Bentsal, Mykola

Bentsal, Mykola [Бенцаль, Микола; Bencal'], b 24 May 1891 in Kurivtsi, Ternopil county, Galicia, d 9 September 1938 in Kolomyia. Actor and director of the Ruska Besida Theater in Lviv in 1910–14 and 1921–4 and of Ternopilski Teatralni Vechory in 1915–17. In 1925–38 he appeared in various Galician theaters. In 1929 he became head of the Tobilevych Theater in Stanyslaviv. Bentsal was a versatile actor, experienced in all the genres. He appeared in the leading roles of ethnographic plays—as Hryts in Mykhailo Starytsky’s Oi, ne khody Hrytsiu (Don't Go to the Party, Hryts) and as Martyn in Ivan Karpenko-Kary’s Martyn Borulia; of historical plays—as Hetman Petro Doroshenko in Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska's tragedy of that title; of the plays of Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka; and of European plays—as Rosmer in Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]