Golubok, Vladislav

Born May 3 (15), 1882; died 1937. Soviet Byelorussian director, actor, playwright, and stage artist. People’s Artist of the Byelorussian SSR (1925). Born at Lesnaia station near Baranovichi into the family of a railroad worker.

Golubok began his literary activity in 1906. From 1917 to 1920 he was an actor and director in the First Association of Byelorussian Drama and Comedy. In 1920 he organized the Golubok Troupe, whose purpose was to serve the artistic needs of the raions (it later became the Byelorussian Traveling Theater, 1926–32, and the Third Byelorussian State Theater, 1932–37). He wrote short stories (collected in Stories, 1913) and approximately 40 dramas and comedies on historical, historicorevolutionary and everyday-life themes, which were staged in Byelorussian theaters, including The Last Encounter, The Clerk’s Name Day (both 1917), Innocent Blood (1918), Without Kin (1919). Ganka (1921), The Trial (1920), The Murderers (1921), Pan Surynta, The Loggers (both 1923), and Pinsk Madonna (1927). He was an outstanding performer of dramatic and character roles, which included Ovechka in The Trial, Surynta in Pan Surynta, Gusak in Mikitenko’s Dictatorship, and Andron in Pogodin’s My Friend. He staged and designed the sets for his plays in the theaters that he headed. Golubok’s dramatic, directorial, and acting work is a connecting link between prerevolutionary and Soviet Byelorussian theater. Among the many Byelorussian actors he taught were V. I. Dediushko, A. A. Zgirovskii, and K. F. Bylich.