Steshenko, Iryna

Steshenko, Iryna [Стешенко, Ірина; Stešenko], b 5 July 1898 in Kyiv, d 30 December 1987 in Kyiv. Actor and translator; daughter of Ivan M. Steshenko and Oksana Steshenko and granddaughter of Mykhailo Starytsky. She graduated from the Higher Courses for Women (1918) and the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute (1920) in Kyiv and performed in prominent roles with the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1920–3) and Berezil (1923–33) theater troupes under the direction of Les Kurbas in Kyiv and Kharkiv. She gave up acting in 1949. Steshenko began translating in 1920. Her translations include comedies by Moliére and C. Goldoni, several plays by William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Egmont, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's Don Carlos, Fernand Crommelynck's Tripes d'or, Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and works by Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Guy de Maupassant, and Henrik Ibsen. Several of her translations were used in Berezil's productions.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]