“Your Library of Balance” was the motto of this year’s events organized by the Scientific and Technical Library of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute to celebrate All-Ukrainian Library Day on September 30. More than 1,000 people took part in the festivities.
The seven-hour program featured activities at numerous locations, including weaving guardian angels, painting in the ebru technique—an ancient Eastern art of creating colorful patterns on water, with paints floating on the surface rather than sinking—and making scented sachets, small decorative items filled with fragrant materials. Visitors to the library’s book stacks also had the opportunity to join a book rave. A first for the library, this initiative was a joint project by the Scientific and Technical Library and the Hinaus cultural space. Its goal was to create a creative environment for readers and support their emotional well-being. The program featured people reading books on their own, together, and aloud in different rooms, accompanied by Ukrainian music producers, writers, directors, a stand-up comedian, and founders of creative communities. Continuous musical accompaniment throughout the event added to the experience, helping the organizers create a welcoming and festive atmosphere in the library.
Finding the room in the shelter of the Scientific and Technical Library where Lesia Ostrovska, a well-known Ukrainian theatre and film actress, was leading a workshop on the actor’s approach to literary texts was easy. The session focused on analyzing short dialogues between characters, much as actors do during the first read-through of a play in the theatre.
From the very beginning, as the participants explored texts by Homer and later by Alexandre Dumas père, Lesia sought to draw their attention away from the problems of everyday life. She invited several amateur theatre enthusiasts, newly assigned their roles, to read short passages thoughtfully from two literary works: Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey and Alexandre Dumas’s adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo.
The workshop leader demonstrated a remarkable ability to sense the dramatic nature of the characters she discussed, interspersing her insightful commentary with opportunities for participants to share their own interpretations. But how should a literary text be read to bring it to life? Thanks to the director’s creative guidance, the logic behind each character’s actions gradually became clear.
As the participants discussed short excerpts from Homer’s text with Lesia Ostrovska, the complex nature of the relationship between Odysseus, the legendary king of the island of Ithaca, and his wife, Penelope, gradually became clearer. (As a reminder, Odysseus spent ten years fighting beneath the walls of Troy and another ten years making his way home.) At the beginning of their conversation, the characters speak in a sorrowful tone. By the end of their first meeting after twenty years apart, their dialogue has become warm and friendly. Thanks to the workshop leader’s explanations, the amateur actors were able to convey the historical and cultural context of Homer’s era more vividly, making the exchange more engaging and expressive. This is what thoughtful actor-led literary analysis is all about. In a similar way, under Lesia’s guidance, the participants worked on a short climactic dialogue between Mercédès Herrera and Edmond Dantès, who had become the Count of Monte Cristo. Although the former fiancés were separated forever by the treacherous schemes of the antagonists Fernand and Prosecutor Villefort, they remained friends. However, given the limited space available in a newspaper article, we will not retell the plot of this adventure novel, especially since it is one of Alexandre Dumas’s best-known works.
At the end of the meeting, Lesia Ostrovska invited the workshop participants to reread the works featured in the session. Why? To restore their inner balance through reading.