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Bohdan Polishchuk
Artist, director, co-founder of the Scenography Gallery NGO, the international festival Lviv Scenography Quadrennial, author and curator of the project Ukrainian Theater Costume of the 20th and 21st Centuries: Identity, Context, Landscape
Futurism and the vision of the future are very expressive and exemplary themes for any manifestation of art, particularly theater costumes. After all, this is not only the territory of an individual artist’s imagination, it is also a mirror of society, its expectations, dreams, hopes, and fears.
If we recall how, back in 1897, H. G. Wells depicted the situation of contact with aliens in his novel The War of the Worlds, we immediately think of danger, uncertainty, attack, and the powerlessness of humanity. He portrays the Martians themselves as something completely incomprehensible to our reality. In his imagination, he brilliantly projects complex technologies inaccessible to humanity and invents the nature and physiology of aliens, unlike Earth. He predicts a planetary catastrophe that will begin when humans and aliens meet. He shows the power and threat of uncharted space and the future.
But if we travel back to 1925 and even take a cursory look at Anatol Petrytskyi’s sketch of the Martian’s costume for the play Viy, we can see quite the opposite picture.
Petrytskyi’s Martian is frankly caricatured. In fact, he is nothing more than a walking moonshine still. And he can hardly threaten humanity with complete extermination, despite his gloomy colors. If it were a little more colorful, it could easily be perceived as a character from some retro children’s cartoon. Of course, this sketch clearly demonstrates the artistic style and ingenuity of the artist, as well as the context and the era in which it was created. Viy directed by Hnat Yura was a reflection of its time. The modernization of a classic literary work was bursting with relevance and... propaganda. Of course, in 1925, there could not have been a force in the information space of Kharkiv, even an alien force, more powerful than the force of communist propaganda and the mighty proletariat. Even on Mars. The first third of the twentieth century was a dream and, to a certain extent, propaganda of the image of the Soviet man who not only abolished God but also defeated nature, became the master of the planet, and is about to become the master of the entire cosmos.
This is where we see the appearance of the funny and slightly clumsy Martian in the theater production Viy. He doesn’t impress us with his technology, he makes us laugh with his nature as a primitive robot. One of his tasks was to remind the spectator-worker of the pipe or boiler he sees every day at his factory workplace. To rhyme with a simple chemical device familiar to a Soviet person — a tank and a coil used to make moonshine. Of course, all this is played out in the play by Ostap Vyshnia and has its explanation in the plot. But it is the costume that interests us.
Thus, we can see how different the threatening apocalyptic images of aliens born of the imagination and pen of a British writer in the late nineteenth century are from the comic image that emerges from the brush of a Ukrainian artist in the first third of the twentieth century.
Thirty years later, a new wave of space fever would sweep the world. The 1960s and later the ‘70s saw the emergence of numerous works that immersed people in romantic fantasies about distant worlds, incredible technological progress, and the possibilities for humanity to escape from earthly problems.
In the 1960s, the music of The Beatles and Elvis Presley is heard in the USA and Europe. Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn shine on cinema screens. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, a wave of Ukrainian cultural and intellectual resistance, called the Sixtiers, emerged in opposition to the totalitarian regime. Writers, painters, artists, and intellectuals began to reassert their Ukrainian identity. This, of course, leads to a new intensification of repression, imprisonment, and murder. In these contrasting and tumultuous years, in Lviv, at the Maria Zankovetska Theater, a significant artist Myron Kyprian worked.
In 1960, he created costumes for the play Faust and Death. This is a play by a Soviet writer Oleksandr Levada that wraps philosophy and propaganda in a wrapper of space exoticism and futurism, all based on the same communist Soviet ideology. But if we look at the costumes from this performance, they are completely different from Petrytskyi’s Martian. This is a great example of visualization of high-quality science fiction.
