Anna Alekseyevna Chelishcheva (, 7 April 1848,

Vladimir Vladimir (, , pre-1918 orthography: ) is a masculine given name of Slavic origin, widespread throughout all Slavic nations in different forms and spellings. The earliest record of a person with the name is Vladimir of Bulgaria (). Etymology ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

– 15 November 1934,

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

) – better known by her stage name of Anna Brenko ( А́нна Бренко́)– was a Russian

stage actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

theatrical Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communic ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...

, and

memoirist A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) ...

, honored in 1924 with the title of Meritorious Artist of the RSFSR.

Life

Brenko was born in

in 1848 and first worked as a teacher. She trained as an actress in

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

and married the music critic Iosif Levenson. She had made a name for herself at the Maly Theatre in

, where she organized concerts to gather funds for exiles in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. The banker Melkiel backed her plans and she launched the first ever Russian private theatre in 1880 (officially named the A.A. Brenko Drama Theatre, but popularly known as the Pushkin Theatre – for the simple reason that it was situated close to

Pushkin Square Pushkinskaya Square or Pushkin Square () is a pedestrian open space in the Tverskoy District in central Moscow. Historically, it was known as Strastnaya Square () before being renamed for Alexander Pushkin in 1937. It is located at the juncti ...

). Brenko paid much higher salaries, insisted on new scenery and three week rehearsals for productions that included works by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

and

Aleksandr Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (; ) was a Russian playwright, generally considered the greatest representative of the Russian realistic period. The author of 47 original plays, Ostrovsky "almost single-handedly created a Russian national repe ...

. Brenko shared management decisions with the actors Modest Pisarev and Vasily Andreyev-Burlak, although she had the final say. Brenko was driven by the artistic event and she was exploited by other actors and directors. The theatre folded for financial reasons in 1882 (to be later purchased by the entrepreneur

Fyodor Korsh The Russian Drama Korsh Theatre (), commonly known as the Korsh Theatre, was a theatre which functioned in Moscow, Imperial Russia from 1882 until 1917. It was named after its founder, entrepreneur Fyodor Korsh. After the 1917 Revolution it car ...

). Brenko went on to teach drama (in her own theatre college between 1890 and 1905) and in 1915 she opened the free Workers' Theatre where 25 plays were produced in the course of two years. In 1917, Brenko not only embraced the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

but enlisted, at the age of 69, in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

and performed, together with some of the actors in her troupe, at battle fronts.

Publications

Brenko authored four plays (1883–1916) and six books of memoirs (1924–1933).The Russian Theatre's Hisrotry
Театр и его история. Анна Алексеевна Бренко.

References

External links

/ Бренко А.А., архив. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brenko, Anna 1848 births 1934 deaths People from Vladimir, Russia Actresses from the Russian Empire Theatre managers and producers Memoirists from the Russian Empire Dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire Drama teachers Russian women memoirists