Ivan Karpenko-Karyi

Ivan Karpovych Tobilevych, known by his pseudonym Karpenko-Karyi, was a Ukrainian writer, playwright, actor, and erudite. Some of Karpenko-Kary's plays were an important step forward in Ukrainian theatre. In them, he abandoned the sentimental populist-ethnographic approach and melodramatic, operatic forms; instead, he highlighted social relations and conflicts and concentrated on psychological portrayal and character development, thereby creating the finest examples of turn-of-the-century Ukrainian didactic plays about peasant life and laying the foundations of modern Ukrainian theatre.