Ukrainian 1930s avant-garde taking the stage in London. Meet the team behind ‘Maklena’ and become part of the story
Date and time:
Thursday 17 May, 2018
19:00 - 20:30
Location:
Main Hall of the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family
21 Binney Street
London
W1K 5BQ
Night Train Theatre Company is producing Maklena Grasa by Ukrainian playwright Mykola Kulish, translated into English for the first time by Maria Montague.
Maklena Grasa was Kulish’s final major work before he was executed during the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s. The play was performed only five times in 1933 before it was banned by the Soviet authorities and erased from Ukrainian culture. After more than eighty years, Night Train is developing a fresh interpretation of this Ukrainian classic; its English-language premiere.
This event will feature extracts from the play and a talk on the play’s historical context given by Dr Rory Finnin, Director of Cambridge Ukrainian Studies and Head of Slavonic Studies Section. Moderated by Ursula Woolley, Trustee of Ukrainian Institute London.
This event will be held in English.
FREE
Speaker
Maria Montague
Maria Montague is a theatre director, translator and co-founder of Night Train Theatre Company. She completed a Master’s researching Ukrainian modernist theatre at the University of Cambridge. She has worked as the assistant director for the prominent directors Caroline Steinbeis (Edward II, Cambridge Arts Theatre, February 2017) and Nicholas Barter (Marlowe Showcase, Jermyn Street Theatre, November 2016). She has directed many productions at the ADC Theatre and Corpus Playroom in Cambridge and co-wrote the documentary play The Summer Before Everything about the war in Ukraine, which was performed at the Cambridge Junction and the Oxford Playhouse Burton Taylor Studio in July 2016. After a successful premiere at the Edinburg Fringe Festival in 2017, the production had a sell-out run at London’s The Lion and Unicorn Theatre.
Speaker
Rory Finnin
Dr Rory Finnin directs the Ukrainian Studies programme at Cambridge and chairs the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES). He received his PhD in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He also holds Certificates from the Harriman Institute and from the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. In 2015 Finnin won a Teaching Award for Outstanding Lecturer from the Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU), the representative body for all students at the University. Rory Finnin's primary research interest is the interplay of literature and national identity in Ukraine. He also studies Soviet Russian dissident literature, Turkish nationalist literature, and Crimean Tatar literature.
