Asmik

(pseudonym of Tagui Akopian). Born Mar. 9 (21), 1879, in Nakhichevan’; died Aug. 23, 1947, in Yerevan. Armenian Soviet actress. People’s Artist of the Armenian SSR (1935).

Asmik began her professional stage activity in 1906. From 1921 until the end of her life she was an actress at the First State Theater of Armenia in Yerevan (now the Sundukian Theater). She created the characters of mothers who suffer deeply over the fate of their children: Shushan (in Pepo by Sundukian), Knirt’e (in The Wreck of the Nadezhda by Kheiermans), and Anna (in At Daybreak by Gulakian). Also among her best roles were Liubov’ Iarovaia (in the play of the same name by Trenev), Melaniia (in Egor Bulychov and Others by Gorky), Vassa Zheleznova (in the play of the same name by Gorky), and Kabanikha (in The Storm by Ostrovskii). She appeared in films beginning in 1926 (Namus, Zangezur, and so forth). She was named a Hero of Labor in 1936. She was a deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR.