Semdor, Semen

Semdor, Semen [Семдор, Семен; aka Симон Дорошенко; Symon Doroshenko; pseudоnyms of Shymon Goldstein], b 1888 in Smila, Cherkasy county, Kyiv gubernia, d 12 August 1938 in Simferopol. Actor and director. He began his artistic career in Chibisov’s Russian troupe in Oleksandriia (1910–13) and then worked as an actor in the Ruska Besida Theater (1913–14); led an amateur troupe in Katerynoslav (1915–17); and acted in Molodyi Teatr (1918–19), the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1919–20), the Independent Theater in Zhytomyr (1921–2), and the Franko New Drama Theater (1923–6, with interruptions). Between 1918 amd 1920 Semdor was one of the activists of the theater section of the Kyiv-based Jewish cultural organization the Kultur Lige. In 1927–32 he was artistic director of a touring theatrical workshop in the Crimea. He staged Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Karl August Wittfogel’s Rote Soldaten, and Karl Gutzkow’s Uriel Acosta, and other plays.

[This article was updated in 2023.]