Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre
Ukraine's leading drama company, playing nightly in an 1898 house on Ivan Franko Square.
The company was founded in Vinnytsia in 1920 by Hnat Yura and named after the writer Ivan Franko. It moved to Kyiv in 1926, taking over the former Solovtsov Theatre, a Viennese-styled house of 1898 by Georg Schleifer and Edward Bradtman on the square that now carries Franko's name. Badly damaged in the Second World War and reconstructed afterwards, the building keeps its curved corner facade, sculpted pediment and horseshoe auditorium, with a handprint memorial to the actor Bohdan Stupka beside the entrance.
The Franko is generally regarded as Ukraine's national drama stage, and its repertoire mixes Ukrainian classics and new writing with Shakespeare, Brecht, Camus and Remarque. Since February 2022 it has continued playing through alerts and power cuts, added work responding directly to the invasion, toured widely in Europe and given free seats to serving soldiers. Recent seasons have included international co-productions, among them a Polish-Ukrainian staging drawing on Homer, Aeschylus and Lesya Ukrainka.
Highlights
- 1898 Solovtsov Theatre building by Schleifer and Bradtman, rebuilt after 1945
- Home of the Franko company, founded in 1920 by Hnat Yura
- Published air-raid rules; shelter at Khreshchatyk metro station
- Bohdan Stupka handprint memorial beside the main entrance
