Eugene Lavrenchuk (; born 24 June 1982) is a Ukrainian opera and drama director, producer and teacher. Director, co-founder (2002), and artistic director of the Polish Theatre in Moscow (2002–2014) and the School of acting and directing. Chief director of the Odesa National Opera House (2018–2021). Rector of the First Ukrainian School of Theater and Cinema (2018), Founder and Head of the Expert Council of the All-Ukrainian Opera Forum. Has staged more than 30 plays (performances-list). Makes productions and also carries out active teaching work in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Lithuania and Israel. The author of the methodology of teaching acting skills and directing. Merited Artist of Ukraine (2021).
Biography Born in 1982 in Lviv (Ukraine)
His first impressions of the theater came in the sixth grade, when his grandmother took him behind the scenes of the Lviv Theater named after Maria Zankovetska during the rehearsal process — the director Alla Babenko was working on the performance Médée by Jean Anouilh.
Fluent in Ukrainian, English, Polish, Hebrew, Russian and French. He is color blind and vegan, actively popularizes veganism and vegetarianism.
Education He graduated from the Polish school named after Maria Magdalena in Lviv.
In 2003 he graduated from the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (Roman Viktyuk's workshop) as an opera director, later – higher courses of choreography at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Lublin, Poland), Higher Courses for directors of feature films (Moscow).
Polish Theater in Moscow
In April 2003, the premiere of the play Snow based on the play by the Polish playwright Stanislaw Przybyszewski was held on the stage of the Moscow theater Et cetera on Novy Arbat – the degree project of Eugene Lavrenchuk, a graduate of the directing faculty of the Theater Academy. Poles of Moscow Roman Yadzinsky (Bronka), Antony Fontanov (Tadeusz), and Volodymyr Terpugov (Kazimierz) played on the stage together with professional actress Yelena Boldina. At the same time, the play was considered as an exam work – the head of the examination board, People's Artist of the USSR Yelena Obraztsova was present, and she signed director's diploma of Eugene Lavrenchuk. Polish Theater in Moscow counts down its activity from the performance Snow.
The legal registration of Eugene Lavrenchuk's Polish Theater in Moscow took place in 2004. The concept of creation declared that the theater does not perform plays every day, it has no plans for the number of productions per year, and they do not tend to vulgarize creativity and check harmony with market algebra. The language of the performances was declared as Polish, Russian and any other acceptable for the performers. Major international funds, the governments and ministries of Poland and Russia, grants from the budget of Moscow, Warsaw and European programs were mentioned among the sources of funding for the theater, which allows theater projects to have a fundamentally non-commercial character.
After the play Snow by Przybyszewski, the theater's repertoire included performances of Maria Stuart by Juliusz Słowacki to the music of Gaetano Donizetti, Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy based on the play by Witold Gombrowicz, Tango by Slawomir Mrozek, The Kidnapping of Europe staged by Eugene Lavrenchuk basing on his author's script. In addition, productions by other directors were released: Romeo and Juliet based on William Shakespeare, Decline of Europe, Oedipus Sleeping.
The performances of the Theater were shown on the stages of Moscow, the Russian cities of Vologda, Tomsk, Lithuanian Vilnius, Polish Warsaw, Szczecin, Kraków, Ryażew, Świnoujście, Wrocław, Sopot, and others. The theater actively participated in international theater festivals.
Participation of the Polish Theater in festivals: 2003 – 5th World Festival of Theaters of the Polish Diaspora in Subcarpathia (Ryaszów, Poland) 2008 – Theatrical Festival of the Polish Theater in Stara Prokhovnia (Warsaw, Poland) 2011 – International Theater Festival V World Meetings of the Polish Stage (Vilnius, Lithuania) 2012 – International Polish festival of mono performances MONOWschó (Vilnius, Lithuania) Shakespeare Festival[pl] (Gdańsk, Poland) Maria Konopnytska Festivals (Przedbuzh, Poland)
In 2010, Eugene Lavrenchuk International Foundation was founded in Warsaw
An important direction of the theater's work is educational programs and acting training for actors of Moscow theaters and students of theater universities. The School of Acting and Directing worked at the theater, regular author training for personal growth was held, Polish language courses and a theater studio for children were opened.
In connection with the events of 2014 (Russian armed invasion of Crimea and the war in Eastern Ukraine), Eugene Lavrenchuk left Russia as a sign of disagreement with the state's policy, which he called criminal. The theater stopped its work in 2015.
Eurovision 2017 In May 2017, at the invitation of the Pershyi TV (Ukraine), he worked as the creative director of the Euroclub and the director of the Fan zone at the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, which was held in Kyiv.
On the eve of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 final, he took part in the live broadcast of the Stozhary.ua project with opera star Maria Maksakova and art critic Kostiantyn Doroshenko.
Educational activity Carries out active teaching activities both in Ukraine and Europe.
