Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko

Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , 1859-1943, Russian stage director, cofounder and director of the Moscow Art Theater . Prior to his historical meeting with Constantin Stanislavsky in 1897, he was an actor, war correspondent, novelist, music and drama critic, and playwright. After publication of his last novel, On the Steppes (1897), he devoted all his efforts to the Moscow Art Theatre, whose influence was felt throughout Europe and the United States.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1936, repr. with new introd. by J. Logan, 1968).

Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir Ivanovich (1859–1943), Russian dramatist and director, who worked under both the Imperialist and Soviet régimes. In his early years he wrote about a dozen light comedies, successfully produced at the Maly Theatre, and he was in charge of the Drama Course of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where Olga Knipper, Meyerhold, and Moskvin were among his pupils, when in 1897 a meeting with Stanislavsky resulted in the founding of the Moscow Art Theatre a year later. He was responsible for the literary quality of the theatre's repertory, as Stanislavsky was for the acting, and it was he who persuaded Chekhov to allow The Seagull to be revived after its disastrous first performance at the Alexandrinsky (later Pushkin) Theatre. He himself directed a number of the theatre's outstanding successes, both classic and modern, the last being Pogodin's play about Lenin, The Kremlin Chimes (1942).