Nova Stsena

Nova Stsena (Нова Сцена; New Stage). A musical-drama theater in Transcarpathia, organized in 1934 in Khust by the brothers Yurii Sherehii and Yevhen Sherehii, the first theater there led by local artists. At first a drama circle, from 1936 it was affiliated with the Prosvita society in Khust, and later with the Prosvita society in Uzhhorod. Mobilization in March 1938 interrupted its activities, and in November of that year it was reconstituted as the State Ukrainian Theater Nova Stsena, under which name it continued its work until March 1939. The artistic directors of the theater were Yu. Sherehii, M. Arkas, Jr, and Vladimir Libovicki (also the choreographer), and the stage designer was M. Ruda-Tushytska. The repertoire of Nova Stsena consisted primarily of Yu. Sherehii’s dramas (pseudonym: Yurii Hrom), based on the ethnographical material of Transcarpathia. The theater also staged M. Arkas Jr’s operetta Moon and Star (libretto by Mykola Chyrsky), Oleksander Oles’s drama On the Banks of the Dnipro (music by Ye. Sherehii), Semen Hulak-Artemovsky’s opera Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube, and Mykhailo Starytsky’s populist-ethnographical plays Marusia Bohuslavka and Oi, ne khody, Hrytsiu ... (Don't Go to Parties, Hryts ...).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]