Hrynevetsky, Ivan

Hrynevetsky, Ivan [Гриневецький, Іван; Hrynevec'kyj], b 24 June 1850 in Sianichok, Sianik county, Galicia, d 25 January 1889 in Peremyshl. Actor, stage director. From 1869 to 1881 he appeared on the Polish stage, but at the same time worked for the Ruska Besida Theater in Lviv as an actor (1874–80), stage director (from 1876), and theater director with Ivan Biberovych (1882–9). He improved the artistic quality of the Galician theater by combining the technical advancements of the West European theater with the principles of the ethnographic theater developed by Marko Kropyvnytsky. He revitalized the repertoire of the Ruska Besida Theater with current Ukrainian plays by Hryhorii Tsehlynsky, Kornylo Ustyianovych, Omelian Ohonovsky, Sydir Vorobkevych, and Yurii Fedkovych, and with translations of such dramatists as Carlo Goldoni, Molière, Heinrich von Kleist, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, and Hermann Sudermann. He also staged operettas by Jean-Robert Planquette, Johann Strauss, Jacques Offenbach, and others. As an actor he appeared in such roles as the mayor in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General, Tikhon in Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s Groza (Thunderstorm), Karl Moor in Schiller’s Die Räuber, and Bychok in Kropyvnytsky’s Hlytai, abozh pavuk (The Profiteer, or the Spider).

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