Vertep

In Ukrainian culture, vertep (Cyrillic: вертеп) is a portable puppet theatre and drama, which presents the nativity scene, other mystery plays, as well as secular plots with satirical and comical elements. The original meaning of the word is "secret place", "cave", "den", referring to the cave where Christ was born, i.e., the Bethlehem Cave. Vertep first appeared in the first half of the 17th century under the influence of Western European traditions, which spread to Ukrainian lands, then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see szopka), and became popular in the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate, which would eventually become a protectorate of the Russian Empire.

In Belarusian culture it is known as Batlejka (батлейка), from "Bethlehem".

A typical vertep was a wooden box, one or two storeyed. The floors had slots through which the puppeteers controlled wooden puppets. The upper floor of the two-storeyed box was used for the nativity scene, while the lower was for interludes and other mystery plays (most often featuring the Herod and Rachel plots) and secular plays, often of comedy character.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the atheistic Soviet state severely persecuted religion and the associated elements of culture, and by 1930s the tradition of Christmas verteps was virtually eliminated, except in the lands of Western Ukraine.^[1]