Odesa Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater

Odesa Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater (Одеський академічний Український музично-драматичний театр). A theater established in Odesa in 1925 from the cast of the Mykhailychenko Theater and the Odesa First Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Theater. Its founders were Ivan Zamychkovsky, M. Tinsky, Yelysaveta Khutorna, Nataliia Uzhvii, Lidiia Matsiievska, Polina Niatko, Yurii Shumsky, and Marko Tereshchenko, who was also its first director. Originally called the Odesa Derzhdrama, in 1930 it was renamed the Odesa Theater of the Revolution, and in 1940 it acquired the name Odesa Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater. In 1995 the theater was granted an academic theater status, named after its second director, Vasyl Vasylko, and assumed its present name.

The first production of the Odesa Derzhdrama was the staging of Anatoly Lunacharsky’s Palii (Arsonists). Later in 1925 Marko Tereshchenko directed G. Kaufman and M. Connelly's Merton of the Movies as a experiment in bright stylization. His successor, Vasyl Vasylko, repeated his Berezil production Za dvoma zaitsiamy (After Two Hares, based on Mykhailo Starytsky). With Liubov Hakkebush, Vasylko created a studio which trained many talented actors. The theater also staged Ivan Kocherha's Feia hirkoho myhdaliu (The Fairy of the Bitter Almond), Volodymyr Vynnychenko's Nad (Nad[ia]), Yakiv Mamontov's Kniazhna Viktoriia (The Princess Victoria), and William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and other plays. In 1929 Tereshchenko directed Ivan Mykytenko's Dyktatura (Dictatorship), and Ivan Yukhymenko directed Oleksander Korniichuk's Zahybel’ eskadry (The Destruction of the Squadron), both premieres in Ukrainian theater. The theater has also staged productions based on the works of Taras Shevchenko, Olha Kobylianska, Mykola Kulish, Oleksander Dovzhenko, Vasyl Mynko, and Berthold Brecht. The directors since 1945 have been Borys Tiahno, V. Vasylko, V. Miahky, B. Meshkis, and K. Pyvovarov.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Duz’, I. Teatr imeni Zhovtnevoï Revoliutsiï (Kyiv 1975)

Valerian Revutsky

[This article was updated in 2012.]