Actor, entrepreneur, playwright. The organizer of the Russian-Ukrainian professional troupe, managed the amateur theater in Kremenchuk.
Hryhoriy Andriyovych Ashkarenko was born in 1856 in Kremenchuk on the Dnieper. In 1880, he founded the first professional drama troupe in Kremenchuk (and one of the first in Ukraine).
Mykola Sadovskyi and Marko Kropyvnytskyi, the great actors of that time, worked in the troupe of Grigoriy Andriyovych Ashkarenko (one of the “rested in God” cinemas in Kremenchuk was named in honor of the latter, it now houses the pasta shop of a private enterprise). In 1880-1890, the theater group from Kremenchuk toured not only in the Poltava province, but also in many cities and towns of Ukraine. The troupe was one of the first on the left bank to stage plays on Ukrainian themes, the author of which was Hryhoriy Ashkarenko, a resident of Kremenchug. Based on his own and borrowed plots, he wrote the plays “The Witch of Konotop” (1889), “The Queen’s Shoes, or Bloody Wakes” and “A Native Mother is Worse than a Stepmother” (both plays in 1891), in 1896 he the play “Okazia with the centurion Yarema”, and in 1897 – the play “Marusya”. Drama with songs, choirs and dances “Who to judge?” Ashkarenko staged together with his colleague Ivan Togobochny.
In 1908, Ashkarenko published “Memories of the First Ukrainian Troupe” in the Kyiv magazine “Native Land”. One of the founders of this magazine was the Ukrainian writer, Panas Yakovych Rudchenko, who was closely associated with the Poltava region in his life and work, who published under the Ukrainianized pseudonym Panas Mirnyi.
Hryhoriy Andriyovych Ashkarenko died half-forgotten.
Source: Wikipedia (access: https://uk.wikipedia.org/)