Premiere of student production disrupted in Odesa theater

The Odesa Drama Theater canceled the premiere of the student play Mina Mazailo, which had been prepared for almost a year by students of Karpenko-Kary University. The production was not included in the repertoire because of the controversy over the interpretation of the play and the topic of Ukrainization.

This was reported by Glavkom.

One of the directors of the production, Andriy Hryshyn, said that in the summer of 2025, students agreed with the director and artistic director of the theater Olena Shramko-Pushkina on the idea of creating a play and prepared a director's explication, which was approved by the theater's management. The rehearsals were postponed several times, and the actual process only started in March 2026, although the premiere was scheduled for April 24.

According to the student, the team was promised enough time to work, but instead of the required 68 rehearsals, only 23 were held. Actors from the Odesa Drama Theater were supposed to perform in the play.

Hryshyn claimed that two weeks before the premiere, after an open rehearsal, the theater director assured the team that the performance would take place, but that evening the actors were informed that the production was canceled without explanation.

During the artistic council, according to the director, the members of the commission criticized not only the performance itself, but also Kulish's play. In particular, they said that the work was allegedly irrelevant, could cause "national hatred" and was not relevant to the present. Audio recordings with fragments of the artistic council, which confirm the student's words, show that communication with the artists took place in Russian.

The students and the theater's management also had a discussion about the topic of Ukrainization and repressions against Ukrainians in Soviet times. The directors explained that they wanted to show how the Ukrainization policy of the 1920s was one of the precursors to further repression. But the theater director, according to the students, disagreed with this interpretation of historical events.

Andriy Hryshyn emphasized that the production deliberately avoided direct politics and focused on the internal conflict of a person in a period of change and Russification of society. Despite this, the artistic council recommended that the play not be included in the theater's repertoire.

At the same time, the director said that the theater's actors had received the material well and supported the idea of the production. He also complained that the theater administration did not provide the students with the official minutes of the artistic council and did not close the practice.

In turn, the theater's director, Olena Shramko-Pushkina, denied that there was any conflict with the students. She explained that the graduation performance does not oblige the theater to include it in the repertoire, and the final decision is made by the artistic council.

The theater director emphasized that the complaints were not about the play Mina Mazailo itself, but about the way it was performed. According to her, the students were unable to fully reveal Mykola Kulish's intention, and the production itself did not comply with the repertoire policy of the institution and "was not timely."

Shramko-Pushkina also said that some scenes of the production seemed primitive and unaesthetic to the artistic council, and that the Ukrainian language in the play, in her opinion, sounded like a caricature. At the same time, she said that the students were offered to hold a free show for the theater community instead of the official premiere, and that "the tickets for the play were not selling well at all." However, the directors refused.

In March 2022, the Odesa Academic Russian Drama Theater removed the word "Russian" from its official name, replacing it with "regional". Until the issue is resolved in the legal sphere, the theater's staff stated that from now on, the theater will be de facto called the Odesa Regional Academic Drama Theater.

Анна Бальчінос