1. Les Kurbas is considered by many to be the most important Ukrainian theater director of the 20th century.
20 Facts About Les Kurbas
1. 2.
Les Kurbas formed, together with Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yevgeny Vakhtangov and several other directors, the Soviet theater avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s.
3.
Les Kurbas is one of the most prominent representatives of Ukrainian avant-garde art.
4.
Les Kurbas is considered to be one of the lead figures of the Executed Renaissance.
5.
Les Kurbas was murdered by the Soviet regime, during Stalin's Great Terror.
6.
Les Kurbas's father, Stepan Pylypovych Kurbas, was a Ruthenian actor who descended from Lithuanian lineage.
7.
Les Kurbas's mother, Vanda Adolfivna, born in Staryi Skalat, was an actress, the daughter of an Austrian, Adolf Teichman.
8.
Les Kurbas integrated all the techniques of the Molody era, most notably in his treatment of the choir.
9.
Since 1922 Les Kurbas worked for the Odesa Film Studio where he directed such movies as "Shvedskaya spichka", "Arsenaltsy", and others.
10.
Les Kurbas was only one of several directors, if the most important one, and an outstanding organizer.
11.
Les Kurbas made mostly use of the expressionistic techniques he had developed during the Molody era, but increased further the rhythmic organisation of the entire production.
12.
In 1927 Les Kurbas met up-and-coming playwright Mykola Kulish in the Ukrainian capital of the time, Kharkiv, where the "Berezil'" had moved in 1926.
13.
The collaboration between Kulish and Les Kurbas proved to be both fortunate and unfortunate for the ensemble.
14.
Yet Les Kurbas was determined to pursue his course in spite of the increasing threats.
15.
In 1930, just before the artificial famine in Ukraine, Les Kurbas was forced to stage Dyktatura, by Ukrainian playwright Ivan Mykytenko.
16.
Les Kurbas turned the sense of the play around, a technique he named "recoding", and made a satirical and tragic opera out of a what had been a dull realist plot.
17.
Les Kurbas was allowed to go to Moscow, where he probably was the major force behind Solomon Mikhoels' famous staging of King Lear.
18.
Les Kurbas was then moved to the remote Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, and was one of the "lost transport" of prisoners shipped back to the mainland in 1937 from Solovki.
19.
Some hagiographers claim that Les Kurbas was a genius who anticipated every development of the later 20th century theater.
20.
The Les Kurbas Prize is a theatre award of Ukraine that is named after the famous director.