Ukrainian Theater

(full name, I. Ia. Franko Academic Ukrainian Theater), one of the leading drama theaters of the Ukrainian SSR. The theater, founded in Vinnitsa in 1920, moved to Kharkov in 1923 and to Kiev in 1926. It was named in honor of I. Ia. Franko soon after it was founded.

In their large-scale productions of heroic-romantic plays, the stage directors of the theater successfully aimed at truthful acting, the development of a professional ensemble, and the authentic depiction of everyday life. Much attention was devoted to music in the performances. The theater stressed the social significance of such plays as Gogol’s The Inspector-General (1921) and The Wedding (1922), a dramatization of Shevchenko’s The Cossack Rebels (1921), Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (1921), Ibsen’s Ghosts (1922), Molière’s Tartuffe (1922), and Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna (1923). Notable productions of the 1920’s also included Kulish’s The 97 (1924) and Commune in the Steppes (1925).

The theater’s greatest achievements included productions of Schiller’s Don Carlos (1936), Pushkin’s Boris Godunov (1937), Karpenko-Karyi’s plays Vanity (1936), The Ill-fated One (1937), and The Master (1939), Gorky’s The Last Ones (1937), Ostrov-skii’s The Ultimate Sacrifice (1939), Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (1940), and Franko’s Stolen Happiness (1940).

During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), the theater’s company performed in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where it staged Korneichuk’s The Front (1942) and Simonov’s The Russian People (1943). It returned to Kiev in 1944. The theater’s best contemporary plays included Korneichuk’s Makar Dubrava (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949) and The Snowball Grove (1950; State Prize of the USSR, 1951), a dramatization of Fa-deev’s The Young Guard (1947), Bash’s Professor Buiko (1949) and Dnieper Stars (1952), Sobko’s Behind the Second Front (1949), Minko’s Without Naming Names (1953), and Korneichuk’s Come to Zvonkovoe (1945), Wings (1954), Why the Stars Smiled (1957), On the Dnieper (1960), and A Page From a Diary (1965). The theater has devoted much attention to the dramaturgy of the peoples of the USSR and to Russian, Ukrainian, and foreign classics. As stage director, G. P. Iura expressed profound popular themes in a realistic, modern style, for example, in his stagings of Ianovskii’s Duma About Britanka (1957) and Kocher-ga’s Svichka’s Wedding (1960).

The theater’s best productions of the 1960’s and early 1970’s include Kolomiets’ Planet of Hopes (1966) and The Blue Deer (1974), Korneichuk’s The Heart’s Remembrance (1969), L. Ukra-inka’s Cassandra (1971), Karim’s On the Night of a Lunar Eclipse (1972), Zarudnyi’s The Time of Yellow Leaves (1973) and Such a Long, Long Summer (1974), and Boguslawski’s The Supposed Miracle, or Cracovians and Highlanders (1976).

The theater’s major artists have included People’s Artists of the USSR A. M. Buchma, V. N. Dobrovol’skii, M. M. Krushel’-nitskii, D. E. Miliutenko, and Iu. V. Shumskii, People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR A. I. Borisoglebskaia, B. N. Nord, and V. M. Skliarenko, and Honored Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR K. P. Koshevskii.

As of 1976, the company included People’s Artists of the USSR N. M. Uzhvii, A. E. Gashinskii, V. M. Dal’skii, P. V. Ku-manchenko, O. Ia. Kusenko, and E. P. Ponomarenko and People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR V. P. Dashenko, M. A. Zad-neprovskii, N. K. Koperzhinskaia, A. V. Omel’chuk, N. L. Panas’ev, P. T. Sergienko, S. I. Stankevich, and Iu. S. Tkachen-ko. People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR S. K. Smiian has been principal stage and administrative director of the theater since 1970.

In 1940 the theater was awarded the Order of Lenin and was designated an academic theater.

(full name, M. K. Zan’kovetskaia Academic Ukrainian Theater), one of the leading drama theaters of the Ukrainian SSR. The theater was founded in Kiev in 1922, using actors from a people’s amateur theater directed by P. K. Saksaganskii.

The theater’s actors devoted a good deal of attention to the interpretation of roles in Soviet plays, including Kulish’s The 97 (1924) and Commune in the Steppes (1930), Kocherga’s The Fairy of the Bitter Almond (1926), Irchan’s The Family of the Brushmakers (1926), Mamontov’s A Republic on Wheels (1927), Dneprovskii’s Apple Tree Captivity (1928), Mikitenko’s Dictatorship (1929), and Bezymenskii’s The Shot (1930). From 1923 to 1930 the company was a traveling theater, performing in the Donbas, the Krivoi Rog region, and Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh’e, Nikolaev, and other cities. Along with contemporary plays, Russian, Ukrainian, and foreign classics figured prominently in the theater’s repertoire.

