Virlana Tkacz (born June 23, 1952, in Newark, New Jersey) is the founding director of the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York.

Experimental in their form and essence, they employ video, projected images, and complex musical scores to explore our relationship to time and consciousness.

Recent Yara pieces include "1917-2017: Tychyna Zhadan & the Dogs" was about the violence of war and received two New York Innovative Theatre Awards.

Yara's recent piece Dark Night, Bright Stars, was about the meeting of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko and African America tragedian Ira Aldridge, which NY Theatre Wire called "visually striking," writing: "On the surface level, this play is a story about two friends with similar pasts having a cultural exchange, but dig deeper and you discover themes of race and poverty, oppression and liberation, diaspora and the yearning for home.

The Village Voice wrote: "A stunningly beautiful work, Circle, rushes at your senses, makes your heart pound, and shakes your feeling loose.

[6] During the pandemic lockdown, Virlana Tkacz created Virtual Forest Song, revisioning fragments of Lesia Ukrainka's classic 1911 verse play, which she translated with Wanda Phipps, and setting them in the future after some ecological catastrophe.

In addition to her work with Yara, Ms. Tkacz directed Return of the Native for BAM's Next Wave Festival with composer Peter Gordon and video artist Kit Fitzgerald.

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

She has assisted such directors as Andrei Serban, Ping Chong, George Ferencz and Wilford Leach at La MaMa, as well as Sir Peter Hall on Broadway and Michael Bogdanov at the National Theatre in London.

The book was published in paperback as Siberian Shamanism: The Shanar Ritual of the Buryats in 2015 and in French as Chamanisme Siberien: Le Rituel du Shanr des Bouriates in 2017.

"[9] 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.

John Smith Goes to Ukraine 2014 Winter Light 2014 Underground Dreams 2013 Fire, Water, Night 2013 Midwinter Night 2012 Dream Bridge 2011 Raven 2010 Winter Sun 2010 Scythian Stones 2009 Er Toshtuk 2008 Still the River Flows 2007 Janyl 2005 Koliada: Twelve Dishes 2004 The Warrior's Sister 2003 Swan 2002 Howling 2002 Kupala 2001 Obo: Our Shamanism 2000 Song Tree 2000 Circle 1998-99 Flight of the White Bird 1996-1997 Virtual Souls 1995 Waterfall/Reflections 1994 Yara's Forest Song 1993 Blind Sight 1992 Explosions 1990-91 A Light from the East/In the Light For more information on Yara Arts Group and photographs see Yara Arts Group