«THE HOUSE» BUILT BY ANDRIY ZHOLDÁK

Researcher of Contemporary Art

Poster for the play The House / lesyatheatre.com.ua

Ukrainian director Andriy Zholdak — one of the most radical and acclaimed figures in contemporary theatre, known for productions such as Medea, Faust, and Three Sisters — has presented a new play, The House. His works always balance between visual extremity and a psychological exploration of the human being, and this premiere was no exception. In her review, contemporary art researcher Olesia Beniuk reflects on how The House transforms into a stage space of memory and experience.

I cannot stop thinking about the artistic event I was fortunate to take part in. For the first time in a long while, Andriy Zholdák ⓘ staged a play at home, with a title symbolic both for him as an author and for each of us, especially today — The House. The performance is multilayered. It prompts reflection, the search for answers. A performance that impresses not so much with form, plot, acting, provocation, grotesque, or aesthetic imagery — all of these are merely tools in the creator’s hands.

This performance astonishes with its concept: the director’s play, as the author of an artistic work, with the audience. As a result, each viewer creates not merely their own impression (liked/disliked), but their own construction of the artistic work, assembling from the «fragments» of their experience and worldview an imperfect vision of their own «house» and of themselves. A kind of hermeneutic-psychoanalytic-existential artistic experiment.

ARTISTIC EXPERIMENT

oday, the artistic experiment is an established phenomenon in art. Its presence in painting, theater, or cinema no longer surprises anyone. As a conceptually defined phenomenon, the experiment appeared a century and a half ago in the theoretical works of Émile Zola. With the shifts of cultural epochs and the development of art, its interpretation has also evolved.

For Zola, experiment meant an experimentally proven argument within an artistic work. In modernist art, experimentation signified the testing of possibilities offered by different artistic means (the Cubists experimented with form, the Surrealists — with reality and its laws, the Fauves — with color, and so on). In postmodern art, where plurality became a key value, the clear definition of the essence of artistic experiment has been blurred, and so it is often carried out for its own sake — a kind of testing by art of its own limits and potential. Thus, the artistic experiment has had its own development, its own transformation, and its own contours in each epoch.

In this context, Andriy Zholdák emerges as a director who, in the 1990s, during the post-Soviet era, brought the artistic experiment onto the Ukrainian stage. Beginning with Moment, he consistently introduced experiments of various formats: from working with themes, texts, plots, character images, and the role of actors, to bold explorations in the field of technologies that were innovative at the time (experimenting with video, sound, and visual plasticity).

Zholdák became a true pioneer of these experiments on Ukrainian theater stages. And he remains one to this day. In The House, the director experiments not so much within the performance itself as with the impact of the artistic work on the viewer. He experiments with the recipient, with their perception of what they have seen, and with their construction of their own understanding of what the performance is really about.

Спектакль «Дом» — The play *The House* / Photo from personal archive

CONCEPTUALITY

Is conceptuality important for an artist today? The postmodern era, which, according to the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch, is based on radical plurality, allows the author to decide its relevance for themselves. At the same time, an author who strives to be heard and understood (not necessarily by contemporaries) will build a conceptual foundation for their works.

With his play The House, Andriy Zholdák demonstrates that the viewer’s understanding, the audience’s perception of the artistic work, is important to him as an author. He wants his production to speak to the Ukrainian community, and therefore, he deliberately embeds certain theoretical ideas into the structure of the performance. It is no coincidence that the play begins with a director’s instruction on what to do with what is seen. This serves as a kind of key to interpretation.

The director, as the author of the artistic concept, speaks of the performance as of an amphora: «On this amphora there are inscriptions, colors, scenes: the story of a home, a family, loving children growing up, the beginning of war, and the aggression that destroys the home». The author’s idea is to break this amphora before the viewer and give them the opportunity to piece together the chaotically scattered fragments on their own. Thus, each viewer will assemble their own amphora, begin their own unique conversation with the artistic work, see within it their own story, and in fact create their own performance.

«The most important thing for me as an artist», Andriy Zholdák emphasizes at the beginning of the first act, «is to tell you, dear spectators, that now you too will begin to create your own performance. My idea as an artist is that each of you will assemble your own amphora from the fragments of the play you will see. And each of you will be able to imagine and recreate something I may not even have intended as the author of the idea».

