Ippolit Novsky and Vladimir Pollak: In Love with Theatre (Biographical Materials)

Ippolit Novsky and Vladimir Pollak are the names that will say nothing to modern theatergoers, and even those experts who know the theatrical past of our country well may hardly recollect them. Nevertheless, these two made their contribution to the development of Russian theatrical art. Educated, multi-talented, antiquity experts, they, unfortunately, did not leave any memoirs. Even their letters are almost not survived to our days. The Soviet history of the 1930s knows many similar examples. That time, when people had to destroy their priceless records, personal correspondence, their own memories, can be called the New Middle Ages. Unfortunately, that fully affected our heroes, especially V. Pollak, who was an assistant director in the V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Leningrad Drama Theater in the 1960s.

Otherwise, we would surely know much more about their lives and companionship. And the people around them were more than worthy of our notice.

Hereditary nobleman Ippolit Petrovich Semenovsky (pseudonym — Novsky) was a close friend of E.B. Vakhtangov and B.M. Sushkevich; together with the collaboration of B.M. Sushkevich and N.N. Bromley, he shared their Leningrad creative period. He played first in the Moscow Art Thea­ter, and then on the stage of the A.S. Pushkin Leningrad State Academic Drama Theater, taught ac­ting at the Cent­ral Theater School, in the workshops of B.M. Sush­kevich and E.I. Time, and at the Kare­lian-Finnish Studio.

During the siege of Leningrad, I.P. Novsky was working on the radio, and the works of Russian classics in his performance supported the strength and hope of the Leningraders. I.P. Novsky and V.M. Pollak had to go through many dramatic events, but they retained their devotion and deep love for the theater. They were among those inconspicuous but indispensable servants of Melpomene.

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