The first USSR and USA astronauts were just preparing for their flights into space and to the Moon. This topic is ringing out in the air, but there is still a lot of unknown, and the images of astronauts, which today seem like a kind of routine and cliché, were only just being formed. Real spacesuits were only just being developed by scientists. If we take into account that Gene Roddenberry’s cult sci-fi television series Star Trek would not be released in the US until 1966, and George Lucas’ Star Wars appeared on the screens only in 1977, we can say that the costumes created by Kyprian were indeed a strong artistic move, they show that the artist was at the leading edge of his time.
This is the futurism of the 1960s! We can see that at a time when the world is engulfed in a real space race and scientific progress is deciding which state will lead in geopolitical confrontations, there is a tendency towards futuristic realism in theatrical costume. The goal is to predict, reveal the secret, and visualize a new cosmic reality for the general public. To portray the hero of our time — the astronaut. To visualize on stage the incredibility and power of scientific progress. But since in 1960, it was not possible to Google a picture of a real spacesuit, the artist had to use his logic, imagination, and intuition to the maximum.
Having had the opportunity to see up close and even hold in my hands the costume of the astronaut Yaroslav from the play Faust and Death, I can say that it certainly influenced the actor’s movement. This is the image of an astronaut-knight. Perhaps there is a lot of the working diver’s suit here, but the dominance of white and silver, and the combination of fabric texture and metal shine still leave no doubt. This space image is very compelling. Depicted in the performance photo Mechanthrope looks even more cosmic in its solid silver shine. These images are as much theatrical as they are realistic.
But now comes the most interesting part. What do futurism and science fiction mean to us and art today, in our time? For Anatol Petrytsky, as well as for Marilyn Monroe, and even more so for H. G. Wells, the year 2024 was an unattainably distant territory of fantasies, dreams, and predictions. But now we are already living in this fantastic twenty-first century. How has the theater costume changed over this time, and has it?
What are we fantasizing about today? Where are we trying to look when the whole of humanity has long ceased to follow the launches of space satellites, and children are no longer named after astronauts?
In my opinion, over this time society has slightly changed the focus of its fantasies, hopes and fears. We are not so much worried about contact with aliens as we are concerned about the development of our technologies, the risks of artificial intelligence, environmental disasters, and the possibility of humanity’s self-destruction. Technology is developing very dynamically today. Information is spreading as fast as ever before. Our reality is increasingly immersed in the virtual dimension. All this cannot but affect art. The theater. The theater costume.
In this context, an interesting example is the costumes that Hanna Ipatieva created for the Ukrainian-British project in 2021. Here, artificial intelligence is a component of the futuristic theme. Anna finds her way of visualizing this motif. The main expressive tool in her solution is the decor made using the application technique. It is both a texture and an abstract ornament, which together undoubtedly create associations with the characteristic pattern and structure of microcircuits and flat cable loops. The artist proposes to play a completely understandable game, building a logical chain: artificial intelligence — computer technology — electronics, microcircuits, and chips as a visual motif and material to create a recognizable and understandable image. In such a solution, the demonstration, the inside-out of all these ‘electronic insides’, transforms technology into aesthetics and defines it, and in this case, artificial intelligence, as the main factor in philosophical, ideological reflections, and staging issues.
This method, for example, is the basis for creating the concept, aesthetics, and laws of the entire universe of steampunk, which is based on steam technology.
Hanna Ipatieva’s costumes look relevant and modern, and I personally have a strong association with the costume of the astronaut Yaroslav from the play Faust and Death. For all their differences, these two artistic solutions share the principle of using technical components as a decorative element, playing with the textures of materials, and using silver metallic shine as a marker of futuristic, cosmic, or non-human nature. In some places, even the color combinations of red and metal rhyme. However, Ipatieva’s costumes, unlike those of Kyprian, are virtually devoid of any impact on the body movement, in this case, of the dancers. Her costumes are also more refined and lack the heaviness and materiality present in the costumes for Faust and Death, which I think is quite understandable, since Kyprian once referred to the rather crude, by today’s standards, space technology of the 1950s and 60s.
