Ukrainian National Theater

Ukrainian National Theater (Український національний театр; Ukrainskyi natsionalnyi teatr). A theater founded by the Theatrical Committee of the government of the Ukrainian National Republic in Kyiv in April 1917, under the artistic directorship of Ivan Marianenko and with the executive members Mariia Hrushevska, Mykola Vorony, and Oleksander Koshyts. The National Theater attempted to move away from the populist-ethnographical repertoire toward a more realistic and contemporary theater genre. Vorony directed its first productions—Volodymyr Vynnychenko's Pryhvozhdzheni (The Downtrodden) and Spyrydon Cherkasenko's Khurtovyna (The Snowstorm)—and Hryhorii Haievsky directed Vynnychenko's Panna Mara (Miss Mara), Mykhailo Starytsky's Oborona Bushi (The Defense of Busha), Molière's Tartuffe, and Hermann Sudermann's Fires of Saint John. Marianenko staged Volodymyr Samiilenko's U Haikhan-Beia (At Haikhan Bei's). Other directors included Ivan Zamychkovsky and Marko Petlishenko. Economic and political difficulties led to the dissolution of the theater by the Hetman government in July 1918; its successors were the State Drama Theater and the People's Theater.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]