Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Academic Music and Drama Theater

Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Academic Music and Drama Theater (Івано-Франківський академічний обласний музично-драматичний театр ім. І. Франка; Ivano-Frankivskyi akademichnyi oblasnyi muzychno-dramatychnyi teatr im I. Franka). The theater was organized (as the Stanislav Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater) in Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in 1939 out of several Galician troupes (Ivan Kohutiak's Stanyslaviv Ukrainian Touring Theater, Yosyp Stadnyk's) employing actors from central and eastern Ukraine. During the German occupation (1941–4) it functioned under the Ukrainian Central Committee. It resumed activities in 1945 after the Second World War. In the first period its repertoire included Soviet plays such as Oleksander Korniichuk's Platon Krechet and K. Trenev's Liubov Iarova. During the German occupation Yurii Kosach's Obloha (The Siege) and Marsh chernihivs’koho polku (March of the Chernihiv Regiment), as well as the operatic version of Ivan Kotliarevsky's Natalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava), were staged. Since 1945 its better productions have included adaptations of Ivan Franko's Dlia domashn’oho vohnyshcha (For the Home Hearth) and Nikolai Gogol's Strashnaia mest’ (The Terrible Revenge), as well as Anton Khyzhniak's Danylo Halyts’kyi (Danylo of Halych) and Dmytro Pavlychko's Zolotorohyi olen’ (The Deer with Golden Horns). O. Yakovliv, Mykola Ravytsky, and Vitalii Smoliak have served as directors of the theater, and Danylo Narbut as set designer.

[This article was updated in 2010.]