{"id":12506,"date":"2019-11-15T19:39:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T16:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/million.in.ua\/?p=12506"},"modified":"2021-05-15T17:42:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T14:42:56","slug":"dmitro-polishhuk-i-kseniya-goncharova-kozhen-sam-maye-viznachiti-chim-i-dlya-chogo-vin-zhive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/million.in.ua\/en\/personality\/dmitro-polishhuk-i-kseniya-goncharova-kozhen-sam-maye-viznachiti-chim-i-dlya-chogo-vin-zhive\/","title":{"rendered":"Dmytro Polishchuk and Ksenia Honcharova: It\u2019s Up to Everyone to Decide, What and Why to Live For"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dmytro and Ksenia, the organizers of the annual JoyFest International Theater Festival, which has been gathering together Ukrainian and the world\u2019s theaters for the eighth time, have opened their heart from a much unexpected side during the interview. It would seem that their tandem is a combination of a pragmatic masculine and a romantic feminine approach. And the roles in their team are divided exactly this way. But the world of theater captivated both of them so much that one may put a question to oneself: who of them is more found of theater? And Dmytro, contrary to any logic, has a good chance to get a win in this dispute against his wife, who has been close to the theater since school. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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When I was preparing for the interview, I analyzed lots of information on the web and compared it with the impressions of my personal communication, and I came to the conclusion that Ksenia is the pearl of the active woman of the 21st<\/sup> century: she works hard, travels a lot, looks great (which is also a tough work). How does this activity affect your marriage and how to bring two active people into harmony in their relationship? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>To reach harmony in the family, I listen to my wife\u00a0 and\u00a0 agree with everything she says. She, as a real woman, does the following \u2013 once I agreed, she begins to offer lots of any possible options. Then we choose the best one together. In general, whatever Ksenia does - creativity or business, it\u2019s \u00a0very interesting for me to observe \u00a0the course of events and afterwards enjoy their results.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>To begin with, business is one story and a festival is another. The theater festival we organize with Dmytro is not a business, it's a social project. Such cultural events cannot make a profit (in Ukraine, for sure). It\u2019s only pleasure. We do everything we can to develop Ukrainian culture.<\/p>\n

And as concerns the effect of my activity on our relationship, well, I can say that I always try to involve my husband and do a lot together with him. It think that when we met, he couldn't have imagined that he would be involved in organizing an international festival, with only about 200 participants each year, not to mention the number of spectators. After all, there are always packed houses during our festivals. For Dmytro, festival life was something very distant.<\/p>\n

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How did you manage to persuade him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>She did not persuade me. To begin with, I came to the family where my mother-in-law has been running her own Maskam Rad theater for many years. Back then, when we met, it was still an amateur theater (now it is a full-fledged professional repertory theater) where my father-in-law and my future wife played sometimes. So, the first acquaintance with the family was a performance actually. Thus, I happened to get behind the scenes of the theatrical world. And then the theater troupe went to a festival in Romania. Unfortunately, I could not go with them that time.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>Yes, we went to a theater festival and played there \u201cNameless star\u201d by Mihail Sebastian a famous Romanian playwright... In European countries, festival life is very active. There is a theater, dance or music festival of international significance at least twice or thrice a year in each small town. There are many different ones. And in big cities such festivals are held not several times a year, as in Kyiv, but dozens of times.<\/p>\n

Thus, in Lugoj, the Romanian city, we had a good time with the organizers of the theater festival - they are very nice and open people. They asked us if they could come to Ukraine for a similar event. The question caught us by surprise, and \u00a0reflexively we invited them \u00a0to our festival, although at that time there was no any festival even in the project.<\/p>\n

