Georges Pitoëff — stage director, actor and designer with roots in the Russian Empire
Georges Pitoëff was born Gevorg Ovanesovich Pitoyan in Tiflis, in the Russian Empire, now Tbilisi in Georgia, on 4 September 1884, into a prominent family of Armenian origin; his father was director of the theatre of Tiflis. He studied at Moscow University from 1902 to 1904 and at the St Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers, then law at the University of Paris from 1905 to 1908, where he acted in Russian amateur theatricals.
His meeting with the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya, whom he followed to St Petersburg, decided his vocation. From 1908 to 1912 he acted with Pavel Gaideburov's touring company, studied in 1911 at Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's school at Hellerau, and from 1912 to 1914 ran his own theatre in St Petersburg. In 1914 he settled in Switzerland, and in July 1915 married Ludmilla de Smanov, also from Tiflis, who became the leading actress of his company.
In Geneva they founded a troupe that from 1918 played in the municipal hall of Plainpalais. They took part in the first production of Stravinsky and Ramuz's The Soldier's Tale in Lausanne in 1918, staged Swiss plays and introduced audiences to Chekhov and Ibsen. In 1922, finding little support in Geneva, the company moved to Paris, playing first at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées and then at several theatres, including Jacques Copeau's Vieux-Colombier, before settling at the Théâtre des Mathurins in 1934.
In 1927 Pitoëff founded, with Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin and Gaston Baty, the Cartel des Quatre, an alliance of directors dedicated to renewing the French theatre. In nearly two hundred productions he worked as translator, designer, director and actor, though his strong accent limited him on stage. He was known above all for introducing contemporary foreign playwrights to France: his 1923 production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author was the first successful French staging, and he directed and acted in Chekhov's The Seagull and Three Sisters, Ibsen, and a notable Saint Joan by Shaw, as well as plays by Schnitzler, O'Neill and young French writers such as Cocteau and Anouilh.
Pitoëff died near Geneva on 17 September 1939, aged fifty-five. Ludmilla continued the company after his death, and their son Sacha Pitoëff became a noted director and actor.
"Studied in Paris (1905–08) and worked in St Petersburg until 1914; settled in Switzerland in 1914–15 and in Paris from 1922."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Tiflis, Tiflis Governorate (now Tbilisi, Georgia)
Born Gevorg Ovanesovich Pitoyan in Tiflis in 1884, the son of the director of the Tiflis theatre, of Armenian origin, he studied in Moscow and St Petersburg and founded his own theatre in St Petersburg in 1912 before leaving Russia.
.svg?width=900)
Tiflis, Tiflis Governorate (now Tbilisi, Georgia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.