Andriy Matsyak, General and Artistic Director of the Ukrainian Drama Theatre named after Maria Zankovetska in Lviv, Ukraine

I would like to express my admiration for our Polish friends and colleagues, in particular for Jan Nowara and his friends from the Wanda Siemaszkowa Theatre for initiating and embodying such a good idea — to hold the TRANS/MISSIONS festival which integrates not only territories, but also nations. Let me express my gratitude to all those who help Jan Nowara in Poland, in the beautiful city of Rzeszów, to hold this festival.

It is a great honour and great joy for us. Although our languages are different — at the festival, there will be one language: the language of cultures, the language of art, the language of different creative personalities. And this is the most important thing!
For the event, we will bring a stage adaptation based on work of Taras Shevchenko “Katerina”. In a sense, this is an experimental performance, but we are very pleased to say that this production has visited already a lot of European theatre venues.

Also, our great orchestra will come, which we love and respect very much, but as we know, is it also very highly regarded by Warsaw public. Further, we will bring with us a photo exhibition of Reverend Andrei Duda — a chaplain who often visits the fronts of war in eastern Ukraine. The exhibition will demonstrate to our Polish colleagues and all guests of the festival how the Ukrainian people are struggling against the extremely hostile and, as it turned out, the extremely aggressive eastern neighbour.

An extraordinarily interesting item of our program will be a movie based on motifs of our prophethic poet Taras Shevchenko “The Blind” and directed by Bogdan Revkevich. The screenplay is an adaptation to current conditions and events taking place in the eastern Ukraine. Once again I want to invite the entire audience to our productions as well as performances of other participants of the project. I wish us and our colleagues from other countries all the best. After all, the most important is the feeling that we are all together. It is an invaluable experience in the light of events that are taking place in the whole world nowadays. We are particularly happy that we will start our 101st season in the circle of such dear friends and before such an exquisite audience.

Many happy returns, TRANS/MISSIONS! Let our friendship be eternal!

Andriy Matsyak
general director, artistic director
of the Maria Zankovetska Ukrainian Dramatic Theatre