Arus Voskanyan

Arus Voskanyan — Biography

Born Arusyak Darbasyan in Istanbul on 28 April 1889, Arus Voskanyan spent her formative years in Ankara before making her stage debut in Constantinople in 1908. In 1910 she moved to the Caucasus, joining an Armenian theatrical troupe in Baku, where she became known for playing Ophelia and Desdemona in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello and married fellow company actor Iosif Voskanyan.

She relocated to Tiflis in 1917 and then to Yerevan in 1921, going on to become one of the leading actresses of the city's First State Theatre, later renamed the Sundukyan Armenian Theatre. Critics credited her with bringing a modern sensibility to classic roles ranging from Antigone and Ibsen's Nora to Lady Macbeth and Rachel in Gorky's Vassa Zheleznova, and in 1935 she was named a People's Artist of the Armenian SSR. Voskanyan died of typhoid fever in Yerevan on 20 July 1943.