Iurii Liubimov

Born Sept 17 (30), 1917, in Yaroslavl. Soviet director and actor. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1954). Member of the CPSU (1952).

Liubimov graduated in 1939 from the B. V. Shchukin Drama School of the Evgenii Vakhtangov Theater, where he performed as a student. From 1940 to 1946 he served in the Soviet Army. In 1946 he joined the company of the Vakhtangov Theater; among his roles were Oleg Koshevoi in an adaptation of Fadeev’s The Young Guard, Kirill Izvekov in adaptations of Fedin’s First Joys and Kirill Izvekov, and Mozart in Pushkin’s Little Tragedies. Liubimov has also appeared in films.

In 1953, Liubimov began teaching at the Shchukin School. In 1963 he staged, with the aid of his students, Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan; the cast of this production formed in 1964 the nucleus of the company of the Moscow Theater of Drama and Comedy at Taganka. Since 1964, Liubimov has been the chief director of the theater. His productions include Ten Days That Shook the World, based on Reed’s book (1965), Mother, an adaptation of Gorky’s novel (1969), The Dawns Are Quiet Here, based on Vasil’ev’s novel (1971), and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1972).

Liubimov, who resurrected the conventions of the agitation and propaganda theater of the 1920’s, is a director who is passionately devoted to the publicistic genre and who has a keen sense of contemporary life. In 1952 he received the State Prize of the USSR.