Krushelnytska, Lidiia

Krushelnytska, Lidiia [Крушельницька, Лідія; Krušel'nyc'ka, Lidija; née Каратницька; Karatnytska], b 1 May 1915 in Kuty, Kosiv county, Galicia, d 4 March 2009 in New York. Actress and theater director. A graduate of the Lviv Conservatory (1939), she appeared in several operas in Stanyslaviv and Lviv, and after the Second World War performed as a soloist with the Muza performing arts group in the displaced persons camps in Austria. Immigrating to the United States of America in 1949, she joined the Theater-Studio of Y. Hirniak and O. Dobrovolska and appeared in many of its productions. In 1966 she became director of the Studio of the Oral Arts in New York, where she worked with young actors as an educator and play director. She has directed children’s plays such as the adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale ‘The Flying Ship’ and of the folk tale ‘Lisovyi Tsar Okh’ (The Forest King Okh); dramatizations of poems by Lesia Ukrainka, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lina Kostenko; and rarely performed plays such as Spyrydon Cherkasenko’s Kazka staroho mlyna (Tale of the Old Mill), Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s Chorna pantera i bilyi vedmid’ (Black Panther and White Bear), and Eugène Scribe’s Le verre d’eau.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]