Anna Brenko


Anna Alekseyevna Chelishcheva – better known by her stage name of Anna Brenko – was a Russian stage actress, theatrical entrepreneur, playwright, and memoirist, honored in 1924 with the title of Meritorious Artist of the RSFSR.

Life

Brenko was born in Vladimir in 1848 and first worked as a teacher. She trained as an actress in St Petersburg and married the music critic Iosif Levenson.
Having made a name for herself at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, where she organized concerts to gather funds for exiles in Siberia. The banker Melkiel backed her plans and she launched the first ever Russian private theatre in 1880. Brenko paid much higher salaries, insisted on new scenery and three week rehearsals for productions that included works by William Shakespeare and Aleksandr Ostrovsky.
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.
Brenko went on to teach drama 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 but enlisted, at the age of 69, in the Red Army and performed, together with some of the actors in her troupe, at battle fronts.
Brenko authored four plays and six books of memoirs.