Antonovych, Danylo

Antonovych, Danylo [Antonovyč] (real name Budko), b 22 December 1889 in Bilopillia, Sumy county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 8 February 1975 in Kharkiv. Actor, graduate of the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute in Kyiv. In 1919 he joined the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, in 1920-2 he worked with Les Kurbas in the Kyiv Drama Theater (Kyidramte), and in 1922-3 and 1926-34 in Berezil. In 1923-6 he worked in Moscow in the First Russian Workers' Theater. From 1935 he acted in the Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater. He began to lecture in 1949 and in 1957 was promoted to professor of the Kharkiv Theater Institute. His main roles included the following: Maksym Zalizniak in Haidamaky (based on Taras Shevchenko's poem), Yaroslav the Wise in Ivan Kocherha's Iaroslav Mudryi (Yaroslav the Wise), Maksym Kryvonis in Oleksander Korniichuk's Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi (and other plays by Korniichuk), Felix Grandet in Honoré de Balzac's Eugénie Grandet, Othello in William Shakespeare's tragedy. He played in the ethnographic plays of Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Ivan Karpenko-Kary, and others. He appeared in S. Eisenstein's films Stachka (Strike) and Bronenosets Potemkin (The Battleship Potemkin).

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