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August 4, 1854

Maria Adasovska was born into a wealthy family on August 4, 1854, in Zanky, a town in northeast Ukraine now in the Nizhen district of the Chernihiv Oblast. Educated in a Chernihiv private school and later at the Conservatory in Helsinki, Finland, Maria from Zanky burst onto the scene as the actress known as Maria Zankovetska in 1882 in a production of Ivan Kotliarevsky's "Natalka Poltavka" (Natalka from Poltava).

Mykola Kropyvnytsky's troupe had taken her on and the staging, in Yelysavethrad (now Kirovohrad), heralded the rebirth of Ukrainian professional theater. It was also an act of defiance and ended a period of heavy repression under the tsarist Ems Ukase of 1876, which had banned the Ukrainian language itself, in the printed word and in performance.

Zankovetska continued to perform as Kropyvnytsky's leading actress (1882-1883, 1885-1888, 1899-1900), but also made her mark under Poltavan dramaturge Mykhailo Starytsky (1883-1885), with Mykola Sadovsky (1888-1898), whose theater made the important transitional step from the populist-folk productions to a modern Ukrainian theater.In 1897, she appeared at the All-Russian Congress of Stage Workers and demanded the termination of censorship in Ukrainian theater.

At the turn of the century, she joined Panas Saksahansky's Society of Russian and Little Russian actors (later known as the Society of Ukrainian Actors), then appeared in productions mounted by Onysym Suslov (1903-1905). After a brief hiatus, in 1909 Zankovetska established her own amateur group centered on Nizhen and Krolevets (east of Chernihiv), and directed its productions until 1915 when she returned to Saksahansky's Society for two years. In 1910, she appeared in her first film role, reprising "Natalka Poltavka."

In 1918, she was with Saksahansky in Kyiv, and together they founded the People's Theater, dedicated to staging Western European drama. From 1919, they defied a ban the Soviet authorities attempted to impose, mounting productions of Friedrich Schiller's plays, as well as Ivan Karpenko Kary's historical dramas. Her last performance on stage was in Kyiv in 1922, and that same year a theater was founded in her name in Lviv.

In 1923, she starred in the film "Ostap Bandura," then retired to write her memoirs. Maria Zankovetska died in Kyiv on October 4, 1934. A museum in her honor was established in Zanky 30 years later.

Source: "Zankovetska, Mariia," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 3, 1997, No. 31, Vol. LXV

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