In 1931 the theater settled in Zaporozh’e, where it staged such major works as Korneichuk’s The Destruction of the Squadron (1933), Platon Krechet (1935), and On the Steppes of the Ukraine (1940), Pogodin’s plays My Friend (1934), After the Ball (1934), and The Aristocrats (1936), Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova (1936), The Last Ones (1938), and The Lower Depths (1940), and Leva-da’s Kamo (1941).

During the Great Patriotic War (1941—45) the company was evacuated to Tobol’sk and then to the Kuznetsk Basin. The theater has been in L’vov since 1944.

The company cooperates closely with Ukrainian playwrights and constantly stages contemporary and classical works. Its best productions include Korneichuk’s Makar Dubrava (1948), The Snowball Grove (1950), and The Heart’s Remembrance (1970), Galan’s plays Under the Golden Eagle (1951), Love at Dawn (1952), and The Boat Is Rocking (1955), Khizhniak’s To the Mainland (1949; State Prize of the USSR, 1950), Levada’s Faust and Death (1960), Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes (1955) and The Third Pathétique (1963), Zarudnyi’s Loyalty (1970) and The Time of Yellow Leaves (1973), Riabokliach’s Mariia Zan’kovetskaia (1972), and Gonchar’s The Standard-bearers (1975). The theater is successful in staging classical plays. It has staged brilliant productions of such plays as Gorky’s The Philistines (1950), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1957), King Lear (1969), and Richard III (1974), L. Ukrainka’s The Forest Song (1952) and The Stone Master (1971), Karpenko-Karyi’s Vanity (1967) and The Master (1970), and Franko’s The Dream of Prince Sviatoslav (1954). The theater was designated an academic theater in 1970.

The theater’s company has included the stage directors People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR B. F. Tiagno, V. I. Kharchen-ko, and S. K. Smiian and Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR M.oV. Giliarovskii. Its actors have included People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR D. I. Kozachkovskii, F. G. Gaenko, V. A. Liubart, V. I. Arkushenko, A. S. Krivitskaia, V. A. Danchenko, Ia. T. Gelias, and D. A. Dudarev. People’s Artist of the USSR F. F. Nirod was one of the theater’s most prominent stage designers.

As of 1976, the company included People’s Artists of the USSR N. P. Dotsenko and B. V. Romanitskii, who was artistic director until 1948, and People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR A. D. Gai, V. G. Maksimenko, and V. K. Polinskaia. The principal stage director is Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR S. V. Danchenko, and the principal stage designer is Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR M. V. Kipriian.

The theater was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1951.

(full name, T. G. Shevchenko Academic Ukrainian Theater), one of the leading drama theaters of the Ukrainian SSR. The theater was founded in Kiev in 1922 and moved to Kharkov in 1926; until 1935 it was called the Berezil’ Theater.

In its first years the theater staged heroic-romantic and propaganda plays, works dealing with current topics, and theatrical shows. In all these productions the theater sought new forms of theatrical expression. The company developed the principles of realism in staging dramatizations of Sinclair’s Jimmie Higgins (1923) and Shevchenko’s The Cossack Rebels (1924) and such plays as Ivanov’s Armored Train 14–69 (1928), Kulish’s The 97 (1930), Pervomaiskii’s Unknown Soldiers (1931), Mikitenko’s The Cadres (1931), and Karpenko-Karyi’s The Master (1932). The production of Korneichuk’s The Destruction of the Squadron (1933) marked the triumph of realism and the presentation of the heroic-romantic theme.

In the 1930’s the theater staged major productions of Korneichuk’s plays Platon Krechet (1935), The Truth (1937), Bogdan Khmel’nitskii (1939), and On the Steppes of the Ukraine (1940), Afinogenov’s The Portrait (1935), and Trenev’s Liubov’ Iarovaia (1937). Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova (1936) and Ostrovskii’s The Storm (1938) and The Forest (1940) received profound social interpretations. The distinctive style of the theater developed fully in the 1940’s and 1950’s, when it staged Kocherga’s Iaroslav the Wise (1946; State Prize of the USSR, 1947), Dmiterko’s General Vatutin (1947; State Prize of the USSR, 1948) and Together Forever (1950), a dramatization of Fadeev’s The Young Guard (1947), Korneichuk’s Makar Dubrava (1948), Sobko’s Behind the Second Front (1949), Galan’s Love at Dawn (1952), Pogodin’s The Third Pathétique (1958), and a dramatization of Stel’makh’s Blood Is Thicker Than Water (1959).

