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PREMISES RESEARCH DIVISION THEATRE LABORATORY CULTURALOGICAL PROJECTS DIVISION "THEATRE IN A BASKET" CREATIVE WORKSHOP PUBLISHING HOUSE VISUAL LABORATORY DRAMA LABORATORY

Paul Florensky once noted that "If Rublov's Trinity exists, God exists". To paraphrase Florensky, one can say that "If Les’ Kurbas exists, Ukrainian theatre exists". Theatre, like history, has never lacked its dreamers. Among them were those who stood the theatrical world on its end by means of the Archimedes law of the lever. Les’ Kurbas was in that group. His 20th century kin include Gordon Craig and Adolph Appia, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Konstantin Stanislavski, and Bertold Brecht and Antoine Artaud. It is with them that we make our entry into the 21st century. Theatre and film director, actor, playwright, theorist, teacher, and polyglot-translator, theatrical reformer Les’ Kurbas (1887-1937) created a world class modern Ukrainian theatre and laid the foundations for a new lexicon in 21st century theatre (even the frigid GuLAG only managed to act as a mere provocation for the master's last chef-d'ouevres). It is to him that perhaps the most sublime of designations of the actor of the future as a "wise harlequin" is attributed. Left incomplete during his lifetime, his theory of "character transformation" is today being completed through the efforts of philosophers and artists searching for the core "archetypal" specificity of Art. Modern virtual space only strengthens the intensification of this search. The Les’ Kurbas State Centre for Theatre Arts, created by a decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on December 12, 1994, began its work in 1996. We took into account new practices in contemporary world culture, which foresee the "totality" of function, an easy interchangeability of "elements", the parallel development of theory and practice, and the principles of multi-levelness and simultaneity. The Centre has three divisions: scholarly-research, culturalogical, and artistic-theatrical search laboratories. Preference is given to the generation of ideas, to young talents and new methods and methodologies, and to experimentation in the broadest of artistic realms (it is impossible to research theatre today outside of a unified artistic context). The Centre aims to provoke experimentation and to create globally-constructive models for TheatreЇas a builder of a national spiritual environment, featuring a new Language. The intellectual thought of new Ukraine and its culturology and art research, should reintegrate themselves into the European and world contexts from which they were separated for well-known historical reasons. The Centre's activities include five strategic directions: 1. The development of a contemporary dialogical model: Ukrainian culture - world culture. 2. The writing of the history of 20th century Ukrainian theatre in the context of world artistic culture, through the utilization of new methodologies. 3. The creation of a wide-ranging system of culturalogical projects as a mechanism for the reintegration of national culture into the world context. 4. The formation of innovative models for theatrical and artistic education. 5. Analysis of state cultural policy, proposals of alternative and innovative cultural forms. The Les’ Kurbas Centre is an open ground. We subscribe to a well-known physicist's formula for "insane ideas". Come, fantasize, roll up your sleeves and work. It is your destiny to live in the third millennium, begin today.