1895–1989
Yosyp Hirniak
Actor of Les Kurbas’s Berezil
More than 170 roles, a Stalinist camp in the far north and the first Hamlet on the Ukrainian stage. Yosyp Hirniak, a leading actor of Les Kurbas’s Berezil, survived arrest and in emigration built Ukrainian theater in Europe and New York.
Key accomplishments
- A leading actor of Les Kurbas’s Berezil (1922–1933): Myna Mazailo, and roles in Mykola Kulish’s The People’s Malakhii and Maklena Grasa
- A role in Les Kurbas’s film Vendetta (1924)
- The first production of Hamlet on the Ukrainian stage (Lviv Opera Theater, 1943)
- A theater studio with Olimpiia Dobrovolska in Austria (1946)
- Artistic director of the Ukrainian Theater in America (1954–1964)
- The memoir Spomyny (Memoirs, 1982)
- More than 170 roles and 65 productions
How many roles can one actor play?
Yosyp Hirniak played more than 170 roles and staged 65 productions. In between came arrest, a prison camp in the far north, war and emigration. He was born in 1895 in the village of Strusiv in Galicia, now in the Ternopil region, the son of a church cantor. In the First World War he and his brother Nykyfor joined the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, and he began acting in the legion’s theater troupe, and later at the Ruska Besida theater in Lviv. In 1920 he was among the first actors of the new Ivan Franko Theater in Vinnytsia, alongside Hnat Yura, Amvrosii Buchma and Marian Krushelnytskyi.
On the Berezil stage
In Kyiv Hirniak met Les Kurbas: he acted first in Kurbas’s Young Theater, then became a leading actor of the Berezil in Kyiv and Kharkiv. His best-known roles came in the plays of Mykola Kulish: The People’s Malakhii, Myna Mazailo, where he played Myna himself, and Maklena Grasa. He also appeared in Kurbas’s film Vendetta (1924). Ostap Vyshnia called him “a first-rate master of character roles”.
The camp at Chibyu
In 1933, as the Berezil was being crushed, Hirniak was arrested and accused of belonging to the “Ukrainian Military Organization”. On 21 May 1934 he was sentenced to three years in the camps. He served his term at Chibyu in Komi, in the same camp as Ostap Vyshnia, and acted in the camp theater; after his release he stayed on there as a hired worker.
The first Ukrainian Hamlet
Before the war Hirniak and his wife, the actress Olimpiia Dobrovolska, returned to Kyiv. In 1942 he moved to Lviv, and in 1943, at the city’s Opera Theater, he staged Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the Ukrainian stage for the first time. In the spring of 1944 the couple left for Austria and then Germany. In 1946 they founded a theater studio that toured Austria and Bavaria with Ukrainian plays banned in the USSR.
Ukrainian theater in New York
In the United States Hirniak was artistic director of the Ukrainian Theater in America, and from 1956 he worked for the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty. In 1982 he published his Spomyny (Memoirs) about the Berezil and his repressed colleagues. Yosyp Hirniak died in New York on 17 January 1989.
Why it matters today
Hirniak was one of the actors who carried the Berezil, the theater that made the Ukrainian stage modern and European. After the camp he went on acting and directing, and it was he who first brought Hamlet to the Ukrainian stage. In emigration he built Ukrainian theaters and staged plays banned at home, and his Memoirs preserved the truth about the Berezil and the artists who were repressed. Anyone who stays true to their calling even after the hardest trials follows his path.
