Nikolai Gritsenko
People’s Artist of USSR, laureate of State Prize of the USSR and the Russian FederationNikolai Gritsenko was born on July 24, 1912 at Ukraine, in the Donbass region.He graduated from the Makeevsk Civil Engineering in 1931.He worked as a technician, foreman on the railroad, then the technician, supervisor of buildings and structures, the designer at the factory “Steel” (Makeev Metallurgical Plant named after SM Kirov).He enrolled to the Theatre Department of Makeevsk Music and Drama workers’ school.In the early 1930s, came to Moscow and entered the Moscow Art Theater School, then moved to the theater school at the Theatre of the Red Army, then – to Vakhtangov School, where he graduated from in 1940.He worked in the theater of Eugen. Vakhtangov from 1940 to 1979.Creative formation of N. O. Gritsenko was made under supervision of A. Buchma, V. Kachalov, N. Khmeleva, B. Shchukin. In the studio, he played the violin in a dramatization of the story Khalyavkin Chekhov’s ‘The Tenant’, then it has always played a “number” in concerts on stage.The artist of wide range with a rare gift of inner and outer transformation, he possessed a bright, generous imagination. Gritsenko had exceptionally scenic courage and ingenuity of artistic techniques. RN Simonov, artistic director of the Vakhtangov theater actor-colleagues came to see “how it works,” Nikolai Gritsenko, admiring his “surprise” at every performance. He had the ability to develop the image in detail, to bring together organically in the nature of the opposite traits. He was called a “theater in the theater.”Nikolai Gritsenko died on December 8, 1979.
