The play “End of the world” by Yura Zoyfer was first stages in Ukraine in 2019 in Kharkiv National University of Arts – one of the oldest and valuable institutions in Ukraine. Kharkiv – native city of Zoyfer – today experiences “end of the world” and is almost destroyed in a cruel war. This makes the play so relevant today.
Yura Zoyfer and his theatre plays were discovered by Alexandr Chepalov – Ukrainian theater expert, theater critic, professor, playwriter, Honor artist of Ukraine, who has showed them to the head and director of theatre department Leonid Sadovskyj. Sadovskyj decided to stage “End of the world” with his students and this work had 2 phases. First the material was used for international project with students from the faculty of performance studies of Hamburg University in 2018. Initiators and directors of the project was Theatre ensemble WHEELS from Berlin. A big performance called “Plündern” was created after a week of teamwork with 50 participants from Ukraine and Germany and was shown in Kampnagel – the international center for the finer arts in Hamburg, Europe’s largest production center for contemporary performing arts. This performance was a retranslation of the play and impressions of international ensemble and was built on performative physical theatre laws.
Upon returning to Kharkiv, Ukrainian students and Leonid Sadovskyj started to rehearse their own performance in traditional way of psychological theatre. Each actor had the opportunity to try the role of his or her favorite character. The text and characters were remained. But as a director Sadovskyj decided to put new circumstances to the performance. He used the story of Yura Zoyfer’s life, his stay in a concentration camp and a trye story that Zoyfer was doing theatre with people who were captured there.
The incarnation was quite complicated as it has two dimensions:
- Students played actors in a concentration camp sentenced to death.
2.The actors who stage the play.
The director used “theater in the theater” technique. Actors-prisoners act the play in concentration camp to survive by any mean. The spectator in this situation becomes not only the observer, but also, he becomes a prisoner and arbiter as well.
The genre of the performance was cabaret used in Brecht’s Theater. After getting roles, the troupe was divided into two groups, which simultaneously worked on the play’s staging. That gave possibility to choose the most successful solutions of the scenes that were used for further performance.
The scenography decision began with a realistic idea that the actors will lie on the bunks, but during the creation process Leonid came to the metaphorical embodiment.
Sadovskyj considered that the weakest place in Yura Zoyfer’s play was the final, because it was very romanticized. Yura Zoyfer hoped and believed that the humanity would be cleverer and would not allow the horror that occurred in concentration camps any more. Sadovskyj was genius pedagogue and director and he predicted: the humanity hadn’t made the conclusions from the past and wouldn’t in the future. Unfortunately, he was right. Director’s pessimistic attitude “created” the character that was not written in original play – abstract supervisor. He pronounced quite provocative texts and always invited the spectators to the dialogue. He tried to stir up the layman who thinks that this wouldn’t apply to him. Today we see again where this position of keeping silence can take us.
One of the most essential steps in the work on the play for actors was a trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in April 2019. This trip was important and helped a lot to dive into proposed circumstances of the play, to learn more about history and to experience the full range of those dreadful atmospheric days. This performance was staged to make people aware of the scale of the tragedy, to remember, and not let it happen again. Today Ukrainian students have no need to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau for artistic experience. These days they experience real war in their country.
Like a true masterpiece “End of the world” is always relevant, today it is like never ever. The play has several layers: from universe and planets, to leaders of the countries and regular people. The main character – professor Hook – can be compared with current president Zelensky, who knocks in the doors of world leaders asking for help.
We consider the “End of the world” must be played all over the world like the revise about cruel past and to break the silence. Yura Zoyfer wanted people to think about humanity’s responsibility of its actions and the value of human’s life – most important thing ever.