Turning the pages back... June 9, 1878 (06/08/97)

Turning the pages back...

June 9, 1878

Ivan Petlishenko was born on an estate near Marianivka, near what is now Kirovohrad. An actor of uncanny adaptability, he adopted the stage name of Marianenko. After graduating from high school in 1895, he joined the renowned traveling drama troupe of his uncle, Mykhailo Kropyvnytsky, and also acted as stage manager for four years.

He then hooked up with the populist peasant theater group led by Onysym Suslov, staying with it until 1906, at which time he settled in the Ukrainian capital. He was a director at Mykola Sadovsky's theater in Kyiv until 1914, and in 1915-1916 he headed the Society of Ukrainian Actors.

In 1917 he was appointed artistic director of the Ukrainian National Theater, founded by the government of the Ukrainian National Republic, and worked with poet Mykola Vorony and composer Oleksander Koshyts (Koshetz), making a seamless transition to a more realistic and contemporary genre. He also taught at the Lysenko Music and Drama School that year.

This period was obviously turbulent, but this did not seem to derail Marianenko's work in the slightest. He stayed on as the Hetman government dissolved the Ukrainian National Theater and formed the State Drama Theater in July 1918, and also after the Bolsheviks reorganized it in 1919 as the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

In 1922, he joined the legendary Les Kurbas Berezil Theater, again effortlessly changing to its innovative acting style, and appeared in Berezil's productions right up until it was disbanded in 1934. He also acted in films, such as "The Downpour" (1929); an adaptation of the Mykhailo Kostiubynsky story "Fata Morgana" (1931); and a feature about the Haidamaka rebellions "Koliyivschyna" (1933). When Berezil's founder was attacked in 1933, Marianenko spoke up for Kurbas, and yet miraculously survived the purges.

The next phase of Marianenko's flexibility is perhaps not as laudable, as he worked with the Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater, founded in 1935 out of the remnants of the suppressed Berezil and as an explicit negation of Kurbas' vision. Until 1958, Marianenko appeared in various concoctions by Oleksander Korniychuk and other socialist realist hits, as well as 19th century Western European classics. He also taught at the Kharkiv Theater Institute from 1944 to 1961. Marianenko died in Kharkiv on November 4, 1962.

Sources: "Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater," "Marianenko, Ivan," "Ukrainian National Theater," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 2, 3, 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, 1993).

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