Serdiuk, Oleksander

Serdiuk, Oleksander [Serdjuk] (Les), b 27 June 1900 in Bziv, Pereiaslav county, Poltava gubernia, d 14 December 1988 in Kyiv. Actor, director, and educator. After completing studies at the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute (1919) he was a leading actor in the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in Kyiv (1919–22) and in Berezil (from 1922), later (1935) the Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater, of which he was also artistic director in 1957–62. His repertoire consisted of approximately 200 heroic and character roles. In Berezil he played Tom Kittling in Sekretar profspilky (The Walking Delegate, based on L. Scott's novel, 1924), Fiesco in Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua (1928), Mokii in Mykola Kulish's Myna Mazailo (1929), and the title role in William Shakespeare's Othello (1952). He acted the title roles in the films Prometheus (1936) and Nazar Stodolia (1937). As a director he staged Oi pidu ia v Boryslavku (Oh, I'll Go to Boryslavka, based on Ivan Franko, 1956) and Mykola Ya. Zarudny's Anteï (Antaeuses, 1961). He taught at the Kharkiv Theater Institute from 1945. A biography, by L. Popova, was published in Kyiv in 1979.