"The ultimate goal of human life is spiritual perfection. As long as it is not taking place, we can say that humankind has lost the game."

Serhy Danchenko, "Conversations on Theater"

Ukrainian theater has lost one of its best-known personalities with the passing of Serhy Danchenko, professor, actor and artistic director of Kyiv's Ivan Franko Theater.

Danchenko died on Aug. 20 at the age of 64. In his memory, the Ivan Franko Theater will stage a week- long retrospective of his work, Oct. 5-12.

Artistic director at Ivan Franko for more than 20 years, Danchenko had a tremendous influence on theater both at home and across the former East­ern Bloc. He discovered and nurtured what would become the cream of modern-day Ukrainian theater -names like Bohdan Stupka, Anatoly Khostikoyev and Andry Zholdak, to name just a few.

Danchenko had theater in his blood. His grandfather was a theater director and his parents were actors. Danchenko followed in their foot-steps, entering the theater in western Ukraine and rising to the position of theater director himself at the Zankovetska Theater in Lviv in 1965. It was an exciting time. The 1950s witnessed the return to Lviv of a wave of Ukrainian intellectuals exiled to Siberia by the Soviet authorities. Danchenko was influ­enced by Lviv's cosmopolitan atmos­phere and became a member of a dissident group now known as the "'60s Generation."

The Zankovetska Theater became a cultural center, where actors inter­acted with composers, artists and playwrights. Through the Zankovet­ska, Danchenko helped preserve the integrity of Ukrainian theater, which, like most aspects of Ukrainian cul­ture, had been largely forced under­ground by the Soviets. His first plays became landmarks of Ukrainian cul­ture. His "Stone Master" reflected on freedom, his "Richard III" on the psychology of totalitarianism.

n 1978, Danchenko became artis­tic director of the Ivan Franko The­ater. In the face of opposition from the establishment, he made vast inroads on making all of Ukrainian theater more European. He raised artistic standards and refused to shy away from philosophical themes like the meaning of human existence.

"For me, the goal of life is to bring spiritual dimension to people's lives, and to turn them on the way to per­fection," Danchenko once said. He remained loyal to that creed. In his interpretation of Shakespeare's "King Lear," the play becomes a metaphor for time and the destiny of man, reflecting Danchenko's own conviction that the future of human­ity was in doubt. Only in madness, he says, can man see the truth - as is the case when the king and his jester swap roles.

Danchenko's choice of authors and plays, however, was never influenced by short-lived trends. He preferred classics to modern authors, never worrying about national borders and creating a theater that was universal rather than provincial. He gave the more than two dozen plays he pro­duced - including Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," Lesya Ukrainka's "Stone Master," Jean Anouilh's "Thieves' Ball" and Ivan Kotlyarevsky's "The Aeneid" - an added dimension that made them classics of Ukrainian the­ater.

Danchenko is succeeded at the Ivan Franko Theater by Stupka, until recently Ukraine's culture minister and widely considered Ukraine's best actor. Stupka started out as a student of Danchenko, 34 years ago in Lviv, and worked closely with Danchenko until his dying days.

Kicking off Ivan Franko's new sea­son at an Oct. 2 press conference, Stupka noted that Danchenko's plays were not always appreciated by crit­ics. But, he said, "We will very soon feel what Danchenko's death means for Ukrainian theater - not only actors and his theatre, but also the public."

In Danchenko's memory, Stupka will see through Danchenko's planned production of Ibsen's "Pere Gynt." He also plans on opening a small experi­mental theater - Danchenko's dream for many years - by the end of the year adjacent to the Ivan Franko The­ater. Naturally, it will be named after Serhy Danchenko.