In turn, Ipatieva works with references to modern elegant technological solutions that are increasingly developing towards nano dimensions. Of course, this parallel between the artists and the costumes for the two productions is a subjective judgment and cannot be taken as a record of imitation or any other conscious connection. However, it demonstrates that even a distance of 60 years, focusing on different problems, managing different ideological tasks, and working in completely different conditions does not necessarily change some basic principles and methods in the artist’s work, the process of searching for and creating an artistic image.
In my practice, I had the experience of working on the futuristic play Android. The Number on Your Back. This performance was created in 2019, and a play was written by Halyna Lystvak specifically for this project. I will not dwell on the rather ambiguous plot but rather focus on the costume of one of the two main characters. Android Mur is an android girl designed to be a personal assistant. At the end of the play, the spectator learns that she is a real human, and the guy who ordered her by mail is a real android robot, although he does not know it.
So, my task as an artist was to find this image of a modern android woman. What should she look like if technology reaches such perfection that it is impossible to distinguish her from a living person? But at the same time, the audience must be sure that they are seeing a real android throughout the performance until the finale.
I thought that if I worked for an android company and was asked to design a new model of a girl assistant, I would definitely not want to make her visually aggressive or overly technological. I would try my best to hide these qualities and create the illusion of humanity. I would like such an android girl to shine with gentleness, comfort, and sensuality. After all, she could be used as a friend who would accompany children to school, as a tutor, personal driver, foreign language teacher, walking companion, or even a lover. This multifunctionality and maximum attractiveness, which should decorate and fill the life and home of a single person with warmth, had to be embodied in a very clear image. That’s how the idea to combine an attractive girl with a pet came about. Who doesn’t love cats? What better way to make an apartment a real home than with a cat? This gave rise to many solutions. For example, in terms of fabric selection. Her costume is mostly velvet. It is a soft and heavy fabric of deep black color, perfectly matched to the desired emotional and associative content. I did not want to use any plastics, metal, or other technological, ‘cold’ materials at all. On the contrary, I used hand embroidery to decorate the costume. It was complemented by embossed stitching, which, in addition to the decorative effect, gave the fabric and clothes strength and a resemblance to armor. That is why Android Mur is wearing a skirt and the top of her costume is laced up. Her entire body is covered, her legs are in leggings decorated with embossed stitching, her hands are gloved, and her headdress covers her hair and neck like a helmet. Only the face remains exposed, but it is completely covered with make-up. This is a kind of doll effect.
I consciously combined Ukrainian and European motifs with Japanese ones. Today, Japanese influence in popular culture, art, and technology is very strong. Finally, I thought that if someone were to commission a design for a new model of the perfect android, it would most likely be a Japanese company. This is how a lot of different tasks, thoughts, developments, and fantasies are interwoven in one theater costume.
The costume of Android Mur is one of my favorite creations of my own. From the very beginning, I considered it both in the context of the performance and as a self-sufficient work. It was originally designed for the actress Larisa Sheloumova, who played the role for five years, and eventually, the role was invented for her. At the same time, I see this costume as an exhibition object in a gallery or other contemporary interior.
In this work, I did not rely on the effect of demonstrating incredible technologies, I did not want to fall into the already proven, one hundred percent working canon of the android robot image that we often see in films. On the contrary, I tried to find an image that would touch the senses and captivate with its strangeness and accuracy at the same time.
Android Mur is not Anatol Petrytskyi’s funny Martian at all; he is as far from Mechantrope or Yaroslav Kyprian’s Astronaut as he is from Hanna Ipatieva’s androids.
In conclusion, I would say that theatrical costume equally reflects both the general features and trends of its era and the unique personality of its creator. The emergence of a living, artistic image is a result of a true symbiosis between the costume and the actor, performer, or dancer. It is this image that the spectator sees in front of them. Being a part of a performance or a play, a theatrical costume can also be considered a piece of fine art in its own right, embodied in a graphic sketch or presented as an art object in a gallery on a mannequin or a live model at a show.
All this fascinates and captivates me as an artist, researcher, and spectator.
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