The museum received from the Canadian diaspora a unique Les Kurbas (1887-1937) archive — 47 personal letters and handwritten scripts from the Berezil period, kept in a family collection in Toronto.
In November 2025 the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine received a unique archive of the outstanding reformer director Les Kurbas (1887-1937). The transfer was made by descendants of the Kurbas family, who kept it for nine decades in Toronto (Canada) — where the family archive was taken in 1933 during Kurbas's arrest. The set includes: forty-seven personal letters of the director to associates, handwritten scripts of 'The People's Malakhii' (1928) and 'Myna Mazailo' (1929) with author's notes, set design sketches, photo chronicle of Berezil theatre rehearsals.
The special value of the archive — manuscripts of the last months of Kurbas's free life before his arrest in 1933. In one letter (dated 12 August 1933, four months before his arrest) Kurbas discusses theatrical reform and plans the next Berezil productions — these plans did not materialise because the director was arrested and on 3 November 1937 executed on the Solovetsky Islands as part of the punitive blow against the Executed Renaissance. The archive will become the central exhibit of the new 2026 exhibition 'Kurbas Before Silence — The Last Year of Freedom'.
