Gogolfest Returns with La Fura dels Baus

This year Gogolfest will host a performance from the cutting edge Spanish theatre company

I have known this lady for a number of years, but it was only when I started doing a little background on her did I realise just how significant she is in Ukraine’s celebrity circles. She has worked with groups like Okean Elzy, solo acts Sofia Rotaru, Ani Lorak and Andriy Danilko (better known as Serduchka), and even movie directors like Semen Gorov. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was the girl next door. I do know better, however, and getting Angela Lisitsa down on the sofa, What’s On gets the goods on one of Ukraine’s behind-the-scenes personalities.

Design has always been a passion for Angela Lisitsa, where even as early as five or six she can remember that drawing was something she loved to do. “My mother was an artist,” she says, as we get comfortable in the Moet Coffee Bar in Arena, “and it was she who influenced me. I can even remember once having my own exhibition at school, where all of the pictures that I had drawn were on display!”

The Business of Fashion

Drawing wasn’t the only thing she did well, however, and at the age of twelve she was enrolled in music school where she learned to play the guitar. “I liked it, but I think I did it more so because my mother always wanted to play the guitar. There did come a point when it got to be a bit much, and it was then that my parents gave me the choice: I could play music or I could draw. I choose art, and after that it was clear where I was going and what I was doing.”

At fifteen she entered a more serious art school where she studied with well-known Ukrainian designers of today Lilya Pustovit, Tetyana Zemskova and Olena Vorozhbit. As students, one of their first jobs was to create an entire collection, which she says she is still quite proud of. She learned a lot, but one of the things that has become increasingly clearer to her over the years is how important it is to ‘see’ what it is she’s creating: “You can learn things in school, you can learn to sing, you can learn to draw, you can learn to perform in front of a camera, for example, but if you aren’t able to think, if you don’t have this ability to begin with, then the process is more difficult.”

After graduation, however, she realised that perhaps the path of fashion design wasn’t necessarily for her: “Not only do you have to be a brilliant designer, you have to be a good businessman as well. There are rules to the game, there are trends and tendencies, and if you don’t follow them, then you’ll quickly find you won’t sell anything, and success will not follow.” But this would be where film and television stepped in. “The process is deeper,” she says, “Which makes things much more interesting.”

Scripting the Next Step

Working as the designer on Star Factory, the stars in Russia as well as her native Ukraine have been keeping her busy in recent years also, and devoting much of her time to videos and costume design, she has been deemed ‘one of the best designers in the CIS’ by pop star Valeriy Leontiev. The one thing that bothers her about this sphere of the business, however, is the inability to continue developing professionally, and she freely admits that, “Doing one video after another isn’t growth or progress.” 

This is quite probably the reason behind her move into films as of late, where her artistic licence has increased ten fold because of the directors she’s been working with. Lisitsa is absolutely loving it, and as she talks, her eyes light up: “You sit, you’ve got the script, you’ve got the screenplay, and you think about how it could all work out. Sometimes you might have to rework this or that because it physically doesn’t work with the actor, but that’s just part of the process.” One of the things she could definitely see herself getting into in the future would be historical pieces or fairytales: “There would be so many opportunities, and I could really use my experience. I would love to work with Guy Ritchie, but he doesn’t do costume films...”

Very recently married, Angela Lisitsa may soon be leaving Ukraine for bigger sets, and having asked her about Hollywood, she said without hesitation, “I would go.” And yet, while she admits that she could be happy wherever it may be that she ends up, she says, “I love Kyiv, it will always be my native city.”

Lana Nicole