Йосип Гірняк

Activity: Culture

Date of Birth: April 14, 1895

Date of Death: January 17, 1985

Navigator: World Wars

Ukrainian theater actor and director. Author of the memoir Memoirs about life behind the scenes of the “Berezil” Theater.

Yosyp Hirniak, the son of a modest church cantor, became interested in theater from an early age. At the age of ten, he first visited the “Ruska Besida” Theater in Kolomyia, where he saw the play The Master based on the drama by Ivan Karpenko-Karyi — an experience that influenced the rest of his life.

In 1914, Hirniak himself joined the company of the “Ruskyi Theater.” A year later, he volunteered for the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and became part of the USS Theater troupe in Lviv under the direction of Yevhen Kokhanenko. In 1919, after the end of the First World War, Hirniak moved to Kyiv and met Les Kurbas, who completely transformed his traditional understanding of theater.

This acquaintance marked the beginning of a long collaboration: first Hirniak performed at Kurbas’s “Young Theater,” and later joined his “Berezil” Theater. On the Berezil stage, Hirniak’s talent fully blossomed: he possessed a remarkable gift for transformation, performing both tragic and comic roles without being limited to a specific acting type. Hirniak appeared in three landmark Berezil productions based on plays by Mykola Kulish: People’s Malakhii, Myna Mazailo, and Maklena Grasa — all of which faced opposition from the Soviet authorities and were eventually banned in Soviet Ukraine.

In 1933, dark times came for Berezil. Les Kurbas was arrested, and widespread repression against Ukrainian cultural figures began. Hirniak himself was also arrested; however, he was fortunate to receive a relatively short prison sentence and survived the Gulag. In the camp, he became friends with Ostap Vyshnia, an experience he later described in detail in his memoirs.

After regaining his freedom, Hirniak moved to Galicia in 1941 and continued his theatrical work at the Lviv Opera Theater. There, for the first time on the Ukrainian stage, he directed a production of Hamlet, dedicating it to his executed friends Les Kurbas and Mykola Kulish. Audiences were also able to see the already banned Myna Mazailo, as well as The Stone Host by Lesya Ukrainka and The Siege by Yurii Kosach.

In the spring of 1944, Yosyp Hirniak emigrated with his wife, actress Olimpiia Dobrovolska, first to Austria and then to Germany, where he worked for some time in a displaced persons camp theater. In 1946, he founded his own theater studio, with which he toured Europe staging plays by Ukrainian authors banned in their homeland. From 1947 onward, he lived in New York, where he remained until the end of his life. There he founded and headed the Ukrainian Theater in America and also began work on his Memoirs, published in the United States in 1982. For Hirniak, it was a matter of honor to tell future generations in as much detail as possible about his repressed friends and colleagues and about the work of the Ukrainian theater.

Throughout his life, Yosyp Hirniak performed more than 170 theater roles and directed 65 productions. He also appeared in the film Vendetta (1924), directed by Les Kurbas at the Odesa film studio of VUFKU. From 1956 onward, he worked as an announcer and producer for the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty. He died at the age of 93 in New York and was buried at the Ukrainian Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Philadelphia.

Author: Olha Herasymenko