16 Facts About Virlana Tkacz

Virlana Tkacz was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in theatre directing.

Virlana Tkacz first recorded the Hutsul Koliada in Kryvorivnia in 2003.

Virlana Tkacz translated a selection of these songs with Wanda Phipps to use in the Yara shows.

In 2005 Virlana Tkacz worked on a translation of Janyl Myrza, a 17th-century Kyrgyz epic about a woman warrior.

In 2008 Virlana Tkacz created Er Toshtuk based on one of the oldest Kyrgyz epics about a magical and darkly humorous journey into the underworld.

From 1996 to 2004 Virlana Tkacz worked with indigenous Buryat artists from Siberia.

Virlana Tkacz worked with them on Blue Lights in the Basement, the memorial to Marvin Gaye at the BAM Opera House.

Virlana Tkacz worked with David Rousseve on Mana Goes to the Moon, and directed plays for the Native American Ensemble, The Women's Project and in Coney Island.

Virlana Tkacz was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Theatre Institutes in Kyiv in 2002 and in Bishkek in 2008, as well as at the Kurbas Theatre Center in Kyiv.

Virlana Tkacz has conducted theatre workshops for Harvard Summer Institute for eleven years and has lectured at Yale School of Drama and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

Since 1989 Virlana Tkacz has worked with African-American poet Wanda Phipps on translations of Ukrainian poetry.

In 2005 Virlana Tkacz was awarded the NEA Poetry Translation Fellowship for work on the contemporary poetry of Serhiy Zhadan.

In 2023 Yale University Press published a second volume of Virlana Tkacz and Phipps's translations of Serhiy Zhadan's poetry How Fire Descends, which was a finalist for the 2024 PEN America Poetry in Translation Award.

Virlana Tkacz has published scholarly articles on the works of Ukrainian avant-garde theater director Les Kurbas in Theatre History Studies, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Canadian Slavonic Papers, and Canadian-American Slavic Studies and has written about her own work in American Theatre.

In 2017 and 2018 together with Tetiana Rudenko and Waldemart Klyuzko, Virlana Tkacz co-curated a series of museum exhibitions on the work of theatre director Les Kurbas.

In 2023 Yara Arts Group, which Virlana Tkacz heads, received the 2023 Village Preservation Award.