Petras Vincovic Vaiciunas

Born June 30 (July 12), 1890, in Piliakal’niai, in the present-day Ionava Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died June 7, 1959, in Vilnius. Soviet Lithuanian playwright and poet.

Vaičiunas was born into a peasant family and studied at the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute. He wrote collections of verse, including Dew-covered Sunbeams (1923) and The Sunny Treasure (1935). He wrote more than 20 plays, many of which were performed in the theaters of Lithuania. In his comedies Vain Efforts (1926), Patriots (1927), and Sunday (1937), Vaičiunas satirizes certain vices of Lithuanian bourgeois society. In 1954 his play His Excellency was performed. His plays have had an important role in the development of Lithuanian play writing and theater.