Adrian Ivanovich Piotrovskii
Piotrovskii, Adrian Ivanovich
Born Nov. 8 (20), 1898; died 1938. Soviet literary critic, theater critic, and teacher. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1935).
Born in Vilnius, Piotrovskii graduated from the classics division of the University of Petrograd in 1923. In 1918 he began his literary career, and in 1919 his career in theater. A director of the theatrical section of the Petrograd provincial office for political education, he organized mass performances with amateurs and a propaganda theater. He directed a literary group within the Bolshoi Dramatic Theater, as well as the Leningrad Working Youth Theater and the Malyi Opera Theater.
Piotrovskii was the author of a number of plays. He also worked in cinema and wrote screenplays, theoretical articles on specific characteristics of cinema, and critiques. From 1928 to 1937 he was artistic director of the Leningrad Sovkino Plant, which later became the Lenfil’m Studio. An expert on ancient literature, he translated the poetry of Aristophanes and Aeschylus. Piotrovskii also did research on the history of ancient theater.
WORKS
Istorila evropeiskogo teatra: Antichnyi teatr, Teatr epokhi feodalizma, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931. (With A. A. Gvozdev.)“Petrogradskie teatry i prazdnestva v epokhu voennogo kommunizma.” In Istorila sovetskogo teatra, vol. 1. Leningrad, 1933. (With A. A. Gvozdev.)