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Virlana Tkacz (born June 23, 1952 in Newark, NJ) is the founding director of the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in theatre directing. With Yara she created twenty-nine original theatre pieces based on fragments of contemporary poetry and traditional songs, chants, myth, history and legends. Although grounded in traditional material, Yara's pieces are experimental in essence, employing projections and complex musical scores to explore our relationship to time and consciousness. == Theatre Productions == Ms. Tkacz has created twenty-one original theatre pieces that were collaborations with experimental theatre companies from Eastern Europe. These pieces were performed at La MaMa in New York, in major theatres in Kiev, Kharkiv and Lviv and at international theatre festivals, as well as in village cultural centers. They included ''A Light from the East,'' ''Explosions,'' ''Blind Sight,'' ''Yara’s Forest Song,'' ''Waterfall/Reflections,'' with legendary folk-singer Nina Matvienko,''Kupala,'' ''Koliada: Twelve Dishes,'' 'Still the River Flows, Winter Sun, Midwinter Night, Winter Light,'' and ''Song Tree'' which Bob Holman called “a luscious experience, flowing from folk to avant-garde, from the bizarre to the holy -- jampacked and juicy.” Reviewing her production of ''Scythian Stones,'' Michael Bettencourt wrote: “The performance builds what good theatre should always build: an alternate world that allows us to re-learn and reflect upon the great questions at the core of our being human.” She created three original theatre pieces based on the poetry of Oleh Lysheha, including ''Swan,'' ''Raven,'' and ''Dream Bridge.''Reviewing Yara’s ''Raven,'' Kinoteatr wrote: “The most amazing thing about ''Raven'' is the magical and masterful way the poetry has been transformed into stage reality. If I had to provide examples of the most organic translations from one art form into another, Virlana Tkacz’s theatrical “re-readings” of modern poetry would certainly be on that list.” In 1996 she began working with indigenous Buryat artists from Siberia. Together they have created six original Yara theatre pieces beginning with ''Virtual Souls''. Based on traditional material, rituals and shaman chants these pieces were performed at La MaMa, in Ulan Ude at the Buryat National Theatre, and in the villages of Aga-Buryat Region, as well as at the Experimental Theatre Festival in Kiev. In 1997 she led a group of Yara and Buryat artists on a research trip to the Aga-Buryat Region. The folk songs, legends and stories they collected inspired Yara's theatre piece ''Flight of the White Bird''. In 1999 she led the research expedition to the Ust-Orda Buryat Region to collect material for her new piece, ''Circle''. In addition to premiering at La MaMa, ''Circle'' also performed at the International Festival of Mongolian Language Theatres in Ulaanbaatar and entered the repertoire of the Buryat National Theatre. The Village Voice wrote: “A stunningly beautiful work, ''Circle'', rushes at your senses, makes your heart pound, and shakes your feeling loose.” In 2001 Ms. Tkacz created ''Obo: Our Shamanism'' based on a shaman ritual she witnessed the previous summer in Siberia. In 2001 Ms. Tkacz traveled to Mongolia to record the songs and legends of the Buryats of the eastern provinces and created the show ''Howling''. Her show, ''The Warrior’s Sister'', was based on an ancient Buryat epic song that she first translated into English with Sayan Zhambalov and Wanda Phipps. Describing this show, ''American Theatre Web'' wrote: “The performance reminds us of what theater should be and rarely is—the opportunity to step to a world that is virtually unknown to us.” In 2005 Ms. Tkacz worked on a translation of ''Janyl Myrza'', a 17th-century Kyrgyz epic about a woman warrior. After traveling to the Celestial Mountains, she created ''Janyl'', with artists from Yara and the Sakhna Nomadic Theatre of Kyrgyzstan. The show performed at La MaMa in 2007, the capital of Bishkek, the regional center of Naryn and the Celestial Mountains, returning to Janyl’s homeland where the story took place. Fifteen photographs from Janyl are featured in ''Kyrgyz Epic Theatre in New York: Photographs by Margaret Morton'' published by the University of Central Asia in 2008. In 2008 she created ''Er Toshtuk'' based on one of the oldest Kyrgyz epics about a magical and darkly humorous journey into the underworld. In 2009 the show performed at La MaMa and continues to perform in Kyrgyzstan. In addition to her work with Yara, Ms. Tkacz directed ''Return of the Native'' for BAM's Next Wave Festival with composer Peter Gordon and video artist Kit Fitzgerald. The piece performed at the Tucano Arts Festival in Rio de Janeiro and at Het Muziektheatre in Amsterdam. She also worked with them on Blue Lights in the Basement, the memorial to Marvin Gaye at the BAM Opera House. At the Aaron Davis Hall she staged Sekou Sundiata's ''Mystery of Love'', ETC. She worked with David Rousseve on ''Mana Goes to the Moon'', and also directed plays for the Native American Ensemble, The Women's Project and in Coney Island. Ms. Tkacz was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Theatre Institute in Kiev in 2002 and in Bishkek in 2008. She has conducted theatre workshops for Harvard Summer Institute for eleven years and has lectured at Yale School of Drama and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She has assisted such directors as Andrei Serban, Ping Chong, George Ferencz and Wilford Leach at La MaMa, as well as Sir Peter Hall on Broadway and Michael Bogdanov at the National Theatre in London. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Virlana Tkacz」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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