La vida es sueño by Calderón de la Barca
Teatro Académico Dramático Nacional Lesya Ukrainka

  Tuesday 18 Nov
  19:30 h
  16 y 18€
MUN Theatre
Ukrainian with English subtitles

Eight actors on an austere stage, echoing the precariousness imposed on the country by the war, condense the drama of Life is a Dream, which tells of a nation (Poland) at risk of being subjugated by a duchy (Moscovia) in the possibility that a bad ruler could be replaced by a foreign government that would take over. The play that Calderón wrote in the 17th century is still relevant today because of its plot and the themes it explores: justice, dignity and freedom, all wrapped in a dream world where Segismundo, the central character, has been imprisoned since birth and does not know who he is, what is reality and what is fiction.

The staging breaks the fourth wall at certain moments and the actors abandon their roles to address the audience and talk to them about some of the issues Calderón and Ukrainian society itself are questioning.

The project was promoted by the Spanish Embassy in Ukraine and the Spanish Cooperation Agency in 2022, at the beginning of the war, when Ukrainian institutions were trying to resume cultural activity. It counted on two of the greatest experts in the theater of the Golden Age, stage director Ignacio García, and José Gabriel López Antuñano, author of the dramaturgy. Last December's premiere in war-torn Ukraine was a time of excitement and uncertainty. But the air alarms did not sound then in Kiev and this adaptation of Life is a Dream was performed to the end.

ARTISTIC FILE:

Life is a dream
by Calderón de la Barca
National Academic Dramatic Theater Lesya Ukrainka
Playwright - José Gabriel López Antuñano
Direction - Oleg Zamyatin, Ignacio García
Set design - Olena Drobna
Cast
Basil - Oleg Zamyatin
Sigismund - Volodymyr Mishukov
Rosaura, noble lady - Olha Nahirniak
Clarin, jester - Anastasia Piskovets
Soldiers - Mykhailo Hanev, Oleksandr Hrekov, Zakhar Kermoshchuk
Star, lady - Valeriia Saakian
Clotaldo - Oleksii Polischuk