Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko

Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko (Russian: Владимир Иванович Немирович-Данченко; 23 December [O.S. 11 December] 1858 – 25 April 1943, Moscow) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, writer, pedagogue, playwright, producer and theatre administrator, who founded the Moscow Art Theatre with his colleague, Konstantin Stanislavski, in 1898.

Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko was born into a mixed Ukrainian-Armenian family in the village of Shemokmedi near Ozurgeti (Georgia). His father was an officer of the Russian army, and his mother, Alexandra Yagubyan (1829–1914), was an Armenian. He went to high school in Tbilisi, continuing hid education at Moscow State University (physical-mathematical and juridical departments 1876–1879). In 1879 he left the University for the theatre, starting as a theatre critic, and in 1881, his first play "Dog-rose", which was staged in one year by Maly Theatre, was published. He was a teacher of Moskvin, Knipper and Meyerhold. In 1919 he established the Musical Theatre of the Moscow Art Theatre, which was reformed into the Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre in 1926. In 1943 Nemirovich-Danchenko established the Moscow Art Theatre School, which is still extant. He died of a heart attack on 25 April 1943, aged 84, in Moscow.

Nemirovich-Danchenko's Moscow Art Theatre staged Chekhov and Gorky drama with theretofore unknown naturalism and full expression. In addition, his theatre presented highly acclaimed Dostoevsky and Tolstoy dramatizations. It has been said that "If Stanislavsky was the soul of Art Theatre, then Nemirovich was its heart".

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