The theater’s productions of the 1960’s and early 1970’s included Korneichuk’s plays On the Dnieper (1961), Retribution (1967), and The Snowball Grove (1972), Zarudnyi’s Marina (1964) and In Seventh Heaven (1969), and Kolomiets’ Planet of Hopes (1966) and The Blue Deer (1974). The theater also presents new works from the dramaturgy of the peoples of the USSR as well as classical works. It was named in honor of T. G. Shevchenko in 1935 and was designated an academic theater in 1947.

Actors who have worked at the theater include People’s Artists of the USSR D. I. Antonovich, E. V. Bondarenko, P. V. Kumanchenko, and I. A. Mar’ianenko and People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR G. Ia. Kozachenko, L. A. Krinitskaia, F. I. Radchuk, S. V. Fedortseva, and V. N. Chistiakova. Stage directors of the theater have included People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR L. Kurbas, L. F. Dubovik, and B. N. Nord, People’s Artists of the USSR M. M. Krushel’nitskii and A. I. Serdiuk, and Honored Art Workers of the Ukrainian SSR V. G. Krainichenko and B. P. Meshkis. As of 1976, the company included People’s Artists of the USSR A. I. Serdiuk and L. S. Tarabarinov and People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR R. A. Kolosova, V. N. Mizinenko, and S. M. Chibisova. The principal stage director is Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR A. Ia. Litko.

The theater was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1947.

(full name, October Revolution Ukrainian Theater), a leading drama theater of the Ukrainian SSR. The theater was founded in Odessa in 1925 to replace the Kiev Experimental Theater Studio. Originally called the Odessa Ukrainian State Drama, it was named the Theater of the Revolution in 1930 and assumed its present name in 1946.

The prominent Ukrainian actors I. E. Zamychkovskii, E. A. Khutornaia, L. V. Matsievskaia, and A. E. Meshcherskaia established the theater’s traditions for truthful theatrical characterization. In the 1920’s and 1930’s the theater staged works by Soviet Ukrainian playwrights, including Kulish’s The 97 (1925), Dne-provskii’s Apple Tree Captivity (1928), Pervomaiskii’s The Komsomol Members (1930), Mikitenko’s The Cadres (1930), and Korneichuk’s The Destruction of the Squadron (1933).

The company reached a new level of development when it presented Trenev’s Liubov’ Iarovaia (1927), Lavrenev’s Break (1929), and the Ukraine’s first staging of Gorky’s Egor Bulychov and the Others (1933).

The first stage directors of the Ukrainian Theater explored new forms of theatrical expression and asserted a heroic-romantic orientation. Among the greatest artistic achievements of the theater have been the productions by People’s Artist of the USSR V. S. Vasil’ko, who was stage director in 1926-28 and 1938-41 and principal stage director from 1948 to 1956.

Important productions have included Kocherga’s Svichka’s Marriage (1946), a dramatization of Kobylianskaia’s The Land (1948), Karpenko-Karyi’s The Woman Farm Laborer (1950), Galan’s Under the Golden Eagle (1951) and Love at Dawn (1953), Dmiterko’s Together Forever (1954), Korneichuk’s The Snowball Grove (1956), a dramatization of Shevchenko’s The Cossack Rebels (1961), Stel’makh’s Truth and Falsehood (1964), Korneichuk’s A Page From a Diary (1965), Drutse’s Birds of Our Youth (1972), Makaenok’s Tribunal (1972), and a dramatization of Gogol’s “The Fair at Sorochintsy” (1973).

Actors of the theater have included People’s, Artists of the USSR V. N. Dobrovol’skii, E. P. Ponomarenko, N. M. Uzhvii, and Iu. V. Shumskii and People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR P. M. Niatko, L. M. Gakkebush, L. A. Krinitskaia, E. A. Os-mialovskaia, Z. S. Khrukalova, B. A. Borin, A. I. Kramarenko, and G. G. Babenko. As of 1976, the company included People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR A. E. Lutsenko, I.I. Tverdokhleb, and V. P. Tuz. The principal stage director is Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR B. V. Meshkis. The theater was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor in 1975.