Oksana Mysina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oksana Mysina in 2012

Oksana Anatolyevna Mysina (Russian: Окса́на Анато́льевна Мы́сина) (born 15 March 1961, Yenakiieve, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, USSR) is an actor, director and musician. She has been described by The New York Times theatre critic Margo Jefferson as one of Russia's greatest actors.[1] She is the founder, lead singer, violinist, and lyricist for the rock band Oxy Rocks.

Oksana Mysina was born and lived in the Donbas region of Ukraine for the first eight years of her life. Her father Anatoly Vladimirovich Mysin, later to be a mining engineer, and her mother Lidia Grigoryevna Mysina (Bratus), subsequently a seismologist, grew up and were married in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro).[2] Oksana credits both parents with giving her the necessary actor's sensibilities: "My irrepressible temperament is from my mother. My father... was a very emotional person."[3] Oksana's sister Marina Yakut (Mysina), three years her elder, was a young talent on the violin and a teacher told the girls' parents that Marina needed to study in Moscow. As Mysina told the audience during a performance in Yekaterinburg in April 2019, the teacher "told my parents: 'Immediately! Immediately to Moscow! I've never had such a talent.' And they took me along too."[4] The family moved to Moscow in 1969 where Oksana and Marina both studied violin and viola at the Gnesin School of Music. "I was admitted to Gnesinka in the hopes that I would be Marina No. 2," Oksana said in 2004.[5] But Oksana had dreamed of acting since childhood, and, while still studying at the Gnesin School, she joined a well-known youth theater: "While still studying [violin], I worked with Vyacheslav Spesivtsev at the then-super popular Krasnaya Presnya Youth Theater."[6] She subsequently studied professionally at the Shchepkin Institute of the Maly Theater under the famed Mikhail Tsaryov, who had acted for Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1930s.[7] She joined her first professional company, the Spartacus Square Theater-studio in 1986.

Oksana married American writer and translator John Freedman in 1989. They lived in Moscow until November 2018 when they relocated to Greece.

Stage

Mysina was a member of the Spartacus Square Theater-studio (known as Theater Moderne since 1995) from 1986 to 1994. During this tenure she achieved her first international exposure, performing the title role in Lyudmila Razumovskaya's play Dear Yelena Sergeevna on tours to the BITEF festival in Serbia in 1989, and Chicago[8] and Los Angeles[9] in 1990. She began working independently at various Moscow theaters, starting at the Novy Drama Theater, where she performed from 1993 to 2000,[10] and the Theater of Young Spectators (MTYuZ), where she performed from 1994 to 2020.[11]

Mysina's starring role at MTYuZ as Katerina Ivanovna in Kama Ginkas's 1994 Moscow production of his son Daniil Gink's play K. I. from Crime, a 90-minute monologue adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment was acclaimed as the best production of the Moscow season.[12] "Critics widely agreed [that she] rose to the creative heights demanded by Dostoevsky."[13] In tours around the world, she took the role to the Grotowski Center in Wroclaw, Poland, in 1995,[14] the Avignon Festival, France, in 1997,[15] the Belgrade International Theater Festival (BITEF) in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 2000,[16] the Midwinter Night's Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, 2000,[17] the Mikhail Tumanishvili International Arts Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2002,[18] Bard SummerScape in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in 2003[19] the Foundry Theater on Off-Broadway in New York City in 2005,[20] on a three-city tour of Brazil in 2006,[21] and elsewhere.

Aside from her work with Ginkas, Mysina has acted for many top theater directors, including Boris Lvov-Anokhin (Novy Drama Theater, 1993–2001), Vladimir Mirzoyev (Stanislavsky Drama Theater, 1997[22]), Roman Kozak (Moscow Art Theater[23] and Pushkin Drama Theater,[24] 1997–2000), Oleg Menshikov (814 Theater Association, 2000–01),[25] Dmitry Krymov[26] (School of Dramatic Art, 2010–2018), as well as in the professional debut of Eugenia Berkovich (Kirill Serebrennikov's Seventh Studio at Winzavod, 2011).[27] She was the first Russian-language performer of the Narrator in the Russian premiere of Valère Novarina's contemporary avant-garde classic The Imaginary Operetta at the School of Dramatic Art (2010). She founded her own theater, the Oksana Mysina Theatrical Brotherhood (2001-2010),[28] directing and acting in two plays by Viktor Korkiya, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the Island of Taganrog, and Ariston, based on the myth of Oedipus. She was the first performer in roles of plays by numerous contemporary playwrights, including Lyudmila Razumovskaya, Yevgeny Kozlovsky, Alexei Kazantsev, Maksym Kurochkin, Korkiya, Alexander Chugunov, Vadim Levanov, Klim (pseudonym of Vladimir Klimenko), and Kira Malinina.

