Vasadze, Akakii Alekseevich

Born July 25 (Aug. 6), 1899, in Kutaisi. Soviet actor and director. People’s Artist of the USSR (1936). Member of the CPSU since 1939.

In 1917, Vasadze began to work on the stage. From 1920 he worked in the Sh. Rustaveli Georgian Theater (Tbilisi), and from 1933 to 1955 he was the head director. His roles included Franz Moor (Schiller’s The Robbers), Darispan (Kldiashvili’s Autumn Gentlefolk), Kikvidze (Daraseli’s Brigade Commander Kikvidze), Ananiia (Sumbatov’s Treason), Abdul-Sadyk (Mosashvili’s Sunken Stones), lago (Shakespeare’s Othello), and Shuiskii (Solov’ev’s The Great Tsar). Among his productions were Shanshiashvili’s Arsen (1936), Brigade Commander Kikvidze (1941), and Sunken Stones (1951). Vasadze is very much a character actor; his art is distinguished by mastery of social typification and variety of expressive means. In 1958 he became the head director of the L. Meskhishvili Georgian Theater (in Kutaisi); he directed the plays The Exile by Vazha Pshavela (1958), The Dawn of Kolkhida by Lordkipanidze (1959), and others. Since 1969 he has been an actor of the Rustaveli Georgian Theater. In 1923 he started acting in films. In 1924 he became involved in teaching, since 1947 as a professor at the Rustaveli Theater Institute in Tbilisi. He was a deputy to the first through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR. He received the State Prize of the USSR (1942, 1946, 1951) and was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.