Fedir Stryhun, the Ukrainian actor and director who led the Maria Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv for more than three decades, died in Lviv on October 23, 2026. His son, the actor Nazar Stryhun, announced his death, saying he had died after a long illness. He was 86.
From Cherkasy to Lviv
Stryhun was born on November 1, 1939, in the village of Tomashivka, in the Uman district of what is now Cherkasy Oblast. He trained at the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv Institute of Theatre Arts, graduating in 1961, and began his career at the drama theatre in Zaporizhzhia. In 1965 he joined the Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv, the company he would serve for the rest of his working life.
More than 100 roles
On stage he played more than 100 parts, among them Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Richard III. In 1987 he became the theatre’s artistic director and chief director, staging productions including Haidamaky and Lina Kostenko’s Marusia Churai, and reviving the operettas of the Lviv composer Yaroslav Barnych. He also trained young actors at the Lviv Conservatory and Lviv University.
His film work included Annychka (1968), The Lost Letter (1972), Babylon XX (1979), The Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube (1986) and Stone Soul (1989).
Honours and family
Stryhun received the Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest award for the arts, in 1978, and was named People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR the following year. In 2017 he became an academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. His wife, the actress Taisiya Lytvynenko, also a star of the Zankovetska company, died in 2025. Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi offered his condolences to the family and the city’s theatre community.