Television

For her performance in Yelena Tsyplakova's 23-part miniseries Family Secrets (2001), Mysina received a Spolokhi award for the best actress. Her performance in "The Other Mask" episode of the original Kamenskaya TV mini-series is recognized as a small masterpiece. In Oleg Babitsky and Yury Goldin's television movie of Mikhail Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel (2003), she offered an eccentric interpretation of Polixena. Her performance as Elzbieta in Alexei Zernov's ironic TV mini-series All or Nothing, based on Joanna Chmielewska's Wszystko czerwona (All Red), was first aired in 2004. Mysina performed the lead in Arkady Sirenko's made-for TV movie Wilting-Failing, based on stories by Vasily Shukshin (2004). She performed in Andrei Eshpai, Jr.'s TV mini-series of Anatoly Rybakov's novel The Children of the Arbat (2004) and in Yury Kara's Star of the Age (2005) in which she played the legendary Russian actress Serafima Birman.

Film

For her performance in Vadim Abdrashitov's A Play for a Passenger (1995) Mysina received a Golden Ram award for best debut. Her performance as the Empress Marya Fyodorovna in Vitaly Melnikov's Poor Poor Paul (2003), a cinematic biography about Russian Tsar Pavel I, has been recognized for excellence on several fronts. It brought her awards at the 14th annual Vera Kholodnaya Women of Film festival, the Vivat, Russian Cinema festival, and the Artek International Children's Film Festival, all in 2004. For this role, she was nominated for a Nika Award (considered the Russian Oscar) as the Best Supporting Actress. She played the tragicomic role Hans Christian Andersen's mother Anna-Maria in Eldar Ryazanov's Andersen (2007). In 2012, she won the Special President's Prize at the 10th annual Amur Autumn Russian Film and Theater Festival in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, for her performance of the Poetess in Vitaly Melnikov's film The Admirer.[29]

After relocating to Greece, Mysina actively began directing experimental short and feature films for her own Free Flight Films production company. Her eleven releases as of February 2025 have enjoyed success at international film festivals (see Film Awards and Nominations below).

Oksana Mysina and Oxy Rocks

Mysina fronted the rock band Oksana Mysina and Oxy Rocks[30] from 2003 until 2018. Oksana was the band's vocalist, electric violinist and lyricist. The music for most of their songs was written by bassist Dmitry Yershov or lead guitarist Sergei Shchetinin. Oxy Rock's Russian-language cover of Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" has been played by legendary Philadelphia DJ Michael Tearson several times on his World Wide Dylan in Translations shows, most recently in 2022, where, as the show ended, he commented, "I love how Oksana did that!" (No. 36/248 on radiothatdoesn'tsuck.com). In 2012 Ainars Virga, the leader of famed Latvian band Līvi, joined Oxy Rocks for a series of concerts in Moscow.[31][32][33] Mysina has incorporated several of her band's songs into her films, including the song "Ivan Petrovich" in Ivan Petrovich,[34] "World on Edge," "The Last Drop" and others in Red, Blue, and Asya,[35] and "Blues-Rock Mood" in Voices of the New Belarus.[36] Oksana created her own music video of "Ivan Petrovich" in December 2023.

Political views and activity

Oksana Mysina has repeatedly taken part in mass protests,[37] including the public demonstrations titled "For Fair Elections",[38][39][40] "March Against Scoundrels"[40][41] and "March of Peace".[42] She was the emcee of the "March of Truth" rally in 2014[43][44] and of Alexei Navalny's "For the Change of Power" rally in 2015.[45] She advocated the release of the defendants in the Bolotnaya case and members of the Pussy Riot group.[46] She participated in the work of the "Congress of Intelligentsia Against the War, Russia's Self-Isolation and the Restoration of Totalitarianism."[47] She supported Navalny in Moscow's mayoral election in 2013,[48] and has frequently spoken out against the persecution of Russian historian Yury A. Dmitriev.[49][50] In December 2021 she organized and hosted an online marathon of prominent public figures speaking in defense of Dmitriev.[51]

In 2011, the actress signed the "Open Letter to Cultural Figures," opposing the presidential candidacy of Vladimir Putin.[52][53][54] In March 2014, along with a number of other figures in the fields of science and culture, she expressed her opposition to Russia's annexation of Crimea.[55] In May of the same year, together with other participants in a discussion platform titled "Round Table on 12 December", she issued a "Statement on the situation in the country, the responsibility of civil society and political elites", which declared that Russia was in "a transition to a fascist-type totalitarian regime is taking place".

Five of Mysina's films have been expressions of her political views: Insulted. Belarus (2020), based on a play by Andrei Kureichik, exposed the horrors of the failed Minsk Revolution in 2020 (2020-2021 Belarusian protests); Voices of the New Belarus (2021), based on a verbatim play by Andrei Kureichik about imprisoned Belarusian protesters, features a performance by Russian politician Ilya Yashin who, himself, was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 2022; Escape (2022), a true-life film short about a refugee from the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Love is Stronger than Fear (2022), a short version of Voices of the New Belarus; and Cherry Orchard. War (2023), a short mixing snippets of Anton Chekhov's writings with documentary interviews that reveal the struggles of Russian and Belarusian theater and film artists who have opposed Russia's war against Ukraine.

Credits

References

External links

Related Articles

Wikiwand AI