NKDT and the friendship of the I. Frank Theater

The National Kaunas Drama Theater (NKDT) has signed a cooperation agreement with the National Academic Ivan Franko Drama Theater of Ukraine.

During the war, this theater goes through big changes – the actor, the voice of the Maidan, who served two terms as the Minister of Culture of Ukraine, Yevhen Nyshchuk, a soldier of the current war, was recently appointed as the manager. The new manager is happy with the theater’s phenomenal popularity and is grateful to Lithuania and the Kaunas Theater for their support.

Y. Nyshchuk assumed the position of director of the general theater on April 3 of this year. Since 2015 he was an actor in this theater, but when the war broke out, he left to defend his homeland. He returned from the front to play from time to time. From now on, the manager has important tasks – to carry out the reform of the theater structure, to solve the issues of actors’ mobilization and to strengthen the theater’s international cooperation.

NKDT is one of the foreign partners with whom we have been friends since the beginning of the war. Last December, Ivan Uryvskyi, one of the most prominent directors of the I. Frank Theater, as well as the set designer of this theater Petro Bogomazov and costume designer Tetiana Ovsiichuk came to Kaunas. With the actors of the Kaunas Theater, the play “Earth” was born on stage, based on the novel by the Ukrainian author Olha Kobylianska. Shown in the repertoire, it finds its way to the hearts of the audience. Meeting St. On Christmas, the theater sent symbolic gifts to colleagues in Kyiv: each theater employee (about 600 of them) received a candy box with the symbolic word “victory” in its name.

May 3 NKDT General Director Egidijus Stancikas and I. Frankos Theater General Director communicated remotely on the occasion of signing the contract. Y. Nyshchuk said that, despite the gloomy mood at the front, the theater is working very actively – tickets are snapped up several months in advance, because the audience misses the performances, and the recent premiere of I. Uryvskyi’s “Mary Stuart” attracted a lot of interest.

The theater also supports fighters. At the beginning of March, the play “The Witch of Konotop” based on the satirical fantasy story of the Ukrainian writer Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko (directed by I. Uryvskyi) was organized in the theater in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During the performance, 55,271 euros were collected for the purchase of drones.

E. Stancikas invited the new manager to ask for help, to come to Kaunas and get to know the theater, to make proposals for cooperation. “We are open to host your performance in our theater, take a small-format performance to Kyiv, organize educational projects, and exchange experiences. And of course we support you morally: your war is our war. We live in anticipation of elections, we see the participation of pro-Russian forces, efforts to influence people’s consciousness. We have common experiences. We are very much looking forward to having you as our guests, because we want to give you time under the peaceful sky”, said the head of NKDT in a friendly manner.