Olena Apchel
Values, Independence, Identity – Transformations of Ukrainian performing arts through revolutions and war.
Ukrainian theater, as well as Ukrainian culture in general, is undergoing an emancipatory transformation today, both in form and content. This is happening in close connection with civil society processes – beginning in the 1990s with the “Student Revolution on Granite” and the miners: inside protests, followed by the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 and the “Maidan Revolution” in 2013/14, and finally continuing with the nine-year Russian-Ukrainian war.
Curator and director Olena Apchel talks about representatives of the independent theater scene, who were and are often the driving force behind these formative social changes and events in Ukraine. Both thanks to their personal positioning and their artistic work in documentary and post-documentary, post-dramatic, critical and political theater.
Duration: approx. 45 Min.
Language: Ukrainian with simultaneous German translation
Цінності, незалежність, ідентичність – трансформація українського сценічного мистецтва через революції та війну Кураторка та режисерка Олена Апчел розповідає про представників незалежної театральної сцени, які були і є рушійною силою формування суспільних змін і подій в Україні – зі „студентської революції на граніті“ та протестів шахтарів у 1990-х, за якими відбулися „Помаранчева революція“ 2004 року та „Революція Гідності“ 2013/14 років, до дев‘ятирічної російсько-української війни.
Тривалість: бл. 45 хв.
Мова: українська з синхронним німецьким перекладом
Olena Apchel is a theater director, performer, lecturer, cultural scientist, curator and doctor of art history. She is the author of numerous academic works dealing with the study of contemporary theater, especially documentary theater, performance and critical art. In her directing work, she focuses primarily on the themes of trauma and social violence.
From 2010 to 2015 she was a professor at the Kharkov State Academy of Culture. Since 2014, she has been a co-author and lecturer at the TESTO School of Authorship for Drama and Performing Arts in Kharkiv. From 2017 to 2019 she was the artistic director of Lesa Ukrainka’s Lviv Academic Drama Theater. In 2021-2022 she worked at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, focusing on social projects. She is currently co-director of the Berlin Festival’s Theatertreffen. In the first years of the Russian war of aggression she was a volunteer, and since the beginning of the invasion she has been helping the military and the civilian population.