The approach to interpretation and perception proposed by Zholdák resonates organically with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical understanding of an artistic work. In his essay Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964), the philosopher states: «…what we call the language of the work of art, for the sake of which this work exists and is transmitted, is the language generated by the work of art itself, regardless of whether or not this work has a linguistic basis.

A work of art conveys something to the recipient — and not merely in the way a historical document speaks to a historian — a work of art speaks of something to each person as if it were speaking individually to them, and as if it were speaking of something simultaneous and contemporary. Therefore arises the task of grasping the essence of what the work says, and of bringing it to one’s own understanding and to the understanding of others».

In his director’s foreword, Andriy Zholdák speaks about a new theatrical language, explaining that the story he tells is built on the principle of the contemporary novel, where the chronology of events, time, and space are not unified. This is a conscious choice by the author, who believes that in this way the viewer receives more tools to establish their own communication with the artistic work and to construct their own story.

The language of the performance must be «heard» by the viewer, who must make an effort and accept the rules of this artistic game. The work itself generates its own language in a very personal, intimate way. That is why the author says that in this play, each viewer independently creates their own performance. Here, once again, Gadamer’s reflections resonate: «For the recipient, to understand an artistic work means inevitably to encounter oneself. But as an encounter with oneself… the artistic experience is an experience in the true sense of the word and must each time resolve the task posed by experience as such: to integrate art into the system of one’s own orientation in the world and into the system of understanding oneself. This is precisely what shapes the language of art, so that it speaks to the intimate understanding of each individual, and it does so each time in a contemporary way and through its own contemporaneity».

With Andriy Zholdák, the viewer becomes a co-creator. The communicative action of the artistic work requires participation from the recipient. After all, the essence of communicative action lies in the fact that every work of art seeks to be grasped, to be understood, and therefore it «speaks» to the viewer. In this act of speaking occurs the process of perceiving, understanding, and co-creating the artistic work.

IMAGERY

The image of the amphora, shattered into pieces and offered to the audience even before the performance begins, is multifaceted. The amphora is a complete artistic work created by the author. The broken amphora is the artistic work presented to the public. Each viewer must gather its fragments independently, «gluing» together their own amphora, and what it will ultimately look like depends above all on them.

The amphora is the home, the family, what is created, preserved, cherished. Yet for one reason or another, this amphora inevitably breaks. The author insists that piecing together one’s own amphora — one’s ideal or imperfect vision of home — is vital. In doing so, he touches upon the profoundly painful subject of wartime reality. Over these years of war, everyone has asked themselves: What will happen to my home? What is «home» at all — the city or village where you or your parents were born? The place where you now live? The dwelling in which you live? The country you live in?

Young people who grew up in Kyiv, Uzhhorod, or Lutsk are defending their home in the Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Donetsk directions, in towns and villages they had never been to before. Because this is their home. And without these figurative «fragments», the amphora of our common home will not be whole. Ukrainians who, for various life reasons, grew up, studied, built careers, and achieved success abroad are returning to a home at war. Because this is their home. Imperfect, wounded, scarred, yet their own.

The theme of return permeates the entire performance and manifests in various ways: a sick boy returns home and finds it; sons return from the war, crippled but alive; life and joy return to the home — all three daughters-in-law are expecting children; after all the hardships, pain, and losses, the family finds the strength to light the lamp again and believe that everything will be all right.

The play brings together a mosaic of family life sketches spanning several decades. The director intentionally arranges them out of chronological order: the viewer constantly shifts from past to future and back again. To watch them is like leafing through old videos or photographs. These sketches depict the typical events of ordinary life: the marriage of lovers, the birth of children, decorating the Christmas tree, the father’s illness, his death, the sons’ weddings, life during the war, return from the war, betrayals, traditions, values, rules, and their transgressions. Such events exist in everyone’s life. Some recall them with tenderness, some with longing, others with pain.

Typical events, different circumstances, individual perceptions shape the unique personal experience of each, an individual story, their own performance, their own amphora. So I carry my own amphora, reflecting on Zholdák’s return, on his House, on his audience. Those who expect ready-made answers and conclusions will not find them here. But for the viewer prepared for searching, for reflection, for beginning this game with the director, the performance will resonate and will not let itself be forgotten.

REFERENCES

Welsch, W. Our Postmodern Modern. Trans. from German. Kyiv: Alterpress, 2004. — 328 p.
Gadamer, H.-G. Aesthetics and Hermeneutics. In: Hermeneutics and Poetics. Selected Works. Trans. from German. Kyiv: Universe, 2002. — 288 p.