Panas Karpovich Saksaganskii

(real surname Tobilevich). Born May 15 (27), 1859, in the village of Kamenno-Kostuvatoe, in what is now Bratskoe Raion, Niko-laev Oblast; died Sept. 17, 1940, in Kiev. Soviet Ukrainian actor, director, and teacher. People’s Artist of the USSR (1936). Brother of I. K. Karpenko-Karyi and N. K. Sadovskii.

Saksaganskii began his stage career in amateur theatricals in 1875 and in the professional theater in 1883. He worked in the troupes of M. P. Staritskii, M. L. Kropivnitskii, and N. K. Sadovskii. From 1890 to 1909 he headed a company that included some of the outstanding actors of the Ukrainian theater, such as M. K. Zan’kovetskaia. As a member of various Ukrainian companies, Saksaganskii toured Ukrainian and Russian cities from 1910 to 1915. He worked in I. A. Mar’ianenko’s company in 1915 and 1916. In 1918, Saksaganskii founded the National Theater in Kiev, which became the M. Zan’kovetskaia Ukrainian Dramatic Theater in 1922 (today it is located in L’vov). From 1927 to 1931 he worked in the I. Franko Ukrainian Theater and the Kharkov National Theater.

Saksaganskii was one of the major representatives of critical realism in the Ukrainian theater in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. His acting was characterized by careful attention to detail, stage dialogue rich in nuances, and folk humor. He skillfully reproduced the external appearance of the character, including clothing, gestures, and facial expressions. Some of his best roles were Voznyi in Kotlia-revskii’s Natalka Poltavka, Karas’ in Gulak-Artemovskii’s The Zaporozhian Cossack Beyond the Danube, and Bonaventura and Gnat Golyi in Karpenko-Karyi’s One Hundred Thousand and Martyn Borulia. Saksaganskii started working as a director in 1889; he staged the plays of Karpenko-Karyi, Staritskii, T. G. Shevchenko, J. Schiller, and other playwrights.