Tbilisi Biennale of Stage Design 2022 took place on October 9-19. The national and student pavilions were exhibited at the Georgian Museum of Literature named after Giorgi Leonidze. The Ukrainian national pavilion, organized by Scenography Gallery with the support of the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgia and the assistance of Tetiana Kolotylova, was opened in a separate space – the Gallery of the National Research Center for History and Monument Protection of Georgia.

9 countries attended the Biennale. The following countries presented their national pavilions: Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Canada, China, Cyprus, and Belarus, with artists-dissidents representing Belarus. Student pavilions: Canada, China, Cyprus, Georgia, Italy, Poland, Serbia, and Ukraine.

In addition, the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts hosted an open master class in artistic embossing by artist Lyudmila Nagorna as part of the Biennale and the Ukrainian Pavilion program.

The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, with the support of the international organization OISTAT, hosted an international symposium in a hybrid format (online/offline) for three days, the theme of which was: TEMPORALITY – PANDEMIC, WAR, THEATER.

The first day of the symposium was entirely devoted to the Ukrainian session. During this session, the curator of the Ukrainian National Pavilion, Bohdan Polishchuk, gave a report, and six artists participating in the pavilion could present their projects to the audience.

Unfortunately, due to the air alert in Kyiv, two of the speakers: Yulia Glushko, manager and co-founder of the Scenography Gallery, and Lilia Voloshyna, a Ph.D. in history of art, were unable to get a direct connection.  Therefore, their presentations were presented later on the Biennale’s website.

Traditionally, the Tbilisi Biennale of Stage Design was organized by the Valerian Gunia YOUTH THEATER ARTISTS UNION (YTA UNION) – OISTAT National Center of Georgia, and the Biennale’s director and curator Nino Gunia.

Ukrainian National Pavilion «The Garden of Living Things»

The Garden connects generations, preserves memory, and links the underworld, earthly and heavenly worlds. It is a symbol of growth. In the earthly Ukrainian garden, you can hear the rustle and echo of the sacred garden, the paradise of the forgotten homeland of humanity.
However, the Garden also keeps artifacts – witnesses and participants in the history of the Ukrainian people. Each piece of the artifact is no longer just a household item; it is a thing with a whole cosmos inside it, endowed with its own soul.

During the war in Ukraine, in a house wholly bombed by Russian missiles, a small kitchen cabinet survived, with a fragile ceramic jug on its shelf, defenseless against the explosion. It became one of the symbols of Ukrainian resistance to the aggression of massive nuclear power. Each such thing holds a whole world and can tell a story if you know how to listen to it and how to talk to it.

The art objects created by Ukrainian scenographers are located in a single installation space of the pavilion. Each of these objects involves a certain interaction with the viewer, each telling its own story.

The critical question is, what trace and heritage will we leave behind? What stories will the artifacts behind us tell? 

The design of the main space was developed by the scenographer and curator of the pavilion Bohdan Polishchuk.

Pavilion director— Yulia Glushko
Scenography gallery director— Oleh Oneshchak.

The artists participating in the exposition:

Prague quadrennial of performance design 2023

The Ukrainian pavilion “Garden of Living Things” was named so for a reason. A garden is a deeply sacral concept imprinted in the consciousness of Ukrainians. With its fertility, generosity, and colourful enthusiasm, Mother Earth represents its beauty and grandeur to the world and being the essence of the aesthetic program of Ukrainians with its spatial scale and diversity, it manifests by itself and cherishes the freedom and will of the nation. The strength of the nation’s invincibility, its ability to protect own land and revive despite all circumstances lies in the figurative depths of Garden’s drawings… read more

Nazar, an “unneeded man” with a university degree and occasional construction work, lives as he can. One day, walking home after a night of drinking with a friend, he meets Ira, a prostitute. He doesn’t have money to pay for her, and she doesn’t have an order yet. The chance meeting beckons them both with some vague hopes. But how do you open up to someone else when you have too many difficult and strange experiences behind you? The story of a small person who has a lot of explosive energy inside him, which tears him apart in search of his own direction.

Video from the performance

Photo from the performance

Our performance is a light, though the sad story about the girl Mitsue who miraculously survived the bombing of Hiroshima. You will learn how love can save a person from the deepest abyss and the darkest gloom. If your heart is burning from loss, pain, and anxiety, “Hiroshima Girl is Afraid of Thunder” will bring you a ray of warmth during this difficult time.

The performance is based on the play by the famous Japanese playwright Hisashi Inoue. Rare for the Ukrainian scene Japanese drama combined with the visual “theatre of the artist” by the director and stage designer Bohdan Polishchuk will immerse you in the world of sophisticated simplicity. Dramatic action without shouting, with attention to the smallest actors’ movement, in a chamber space – this theatre will make your evening special. It is also worth mentioning that the music is performed live during the show and is created particularly for the project by Yana Shliabanska, one of the most interesting sound designers in Ukraine.

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“Last year, on these very days, artistic and theatrical Kyiv was enthusiastically discussing Bohdan Polishchuk’s project Vertep. A Neo-Baroque Mystery”.

This year, the luxurious mystery has actually turned into a minimalist parable with a pronounced psychological and therapeutic effect.

The theater community is going through this war, painfully searching for the right tone, rhythm, genre, and text. Some are looking for classics, others for the verbatim method, modern docudrama. Sometimes from the wheels (basements) in a live way, sometimes after having already managed to rethink and transform their tragic experience.

Director and scenographer Bohdan Polishchuk & Co. reflected on the war with the play A Girl from Hiroshima Who Is Frightened by Thunder, based on the play by Japanese playwright Inoue Hisashi, Life with Father, or Rainbows over Hiroshima (translated by Yulia Kuzmenko).

The intentionally original material is Polischuk’s specialty. It is interesting that the idea arose two years ago, and it has been realized with a relevant sound today. Too relevant, given the plot, which revolves around the nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Despite the topic, issues, allusions, and even the use of real television newsreels, this is a subtle, not speculative, and very restrained production. Delicacy, deliberate temporal and rhythmic slowness, noise, sound and music (the Spirit of Hiroshima – Anna Seriogina, flute), light and color scores, sparing acting (sometimes too much), as if emotions were deliberately withheld, and a clearly carefully chosen tone made it possible to evaluate the performance in the aesthetic plane. As a complete work of art, not as an instant performative reaction to bleeding events.

“The Girl from Hiroshima” turned out to be a kind of theatrical reproduction of the Japanese aesthetics of sumi-e (ink + drawing), which focuses the viewer’s attention on the main thing and creates an expressive image that, through monochrome, allows colors to appear more vividly. Actually, as well as emotions. After the performance.”

Olga Stelmashevska about the play

Video from the performance

Photo from the performance

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