Background
Nikolai Ivanovich Sobolshchikov-Samarin was born on March 28, 1868 in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation in a peasant family.
Nikolai Ivanovich Sobolshchikov-Samarin was born on March 28, 1868 in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation in a peasant family.
At an early age Nikolai Ivanovich began performing in amateur performances. Since 1883 he played and staged performances on the club stages of St. Petersburg and its suburbs. Since 1884 he performed in theaters of Petrozavodsk and Novgorod. In 1892 he was an actor and director of the St. Petersburg Vasileostrovsky Theater for Workers.
In August of the same year, he left for Nizhny Novgorod, where he performed on stage and directed (1892-1899), a year later Nikolai Ivanovich organized the Association of Artists on shares under his leadership. In 1897, he rented a new theater building and became an entrepreneur. In 1901-1907 he created an opera and drama troupe in Saratov and Kazan, touring with them in different cities of Russia. Nikolai Ivanovich held an enterprise in Astrakhan, worked as an entrepreneur in Rostov-on-Don for three years. He also worked in Tver, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinodar, Samara, Simbirsk, Tsaritsyn and Odessa (1917-1924), where the revolution found him.
In the spring of 1917, Nikolai Ivanovich opened the "Vronsobsam" theater of revolutionary satire in Odessa, and the miniatures "Smiles" in the summer. In 1921, after the departure of the interventionists, he was appointed director and chief director of the Odessa Theater. In 1924 he moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked the rest of his life as an actor, director, art director and consultant.