Sarafov, Krusto Petrov

Born Apr. 6, 1876, in Li-biakhovo, Blagoevgrad District; died Aug. 27, 1952, in Sofia. Bulgarian actor. People’s Artist of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1946). Member of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1946.

From 1895 to 1899, Sarafov studied at the St. Petersburg Theatrical School in P. D. Lenskii’s class. He debuted in Sofia in the troupe Tears and Laughter, in which he worked from 1899 to 1905. The following year he started periodically performing at the People’s Amateur Theater in Sofia. Sarafov both acted and directed in theaters in Ruse (1923–25), Burgas (1932–33), and Varna (1935–36). He played in almost all the theaters in Bulgaria and contributed to their creative growth by affirming the realistic and democratic traditions of the Bulgarian theater.

Sarafov successfully acted in roles that required a psychological understanding of the character; these roles included Prota-sov in L. Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse and the title roles in Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Rostov’s Golemanov. As a director, he was very particular in his choice of staging devices; among the works he staged were Musakov’s Dalila, Nemirov’s Dark Souls, and Sudermann’s Die Schmetterlingsschlacht.

In 1951 the Higher Institute of Theater Art in Sofia was named in honor of Sarafov. Sarafov was awarded the Dimitrov Prize in 1950.