Since January 2015, he has been a teacher at the Royal Academy of Business and Diplomacy (Polish: Krolewska Akademia Biznesu i Dyplomacji we Wrocławiu; Wroclaw, Poland).
Since 2018, he has been the rector of the First Ukrainian School of Theater and Cinema. The school is open, students can be representatives of different age groups with different degrees of preparation (from elementary to professional).
School students regularly appear on professional stages, where they demonstrate their achievements to the public.
Every year, the Eugene Lavrenchuk School holds seasonal field workshops in the largest cities of Ukraine (Lviv), Poland (Warsaw, Kraków, Zakopane, Gdańsk, Sopot, Wrocław, Świnoujście etc.), where interested students from Ukraine come together with students from Poland and other European countries.
The school's curriculum and trainings are based on Lavrenchuk's own teaching methodology, which uses new interpretations of the ideas of Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, Antonin Artaud and Konstantin Stanislavski, and also has an author's course Everything about Character. The Typology of Personality.
Odesa National Opera House Formation
On March 2, 2018, he won the competition to fill the vacant position of chief director of the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theatre. He took the position of chief director of the opera theater at the age of 36. He headed the Fund of the Odesa National Opera.
He began his work as a director by conducting training for artists: not only for soloists, but also for choir artists. He made education an integral part of the life of a professional theatrical team.
In the Odesa Opera during the time of Lavrenchuk's leadership, practical steps towards theater marketing and management appear, a vector for opera direction is taken through musical education and the ability to read scores. Lavrenchuk illustrates this thesis with Verdi's paradox in the duet Libiamo ne' lieti calici from the second scene of the first act of the opera La traviata: It says about public expression, when people say banal words and sing for joy, but Verdi puts two pianos and very careful intonations. This is the only moment when the main male character declares his love for the main female character. They remain alone, but there is untruth between them: fake orchestra sounds, bassoons and clarinets, that is, musical instruments from the mind, not from the heart. It is a paradox that people remain alone, but instead of sincerely confessing their love, they speak clichéd blanks. Instead, when the chorus sounds, everyone raises their glasses of champagne, the hero manages to quietly say I love you to the heroine so that she can hear it. Therefore, the cultural process is a combination of the artist's intimate process and open public hype. The point is to create such a multi-layered structure.
Among the realised productions are The Last Romantic based on opera works by Richard Strauss (2018), La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi (2019). Preparations were made for the production, and the presentation of the project of the opera Dragon took place, based on the play of the same name by the Soviet playwright Evgeny Schwartz – the theme of totalitarianism in an operatic format (translation and libretto by Pavlo Arie, composer – Anton Baibakov, theater artist - Nataliya Leykina).
La Traviata The most resonant and significant work of Eugene Lavrenchuk at the Odesa Opera was the production of La Traviata – Giuseppe Verdi's opera. All existing additions were removed from the musical part – exclusively Italian is used and Verdi's score is strictly followed. The premiere took place as part of the 210th theater season of the Odesa Opera, on November 9, 2019. For the premiere, the landing force of the world's opera elite gathered in Odesa: critics of leading profile and socio-political publications (Online Merker, Klassik begeistert, Die Bühne, L'Opera – International magazine, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Salzburger Nachrichten, Il Tempo), management of theaters, intendants from all over Ukraine, from Rome, Venice, Hamburg, Tartu. The stage conductor was Viacheslav Chernukha-Volich. Yefim Ruakh worked on the realization of an artistic solution of the main theme of the play – the element of wind – the eternal carrying away of all and everything to nowhere. All scenery will transform and fly away. Everything will spin, and in the third act, such a whirlwind will rise that a circle of dresses will appear above the chorus, which will fly. The part of Violetta Valery was performed by soprano Alina Vorokh, Alfred by tenor Oleg Zlakoman. The poster of the performance is made in such a way that the viewer observes an X-ray picture of the Lady of the Camellias of Violetta Valery, where camellias "bloom" on her lungs. The action itself is filled with movement and stage transformations, the myth of Minos, Poseidon and Pasiphae, the metamorphoses of Zeus in love, is woven into the fabric of the play.
La Traviata gathered the press that, on the one hand, was enthusiastic about the innovative directorial work, on the other hand, there were criticisms about the dominance of visual images over the musical component of the opera. Based on the production, a video version appeared: a separately recorded audio version, to which a video sequence involving drones and a crane was shot. The publication of a book about the play "La Traviata" was announced, the title of which echoes Violetta's main aria Addio, del passato.
The work received professional recognition in the form of the Les Kurbas Prize (2020), won in the nomination Musical performance in the genre of opera/operetta/musical of the All-Ukrainian Theater Festival-Award GRA (2020), Eugene Lavrenchuk entered the short list of the Shevchenko National Prize (theatre art).
Termination of cadence