“Kyiv of the Sixties”: Maly Theatre announces focus theme and dates of the ‘Cult of Kyiv’ festival

From 26 to 29 June, Kyiv’s Maly Theatre (33 Olesia Honchara St.) will host the second edition of the Cult of Kyiv chamber festival of local art dedicated to the capital, its culture and iconic figures.

This year’s focus is on the Kyiv of the Sixties. The team of the Maly Theatre addresses the generation that, through literature, cinema, music, visual art and daily resistance, created an image of the city that is still relevant today. The performance schedule is published on the theatre’s website.

The organisers see their work not as a museum piece, but as a living part of urban life, and they want to convey this view to visitors. This idea is reflected in the visual design of the festival: the team chose the approach of deconstructing the paintings of the Sixties, as if ‘decomposing’ familiar images into details to look at them in a new way.

In 2024, the festival was held for the first time and was about everything Kyiv and its surroundings. The programme included a ‘one-painting exhibition’ in collaboration with The Naked Room gallery, lectures on Kyiv’s art scene, and a concert by Max Ptashnyk.

The cult of Kyiv and the festival programme

This year’s festival programme is expanding: guests will be able to attend lectures, an exhibition of visual art, readings of prose and poetry by the Sixties, musical performances, tours of Kyiv and, of course, theatre performances. In addition, there will be a fair of local brands and a charity auction.

This time, the organisers decided to focus on the details, so the lectures and events within the festival will not be dedicated to all art in general, but to individual works, places or manifestations of Sixties culture.

‘We are deliberately narrowing our focus to reach the big through a careful look at the small. We believe that the way to understand the era is through individual stories, texts, and images. Through the microcosm to the macrocosm. Because everything starts small,’ explains the artistic director of the Maly Theatre, Dmytro Veselsky.

The educational programme of the festival is one of its key parts. Everyone will be able to recite a poem about Kyiv, dive into a music album from the 60s, watch fragments of Ukrainian poetry films or visit a chamber exhibition.

The educational programme of the festival is one of its key parts. Everyone will have the opportunity to read a poem about Kyiv, listen to a music album from the 60s, watch fragments of Ukrainian poetry films or visit a chamber exhibition.

‘This year’s festival is about the search for urban identity through the prism of the creative work of an entire generation of Ukrainian intellectuals. We will try to create a complex multi-referential context that will ensure a strong connection between the city and its residents. The educational programme of the festival is based on the goal of engaging the visitors of the Kyiv Cult to learn about their city and to become self-aware in it, through the introduction of new, local and intimate things,’ says Larysa Sheloumova, curator of the educational programme.

The programme of events and a map of locations will be announced by the Maly Theatre on 1 June.

As a reminder, the Maly Theatre premiered The Voyage of the Discovery of Dr Leonardo based on the novel by Mike Johansen.