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Do I get it right, that Ksenia promised to arrange a festival and pin you, Dmytro, down to facts? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>No, It\u2019s not typical of our family to pin someone down to facts. Ksenia hand an idea and I just supported it. It was completely unclear: neither where to start nor how much it would cost. The main mission was to create a project for people: for theaters, for the audience, for all those who were interested in art in general. We wanted to create a socio-cultural project. So from the outset, we were thinking of free admission. We organized the first JoyFest at our own expense. We hoped that the city or state would respond to the second or third festival and would help us somehow by providing a playground or inviting foreign guests. But, it was not the case, I should say.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>It is sad enough that even at the level of cultural houses that we tried to attract and rent their scenes, we constantly faced many problems. They do not want to let anyone in; they do not want to work out of plan, overtime. And the public readiness for such projects is of concern.<\/p>\n

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Regarding the public readiness, as I understood, you didn\u2019t manage to reach any agreement with the Ministry of Culture? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>It\u2019s rather sensitive issue. We are often asked: who is financing you? I always say that when we organized the festival, we didn't ask anyone for permission, we created it ourselves. Therefore, we do not have the right to come to someone and demand funding. All we can do is pay attention and offer cooperation. And finally, we have our own format. We will not modify it or adjust it for anyone, because it is a stable format of the international festival of the European model.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>The JoyFest format is not typical of Ukraine. We have been doing this for the seventh year. We tried our best to adapt the format to our realities, to the requests of Ukrainian theaters and spectators. And, of course, every year we change and correct something, we try to do our job better. In recent years, our festival has grown up. Now it lasts four days. Eight to ten performances and two to three master classes on acting and theater are on the day. There are up to 500 spectators at each performance and the house is packed even on weekdays.<\/p>\n

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Tell us about your international cooperation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>The point is that it was the international theater community, who noticed us first. Initially, they came to us as participants. Already at the first JoyFest, in addition to Ukrainian theaters, we hosted Romania, Italy and Georgia. We have started to actively cooperate with AITA\/IATA, the International Association of Amateur Theaters. Next, theater experts from Europe joined our jury. There were jury members from the Netherlands, Sweden, Estonia and Hungary. Aled Rhys Jones, the Vice President of AITA\/IATA British Center for the International Theater Exchange, a member of the jury of ten international festivals around the world came to us for the second time this year.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>During the seven-year history of the festival, theaters from different corners of Ukraine, Armenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Egypt, Romania, Paraguay, Iran, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Poland showed their work at the JoyFest site in Kyiv. Some countries were represented twice by different theater ensembles.<\/p>\n

This year the JoyFest International Theater Festival and a number of festivals sponsored by our NGO were awarded by the EFFE Label 2019-2020 European Association of Festivals. This is a kind of \u201cStar of Quality\u201d for festivals.<\/p>\n

The fact is that we have more understanding with the international community than with our so-called cultural elite. It is not about the audience (we are fine with them), but about the Ukrainian cultural community. Not everyone understands - what, how and what we do. Not everyone likes it. But this does not scare us, but rather inspires us to move on.<\/p>\n

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Interesting, how did you find your spectator? Because, it seems to me that theaters are not of great demand today\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>You know, in our country there is a certain \u201chunger\u201d in the theater and cultural sphere. Of course, there are many repertory theaters in Ukraine and Kyiv in particular. Some are of very high quality, some are not very good. Almost everyone finds their audience. But the festival is something another. It's a dive into the subject. It's not just two hours spent in the hall. Here you can see the process of preparation for the performance, get acquainted with the actors afterwards, see the next performances, compare, take part in a master class, be inspired, and after all, decide whether to engage in acting and take the stage or not. It is a useful leisure that encourages the development, the search for something new in oneself.<\/p>\n

In addition, we have a European standard i.e. 90 minutes almost non-stop multifaceted performances. The main question is not how to gather people, but how to inform them. People are happy to come for all four days and participate in all the festival events. We have spectators who have been bringing their families to all our festival for years. Even at the first JoyFest (with minimal advertising), the hall, which seats two hundred people, hosted much bigger number of spectators.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>It wasn't even advertising. I used to work as a journalist and PR writer, so I had some experience in informing people. It is very important that both print media and online publications and radio waves understand that we do not make money at the festival - it is a charity, so they do not take money from us for placing materials on their resources.<\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>I would like to add that the first festival showed that we have a wide audience, which is interested in our events. If it did not happen, we would have stopped doing it right away. Our target audience is doctors, teachers, accountants, office workers, retirees, students and creative intelligentsia. Every year we see more and more interested people. The festival venue now holds up to 500 spectators. During four days of the festival, we gather up to five thousand spectators and theater lovers. Our traditional playground and partner, the Khreshchatyk Hotel, physically can no longer fit more than this number of viewers.<\/p>\n

