Theatre stage characters: Ukraine - Lithuania 2025

Photography exhibition

"Theatre costumes
on stage, behind the scenes and through the lens"

📅 Exhibition dates: 27 September – 5 October 2025

📍 Location: Main Post Office Building, 1 Slovatska Street (entrance from Kopernika Street)

Anastasia Mantach (Kyiv)

Anastasia Khlibnyk (Lviv)

Artem Galkin (Kyiv)

Valeria Landar (Kyiv)

Vitaliy Vizhansky (Lutsk)

Iryna Derkach (Kharkiv)

Series title: Leave or Stay?

The idea behind the series is theatrical symbolism: the jacket of the absent husband plays the role of a silent character. It is the object of the main character's emotions, who pours out her resentment, despair and, at the same time, tenderness onto it. This technique allows the costume item to become an important symbol in the performance. It symbolises the husband who has once again left the main character alone.

The jacket is not just an element of the costume or set design, it is a silent witness and at the same time a symbol of the ‘absent’ man, who becomes almost an independent character.

Margaryta Korniushchenko (Kharkiv)

Series title: Costumes for the play ‘Krykhitka Tsahes, nicknamed Cinnabar’: from concept to stage

The exquisite minimalism embodied by renowned fashion designer Konstantin Ponomarev has its roots in Japanese art. Hence the black colour of the robes, which do not distract the viewer (since the essence of the characters is concentrated in their faces and hands), and the wigs, which hint at the mystery or emptiness hidden in every human head and soul.

Pavlo Tyschenko (Kramatorsk/Dnipro)

Series title: ‘Stuart's Life Podium’

The series shows the heroine's life journey through transformations: from confidence and strength, through physicality and vulnerability, to purification and final absence - when only the shell of the character remains. Five photographs build images in which the actor and the costume share the stage equally.

The costume is not just a stage detail, but an independent language that reflects the drama of internal changes; it becomes an extension of the human body — a second skin that both protects and imprisons. Each change of costume not only shapes the image but also shows the fragility of physicality: the character seems to live constantly in someone else's skin, which he must shed again and again.

The finale is complete purification: an empty shell that no longer needs to be worn.

Photo titles: Strength, Doubts, Power, Purification, Verdict