Tovstonogov Georgy

Georgy Tovstonogov (1915–1989) was a Russian-Georgian theatre director. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR (1957), Doctor of Arts (1969), and a People's Artist of Georgia (1974). He was born in Tbilisi, into a family of engineers. His mother was Georgian—Tamar Papitashvili. He began his theatrical career in 1931 in Tbilisi as an actor and assistant director at the Russian Theatre for Young Audiences. In this theatre, he directed his first play—N. Gogol's The Government Inspector (1934), then moved to Moscow, where he graduated in 1938 from A. Lunacharsky’s Institute of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography. That same year, he returned to Tbilisi and worked as the director of the A. Griboedov Russian Theatre in Tbilisi until 1946. Among the plays he staged there were S. Naydionov's The Children of Vanyushin (1939), N. Pogodin's The Kremlin Courtiers (1946), and others. From 1939 to 1946, he also taught at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute in Tbilisi.

In 1946, he left Georgia. Between 1946 and 1949, he worked at the Moscow Central Children’s Theatre. From 1956, he became the chief director of the M. Gorky State Academic Drama Theatre in Leningrad. Notable productions by G. Tovstonogov include Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1957, 1966), M. Gorky’s Barbarians (1959) and The Lower Depths (1966; The Lower Depths was also staged in 1968 at the Rustaveli Theatre), A. Griboedov’s Woe from Wit (1962), Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1965) and others.

G. Tovstonogov passed away in Leningrad. He was buried in the Necropolis of Artists at the Tikhvin Cemetery in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.