SLAP!
David Burliuk is slapped by a Scythian Ice Princess.
The obvious result: Futurism in Siberia, Japan and New York.
created by Yara Arts Group
with Bob Holman, Susan Hwang and Julian Kytasty
director: Virlana Tkacz
lights: Watoku Ueno
projection design: Darien Fiorino
costume design: Keiko Obremski
graphics: Waldemart Klyuzko
stage manager: Anastasia Panchenko
Slap!
Sept 19-22, 2024 - Thur-Sat 7PM, Sun 3PM
East Village Basement, East 9th St, New York
and
SLAP! Sept 26, 2024 Thur at 7PM
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation
526 La Guardia Place, New York
Photos on link above and on this page by Pavlo Terekhov
SLAP! Songs album release
Oct 15, 2024 at Bowery Poetry Club
program | photos
Photos by Steven Pisano
Yara Arts Group, from La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, presents Slap created and performed by Bob Holman, Susan Hwang and Julian Kytasty, and directed by Virlana Tkacz. Slap is an hour-long theatre musical-cabaret, interrogating the totally true but outrageous life and journey of David Burliuk, the father Futurism. In Slap David Burliuk is performed by Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and the poet most often connected with the oral tradition, spoken word, hip hop and poetry slams. Singer-songwriter Susan Hwang portrays the accordion-playing the Scythian Ice Princess, while Julian Kytasty, traditional epic singer and bandura player, sings their story. The three, together with director Virlana Tkacz, created Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine, which NY Theatre Wire called “an extremely delightful musical-experimental work of theater gives its history lessons a much-needed makeover with fun,liveliness, and an accordion…”
Slap! was developed and presented at La MaMa, the Bowery Poetry Club and at the Ukrainian Museum in New York. program| more photos
PRESS IN NEW YORK
“Scythian Slap” is a comedy based on the life of painter and poet David Burliuk, the founder of Futurism. It is also a very profound show… The play is composed of poems and historical facts. The unusual structure draws on various times, generations, styles and genres. Hwang and Holman play with classical vaudeville techniques we know from American comedies, successfully weaving these into a Futurist canvas. The audience see a comedy and a futurist cabaret, an American vaudeville with Scythians, Ukrainian epic songs (dumy), original poems by Bob Holman and songs by Susan Hwang.
… Bob Holman, a famous and charismatic American poet steps forth proudly as both Burliuk and himself, existing, not simply on stage, but truly being both. Susan Hwang, the extravagant Viper Goddess with an accordion, is both a shaman and a coquette. She gives Burliuk a generous Scythian slap, which brings up for him deeper questions of being, pushing him to see the invisible, realize his own potential and experience himself constantly at the crossroads. The voice of this Scythian goddess often sounds as a duet with Mamai, portrayed by Julian Kytasty- one of the best Ukrainian bandura players. Like Burliuk, he experiments with music. The show ends on an upbeat with the “Radio Manifesto” Burliuk proclaimed in New York in 1926. What defined David Burliuk’s life, was his constant desire to slap the face of public taste, to see the ancient past in the future and to sharpen our perception to break through linear thinking.
The performers, director Virlana Tkacz, set designer Watoku Ueno, costume designer Keiko Obremski and projection designer Darien Fiorino arranged this feast of a show as a celebration of the 99th anniversary of David Burliuk’s arrival in New York.
by Oksana Lebedivna Svoboda newspaper (Parsippany, NJ) October 21, 2022
Scythian Slap is an original theatre piece created by Yara Arts Group, a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York. It was made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as the Self-Reliance Foundation and the numerous friends of Yara Arts Group.
Bob Holman,
Susan Hwang,
Julian Kytasty
& Virlana Tkacz
taking a bow.
