compose and arrange music for bandura, and to engage in collaborative projects.

Tom Lee's work often explores the synthesis of manipulated figures and objects using film techniques and animation. He has worked with Yara at La MaMa and his interest in puppetry was encouraged by Ellen Stewart. Recently, he designed puppetry for Mary Zimmerman's production of "Florencia en el Amazonas" at the Metropolitan Opera, in which he also performed as a puppeteer. (www.tomleeprojects.com)

Virlana Tkacz, the founding director of Yara Arts Group, has created over 40 original theater pieces with the company, most of which had their premieres at La MaMa. Notable among these are "1917-2017: Tychyna, Zhadan, and the Dogs," "Opera GAZ" and “Radio 477!" Yara Arts Group, founded in 1990, is a resident company of La MaMa. The group creates original theater pieces in a signature style with multilingual dialogue and music supported by evocative visuals and projections. Because of the diversity of Yara artists, they have privileged access to magnificent texts from overlooked cultures. Yara strives to use the language of experimental theatre to break down interpretive barriers among cultures, histories and languages. (https://www.yaraartsgroup.net)

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