NELLI KORNIENKO
An elusive link exists between theatre as a momentary, mirage-like
art born and disappearing before our very eyes, and one of the
oldest of traditions, mentioned as far back as by Plutarch.
It was not only olden sage King Numa, who decreed to be buried
along with his works, thereby depriving posterity of his texts.
The secrets of spirit, thought, and feeling in olden high consciousness
were not entrusted to cold script-they were passed on orally
only to the most worthy, those capable of committing them to
memory in order to pass them on, maintaining the oral chain.
It is these arguments that lay at the base of the ethics of
non-commitment to paper and the teachings of the Pythagorians
and other sages. Tiutchev’s later postulate that “a thought
spoken is a lie” represented truth in antiquity. We work with
the Word-in script. But how enticing it would be to discover
the silence of profound theatre criticism. Of silence and the
multiple-essentiality Of the Black Triangle.
Director of the Les' Kurbas Centre, holds a doctorate in art
criticism. Member-correspondent of the Ukrainian Academy of
Arts, laureate of the Les’ Kurbas Prize, and Chevalier of the
Order of Princess Ol’ha. Candidate’s dissertation is entitled
"Les' Kurbas, the Director", doctoral dissertation
is entitled "Theatre as a Diagnostic Model of Society.
Some Universal Mechanisms of the Self-Organization of Artistic
Systems". Has worked at the Sociology Division of the Institute
of the Theory and History of the Arts (Moscow) and at UNESCO
United Publishers (Moscow-Paris). From 1992 on has lived in
Ukraine and is employed by the National Academy of Sciences
and the Les’ Kurbas Centre. Author of close to 200 scholarly
works, including the following monographs and books: Theatre
Today-Theatre Tomorrow, Les’ Kurbas: A Rehearsal of the Future,
Ukrainian Theatre at the Brink of the Third Millennium: A Search
(Images of the World, Valuable Orientations, Language. Prognosis,
Gordon Craig and his Theory of “Ideal Theatre”, Ukrainian Theatre
of the 1920s-1990s (The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre,
London-New York, Toronto), Hryhorii Skovoroda: Hypothesis on
Happiness, Olena Rerykh’s Noosphere, Mass and Elite Culture
in the “Interior” of Post-Modernism. Special interests
include national cultures (Armenian, Abkhazi, Assyrian, Jewish,
Uzbek, Roma, Lithuanian, among others). Has lectured in the
US, Canada, Poland, Israel, Russia, and elsewhere.
Works at an intersection of disciplines: art criticism, the
sociology of art culture, culture studies, synergetics, semiotics,
and hermeneutics. Has been translated into 32 languages.