Background
ORLENEV, Pavel was born on March 6, 1869 in Moscow. Son of a merchant.
ORLENEV, Pavel was born on March 6, 1869 in Moscow. Son of a merchant.
Studied at drama courses, Moscow Maly Theater.
1881 stage debut with Moscow Artistic Circle. 1886 performed at Maly Theater. 1886-1887 worked for Pushkin-Chekrygin Company, Vologda.
1888-1893 acted in various towns and performed with dacha theaters such as the “Ozerki” Theater near Saint St. Petersburg. 1893-1895 actor, Korsh Theater, Moscow. 1895—1902 (with intervals) with Theater of Literature and Art Social, Saint St. Petersburg.
Then strolling actor. Toured various cities with itinerant drama companies. Tried to establish public theaters for peasantry.
1910 organized free shows for peasants at Golitsyn, near Moscow. Organized open-air shows at Vostryakov near Moscow. Toured abroad: 1904 in Berlin.
1905 in London; 1905-1906 and 1911 — 12 in America. 1908 in Sweden; 1915 in Norway. Specialized in comic simpleton, vaudeville and character roles.
Roles: the Cobbler’s Apprentice in Mansfel’d's South mesta v kar’yer (Making a Career) (1888). Stepan in Babetskiy’s Shkol" naya para (The School Couple) (1891). Fyodor Slezkin in Ludvigov-Mayevskiy’s Nevpopad (Out of Place) (1896).
Jacko in Gay’s “Trilby” (1896). Title role in A.K. Tolstoy's “Tsar’ Fyodor lonnovich" (1898). Raskol’nikov in Preslupleniye i nakazaniye (Crime and Punishment) (1899) and Dmitriy Karamazov in Brat’ya Karamazovy (The Brothers Karamazov) (1900), after Dostoyevsky.
Lorenzaccio in Alfred de Musset’s “Lorenzaccio” (1900). Arnold in Hauptmann’s “Michael Kramer” (1901). Oswald in Ibsen’s “Ghosts” (1903).
Brand in Ibsen’s “Brand” (1907). Paul I in Merezhkovskiy’s Pavel I (Paul I) (1902). Rozhnov in Krylov’s Gore-zloschast’ye (Misfortune) (1902).
Nakhnan in Chirikov’s Yevrei (The Jews) (1904), et cetera