Yara Arts Group's Script Series premieres with "The Magic of Light" and includes the script of Yara Arts Group's March 2025 production at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York. Yara creates original theatre pieces in rehearsal, so this book has three short essays by its creators that describe the making of "The Magic of Light." Bandura master and composer, Julian Kytasty, writes on the music, director Virlana Tkacz describes the origin of the story and how it evolved into Yara's production, designer Tom Lee writes on the process of creating the puppets, set and video in the show.
VIRLANA TKACZ heads the Yara Arts Group and has created and directed 40 original shows that have performed at La MaMa Theatre in New York, as well as in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Bishkek, Ulaanbaatar, and Ulan Ude. Her favorite Yara productions include "Blind Sight" in 1993, "Dark Night Bright Stars" in 2016 about the meeting of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko and the African American tragedian Ira Aldridge, "1917-2017 Tychyna, Zhadan, and the Dogs" at La MaMa in 2017 and "The Magic of Light" in 2025. She received a NEA Poetry Translation Fellowship for her translations with Wanda Phipps of Serhiy Zhadan's poetry. Yale University Press published their second selection as How Fire Descends (2023) which was a finalist for the PEN Poetry Translation Award.
JULIAN KYTASTY is a third-generation bandura player. He is both a keeper of traditions and an innovator who has opened new paths for his instrument. He has worked frequently with Yara Arts Group creating and performing music for theatre pieces, poetry performances, and festivals. His work on Yara's "1917-2017 Tychyna, Zhadan, and the Dogs" earned him a NY Innovative Theater award for best original score. He continues to teach bandura to a new generation of students in North America and Ukraine, to record, to compose and arrange music for bandura, and to engage in collaborative projects.
TOM LEE is a puppet artist, designer and director who began his career at La MaMa. He is both a performer and a master of many different puppetry traditions. As a puppeteer he worked on "Madama Butterfly" and "Florencia en el Amazonas" at the Metropolitan Opera, "War Horse" on Broadway, "Le Grand Macabre" at the New York Philharmonic, "Queen of Spades" at the Lyric Opera. For many years Tom has worked with Japanese Master Puppeteer Kory Nishikawa V. Together they developed and performed "Shank's Mare" in 2015 and "Akutagawa" in 2024. Tom's recent puppetry piece "Sounding the Resonant Path" at La MaMa in 2024 was called "mesmerizing" by the New York Times. The reviewer added "There is, at show's end, a clear and lingering consciousness of being minuscule in the universe, and terribly, beautifully human." A co-director Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab, Tom Lee has worked with Yara Arts Group since 1996 and is Yara's Artistic Associate. www.tomleeprojects.com
"Yara Arts Group's Virlana Tkacz directs a multimedia work that celebrates Ukrainian culture of the 1870s as exemplified by the epic sings Ostap Veresai and the young artist Porfiry Martynovych. The songs of the former are performed live by bandura specialistJulian Kytasty; the journey of the latter, whose drawings were projected at an 1875 Veresai concert, is rendered by puppeteer Tom Lee. The piece is performed in English and Ukrainian." — Time Out, March 1, 2025
