Koshevsky, Kost

Koshevsky, Kost [Кошевський, Кость; Koševs’kyj, Kost’] (real name: Shkliar), b 30 September 1895 in Shulhivka, Novomoskovsk county, Katerynoslav gubernia, d 14 March 1945 in Kyiv. Actor, dramatist, and stage director. From 1914 to 1918 he acted with various amateur theater groups, and then joined the Molodyi Teatr company. After working briefly at the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1920–1), he stayed with the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater (1922–39), except for short periods with the Odesa Derzhdrama (1930–1) and the Dnipropetrovsk Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater (1932–3). He was appointed artistic director of the Kyiv Young Spectator's Theater in 1939, but was dismissed in 1941 for criticizing contemporary Soviet drama. His more successful productions were Oleksander Korniichuk's Platon Krechet and Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin. His actor's repertoire included Perelesnyk in Lesia Ukrainka's Lisova pisnia (The Forest Song), Mokii in Mykola Kulish's Myna Mazailo, the title role in K. Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta, Creon in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and Möbius in W. Hasenclever's Ein besserer Herr. He also wrote several plays: Kooperatory (Co-operative Managers), Budni (Everyday Life), and Bludni vohni (Wayward Fires), an adaptation of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky's Fata morgana.

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