Yanovych, Stepan

Yanovych, Stepan [Janovyč] (real surname: Kurbas), b 28 October 1862 in Kuropatnyky, Berezhany county, Galicia, d 10 September 1908 in Staryi Skalat, Skalat county, Galicia. (Photo: Stepan Yanovych.) Actor, singer (tenor), and stage director; father of Les Kurbas. In 1884–98 and 1900 he worked as an actor in the Ruska Besida Theater (from 1891 also as director), and in 1898–9 he led his own troupe (with Kost Pidvysotsky) in Kamianets-Podilskyi. As an actor he played a range of roles, from those in Ukrainian populist plays to those in classical operettas. As a director he staged Ivan Franko's Uchytel’ (The Teacher) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's Die Räuber (where he played the role of Karl Moor). He retired in 1902 as a result of illness.