Les Kurbas and the Berezil Theatre — Ukrainian Stage Reform

A 2025 exhibition-reconstruction dedicated to the avant-garde period of 1922-1933, when Les Kurbas (1887-1937) and his Berezil Theatre carried out the most radical reform of the Ukrainian scenic tradition. The halls presented original set design sketches by Anatol Petrytskyi and Vadym Meller for productions of The People's Malakhii (1928), Myna Mazailo (1929), and Maklena Grasa (1933) — landmark performances based on plays by Mykola Kulish from the Kyiv-Kharkiv period. Constructivist-cut stage costumes, poster graphics, rehearsal scripts with Kurbas's marginalia, photo chronicles of the Berezil artistic association. A separate section presented Kurbas's biographical trajectory from the Lviv Young Theatre to the Kharkiv Berezil, his arrest in 1933, and execution on the Solovki islands on 3 November 1937 as part of the mass punitive operation against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The exhibition placed Kurbas within the broader context of the Executed Renaissance — the generation of Ukrainian writers, directors, and artists destroyed by the Stalinist regime. The lecture programme involved contemporary theatre scholars, young-generation directors, and historians of Soviet repression.