LES KURBAS CENTRE

NATALIA SHEVCHENKO

It is the artistic characteristics of actorial creativity in particular that ontologically belong to two mutually conditioned dimensions: art and life-creation. A creative individual as such, enters a circle of artistic expression and conditions its artistic level. Art, in its turn, serves as a manual for the individual’s journey of self-fulfillment. The psychology of creative processes as the study of human potential, particularly through the synthesizing quality and applied (the person-aims and path) nature of actorial creativity, can come in touch with the art of life. Theurgy carries with it the sense of transgressing of limits—change, transformation, movement upward. Theurgy in Greek means miracle. It is man’s answer to God, an attempt at spirit creation. The theurgy of creativity means that an individual practices a particular spirituality through art. A higher level of spiritual-material inter-penetration on a new evolutionary spiral of humanity, an ascendance to which 20th century history testifies, is enabled by the union of secular and religious orders. The question of the synthesis was posed in theory by the philosophy of art back at the beginning of the century (general theory of art). In practise, the theurgy of creatvity (in the aggregate process of creativity and the artistic “order”) takes place in an avant-garde manner, to my mind, in the work of the actor in an experimental theatre.

Theare scholar, translator, pedagogue, actress. Graduated from the Kyiv state Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages and the I. Karpenko-Karyi State Institute of Theatre Arts (class of theatre scholar, Prof. V. Zabolotna). Taught a course in Eastern theatre at the I. Karpenko-Karyi KSITA. From 1996-2000, a researcher at the Les’ Kurbas Centre. Author of “Golden Temple a quad-project, which entails work on four texts: The Golden Dome by Jukio Misimi, The Constant Prince by Pedro Calderon, Cassandra By Lesia Ukrainka, and the “Song of Songs”. These are four “columns of meaning” around which the sphere of the Temple of the Soul is built, in its depths combining the heavenly and secular. Founder of the H20 group, which researches the topic of “Eternal Femininity”.

Is researching the topic “Actorial art as a theurgical act in 20th century experimental theatre. Other research interests include culture studies, the theory of self-organization, the philosophy of creativity, the methodology and practical psychology of actorial art. Has developed courses in the theory and practice of Eastern theatre and the philosophy and psychology of creativity.