In the morning of March 22, a memorial service was held in Kharkiv for Svitlana Oleshko, the founder and director of the independent theater-studio “Arabesque”.
This was reported by an Ukrinform correspondent.
The artist’s family, friends, and colleagues gathered at St. Demetrius Church. Natalia Tsymbal, an actress in Arabesque and a lecturer at the Kharkiv National University of Arts named after Kotliarevsky, is connected to Oleshko not only by her creative work but also by her 30-year friendship.
“I was still a student at the University of Arts. My classmate came up to me and said: “Do you want to take part in a play? Only it doesn’t pay money.’ I said: “Okay”. And that’s how I ended up at the Literary Museum, where they were preparing an exhibition for Khvylovy’s 100th birthday, and Svitlana, then a student at Karazin University, joined the creation of this exhibition and had friends who were theater people [Oleshko wrote and directed the play The Way to the Mountainous Commune based on the works of Mykola Khvylovy] That’s how we met, in ’93,” Natalia recalls.
She emphasizes Oleshko’s uncompromising attitude.
“Svitlana was the founder of an avant-garde, independent theater. We were always sharp and spoke out, not hiding anything in our works, and Svitlana was an absolutely uncompromising person in her work,” the actress says.
According to her, it was important for Oleshko to continue her work after the death of her husband Misko Barbara in 2021.
“A man has passed away – not just an actor, a musician. The whole repertoire was based on him, he participated in all our performances. And there was a feeling that everything had fallen apart. But then Svitlana said that Misko would like the theater to continue to exist, and the theater will exist, but it will be a little different. But the full-scale invasion made its own adjustments,” said Tsymbal.
Oleshko’s burial took place at the city cemetery #2.
As reported, on December 19, 2024, Svitlana Oleshko, director, founder and director of the Kharkiv Arabesque Theater, died in Poland as a result of illness.
Svitlana Oleshko was born on June 5, 1973, in Kharkiv. She studied at the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University, as well as at the Mobile Academy of Performing Arts in the Netherlands, and the Art School of Strategic Management in Slovakia. She was an intern at the Polish Theater Institute. In 1993-2019, she worked as a researcher at the Kharkiv Literary Museum, which became the base for the independent theater Oleshko organized.
Initially, Arabesques was an experimental project in which poems by poets of the Executed Renaissance were read. Over time, the team developed a repertoire. Since 1997, the theater has been touring, participating in international festivals, and implementing artistic and social projects.
The Arabesque has staged performances based on the works of Vasyl Symonenko, Hryhorii Skovoroda, Ivan Kotliarevskyi, Oleksandr Irvants, Serhii Zhadan, and Jerome Salinger.
Source: In Kharkiv, people bid farewell to founder of Arabesky Theater, Svitlana Oleshko
