Turning the pages back... February 8, 1904 (02/07/99)

Turning the pages back...

February 8, 1904

Bohdan Pazdrii was active in Ukrainian theater for five decade in Ukraine and the diaspora. Pazdrii was born on February 8, 1904, in Nove Selo near Zbarazh, 20 miles west of Ternopil.

When he completed his two-year stint of military service in the Polish Army in 1926, Pazdrii took up acting and joined the Stanyslaviv Ukrainian Touring Theater headed by Ivan Kohutiak, then in 1928 jumped to the Prosvita Theater in Lviv for a year, before returning to Stanyslaviv for a longer collaboration with the Tobilevych Theater. There Pazdrii became an acolyte of Volodymyr Blavatsky, a veteran of the Berezil Theater. When Blavatsky left the Tobilevych to form the Zahrava Theater in Peremyshl in 1932, Pazdrii hesitated at first, but then followed his mentor the following year.

When Zahrava merged back with the Tobilevych troupe to form the Kotliarevsky Theater in 1938, Pazdrii began to try his hand at directing, taking charge of productions of Ivan Franko's "Ukradene Schastia" (Stolen Joy). When the Soviets occupied Galicia the following year, they forcibly merged several of the region's groups into the Lviv-based Lesia Ukrainka Theater (LUT), where Pazdrii witnessed acrimonious disputes between those who sought to remain true to artistic vision and those who buckled under the precepts of Stalinist socialist realism. However, Pazdrii's career did not come to a standstill. He branched out into film, appearing the Kyiv-produced "Dovbush" (1940).

When the Germans arrived in 1941, Blavatsky and Yosyp Hirniak (who returned to Galicia from Siberian exile) reorganized the LUT as the Lviv Opera Theater (LOT) and Pazdrii became an integral part of its productions, such as the first Ukrainian staging of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (Blavatsky took the title role), a treatment of Lesia Ukrainka's "Kaminnyi Hospodar" (The Stone Host) and Mykola Kulish's "Myna Mazailo."

In 1944 he fled along with most of the LOT's actors and directors and, in yet another reunion with Blavatsky, joined the Ensemble of Ukrainian Actors in West Germany.

Pazdrii emigrated to the U.S. in 1950, settling in Philadelphia, where he helped establish the Teatr u Piatnytsiu (Theater on Fridays). In 1970, he starred in the CanUkr Films production of "Nikoly Ne Zabudu" (I Will Never Forget). All told, Pazdrii appeared in over 130 roles in dramas, comedies, films and operettas. He died in Philadelphia on March 30, 1975.

Sources: "Pazdrii, Bohdan," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); "Pazdriy, Bohdan," Ukrainians in North America, Dmytro M. Shtohryn, ed. (Champaign, Ill.: Association for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, 1975).

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