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How do you organize your work, what are your responsibilities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>Our team is v<\/strong>ery small. The whole festival is organized by five to six people. This is our stable JoyFest Organizing Committee. The festival is big, and there are lots of volunteers. We accept collectives not by status, but solely for video performances, which they add to the application. All international festivals work on this principle. Nobody cares about your name. All that matters is the quality of the production, the relevance of the chosen theme and the desire to be a part of the festival for all four days. We process the applications together and vote for the next festival participants.<\/p>\n

Dmytro deals with global issues. He deals with the venue, advertising in Kyiv subway and oversees financial issues. And I'm more in administration. I and Alina Sakun, my colleague, gather the festival piece by piece. About six months before the launch, we announce the acceptance of applications; send mails to theaters around the world. Initially, it's a lot of correspondence.<\/p>\n

Closer to the event, we engage partners and friends. We deal with models, diploma, hold talks with participants and jury, draw up a program, create prizes, find gifts, arrange transfers, settlements, closures, etc.\u2026 All those involved in this process help us to create this great event. We appreciate everyone's help greatly.<\/p>\n

Victor Kozhevnikov, our development director and my dad greats and welcomes the foreigners. Inna Honcharova, my mother, organizes the jury\u2019s work. During the event the actors of Maskam Rad Theater, volunteers, who are not indifferent to the theater, join the process. Mitia Matusov, who was just my parents' upstairs neighbor, has been the JoyFest's technical director for many years. And now he is a family member, friend and the theater actor.<\/p>\n

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Other words saying, are you the family team?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>Family-neighborly one. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever regret of getting into this game?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>Yes, I have sometimes. I'm a pretty emotional person, so when something goes wrong, I'm really upset.<\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>No! Although it is difficult, it takes a lot of time and it's not always a grateful affair. Most people who come, as well as those who attend, are convinced that the festival is funded and put some requirements for accommodation, food or other things. Very few people do realize that we are not receiving any money and that our team is very small. Foreigners do not believe when they see that a limited number of people make the festival. They organize such events only with full funding from the state or funds and with a team of at least 20-30 people.<\/p>\n

Spectators go to the subway, see our advertising in each of the 705 wagons, come to the Grand Hall of the Khreshchatyk hotel and they have the impression that there is a lot of money and a great team behind all this. We don't tell anyone the details, and frankly speaking, few people ask.<\/p>\n

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Well, why don\u2019t you regret? Are you really found of theater, as Stanislavskyi, indeed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dmytro: <\/strong>Well, the point here is: first, it's addictive and second, there is a complex dilemma and a question that, unfortunately, people rarely ask themselves: what and why do you live for? If you think about it, you do realize that there is always a certain part of the whole that can be given away. You can just give it away, it can be promoted, there are a bunch of charities, where you can give money, and I thank them for that. And we\u2019ve managed to find a way of such charity, which we\u2019ve organized by ourselves.<\/p>\n

This is a family budget, it should be understood that if we organize a festival, we are not literally buying something or going somewhere. We count on ourselves. I came from business and I have the right environment. So, when it all started, my partners asked me: Why do you need this? And only when they realized that this was purely charitable project, they did help. And often these are people, who are not willing to spend much; on the contrary they always tried to make money. Often they even did not think about such charity. And now they join and do it quite consciously.<\/p>\n

Ksenia: <\/strong>We chose this particular area of charity because we have very little importance for culture. The theater touches upon many strings of the human soul, thereby giving the opportunity to develop in different directions. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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