Derkach, Heorhii

Derkach, Heorhii [Деркач, Георгій; Derkač, Heorhij; pseudonym of Liubymov], b 23 March 1846 in Katerynoslav, d 24 June 1900 in Tomsk, Siberia. Comic actor and entrepreneur of a Russian-Ukrainian troupe. At the end of the 1860s he toured Ukraine, Siberia, the Crimea, Caucasia, and Central Asia. In 1893–4 his troupe appeared in France (Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille). Some of Derkach’s best performances were as Shelmenko in Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s Shel'menko denshchyk (Shelmenko the Batman), Karas in Semen Hulak-Artemovsky’s Zaporozhets' za Dunaiem (Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube), and Vyborny in Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Natalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava).

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