Kote Marjanishvili

Director, the second Georgian theatre

1872–1933

Kote Marjanishvili (1872-1933) was born in Kvareli and took shape as a director in Russia: the Nezlobin troupe from 1906, the Moscow Art Theatre from 1910, where Stanislavsky invited him, and his own Free Theatre in 1913.

In 1922 he returned to what was by then Soviet Georgia and took charge of the Rustaveli Theatre. In 1926 he left it and put together a new company that worked in Kutaisi and Batumi: it became the Second State Georgian Theatre.

He died in Moscow in 1933. That second theatre now carries his name and works in Tbilisi.