“Kyiv and Haarlem think differently about America”
Stars, the play by the Haarlem World Children’s Theater is about America: murder, knife fights, and blackmail. “Hello America” is the title of the show of the Kyiv children’s theater “Planeta” and it is about the same America: cheerfully dancing Indians, cowboys, and Disney characters.
Two views on America, diametrically opposed.
While the Haarlem children have incorporated the harsh American society into a realistic play, the children from Kyiv dream away in a show about an America where many different peoples and races, all with their own culture, live in peace with each other.
It was the first time that the children of both theater groups could view each other’s performances in their entirety. The mutual admiration was great, despite the language problem that could hardly be overcome.
The children from Kyiv have been staying at home with their Haarlem colleagues for over a week, so they are starting to get to know each other. Last Sunday (24 May 1992) they played together fragments from the performances during the World Children’s Festival in theater de Meervaart in Amsterdam.
“When we knew that the visit of “Planeta” would certainly take place, there was not a single theater in Haarlem that could promise us space in that short term. The Stadscafe has helped us enormously by offering us this room”. This said Inge Nypels, coordinator of the World Children’s Theater.(It is now called De Wereld Children’s Theater -ed.)
It was the first time for all Ukrainians in the West, the wall had just fallen, in 1992 Russia still had a firm finger in the pie, this started to change in 1994.
The visitors were amazed, shops full of beautiful things, Televisions, and Supermarkets were filled. That not everyone could buy what was in every store was something they found strange, in their eyes everyone here was very rich.
They were accompanied by a couple, who, on behalf of the government and so-called aid organizations, took a frantic attitude and were defensive against all those Western freedoms.
On the way there, two children were not allowed on the trip, the parents of 1 of the supervisors had to go with them to buy a car in Germany and drive back to Kyiv. Partly paid for by the budget that was intended for the children’s trip.
The last traces of years of Russian rule in the upcoming new reality in Ukraine. (….)
To save more money, the entire theater group had to spend the night in a parking lot, without facilities and breakfast, around the Berlin highway, both on the way there and back, as we learned later. We were also not allowed to use their bus to go to Amsterdam for the festival, or to visit the beach. Amsterdam / Zandvoort are just around the corner…
The supervisors of the WKT Haarlem called all the parents and friends of our group in no time. Suddenly there were twenty cars in front of the door. The female supervisors could hardly stop me from murder, the Planeta group also had to return home…
1992: There is a beautiful new dawn, 1990 also a festival in Anger / France, with Eastern European countries, including Ukraine.
Romanian and Hungarian kids, all of whom knew MTV and the fist gesture for Hardrock. I have seen more than 80 children dancing the “Lambada” together. We, the lucky chaperones, enjoyed each other and the atmosphere.
Leaving indelible impressions on everyone, that’s why my heart is crying now.
If only there was a vaccine against hate and would make love go around as fast as Omnikron.
Better for everyone…
Luc van de Steeg /LucFineArt /Url Duke NL
23-02-2022 Amsterdam/Weesp NL