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Samuil Strashnov was born in Ukraine, and when he was three years old, his family moved to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. All in his future life was tied to this sunny city. At the age of seventeen Samuil had gone as volunteer to the front - there was a second world war. His destiny had returned him safe and whole to his homeland. As for his future career, he never had any doubts - young Samuil applied and was accepted at the Tashkent Theatrical Institute in the Stagecraft department.
Times were hard and from his first years he combined his studies with work at the Tashkent State Puppet Theatre. He learned not only in school, but also at the theatre from professional masters. Helping him to quickly master the rare trade of puppet making were a rare diligence, keenness and persistence, and a remarkable gift to "feel" a puppet. Not only once has it happened that an actor who has taken a puppet in his hands, could not easily work it, the puppet would not "obey" him. But as soon as it happened to come into the hands of Samuil, there was that which the great puppeteer Sergey Obraztsov had named the "miracle of the Puppet enlivening". The puppet in his hands "came to life", and it was as if it lived an independent one.
Because of festivals of puppet theatres and touring performances, his work soon became known and popular among many puppeteers of the former USSR. There were over one hundred state theatres in the USSR, and none of them had such a talented master of puppet making as the Tashkent Puppet Theatre.
Puppets were extraordinarily diverse: dimensional and flat, rod and glove, marionette and hand, big and small; they had various mechanisms: for opening the eyes and mouth, for movement of moustaches and ears, heads, and hands, with open and concealed control mechanisms. They were puppets of people and animals, reptiles and insects, and not only these. Could you imagine a puppet personifying the Sun, Water, and Wind, which come to life, move, and speak? And how about such characters as Accident or Greed, which not only come to life, but also vary in size during the course of a performance from twenty centimeters up to two meters? All of this was under the control of the remarkable master, and he always found the most impressive and expressive decision.
Strashnov's puppets were already shown many times at various exhibitions during festivals in Moscow and Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Kiev and Tbilisi, Riga and Chelyabinsk. There, they were also seen by foreign puppeteers who were guests of these festivals. Their attention was captured not only by the exotic character of the puppets created by the master from Uzbekistan, but also by the surprising skill to convey, with modest means, the main characteristics of the puppets unique personas.
By the time the film studio "Uzbekfilm" began to produce their doll animated films, the name Strashnov was already known even to many professionals of animation far from the borders of Uzbekistan. Not surprisingly, then, he was at once invited to work in a film studio. And in the first film, in the Square 6x6, all the uncommon skill of the gifted artist was exposed. The first film of the Uzbek animators put them on one level with the glorified animators from Moscow, Leningrad, the Baltic, Transcaucasia, and many more. And in it, there was a considerable role of very expressive and flexible dolls created by Strashnov. The boundless love to his craft, and the unusual diligence of the master stunned the imagination. For several decades he successfully combined his work at the theatre with his work in the film studio. And no director, no producer could complain of a lack of attention from the master.
Because of the theatre's performances abroad, and also because of theatrical and film festivals, Strashnov's puppets and dolls soon became known far outside the borders of the USSR. Performances of Simurg, Aldar-Kosae, Ognivo, Hodja Nasretdin, The Sleeping Beauty, The Star and Death of Hoakin Muryet, Gavrosch, Smile Àihon!, and Fairy Tales of Îlye-Lukoye were viewed by spectators not only of Moscow, Kiev, Kishenov, Frunze, Alma-Ata and other USSR cities, but also by spectators of Rangoon, Karachi, Lahore, Delhi, Udaipur, Calcutta, Bombay, Kabul, Paris, Sofia, Plovdiv, Gabrovo, Istanbul, Seoul, Hanover, Lubek, Munich, Vienna, Mistelbach, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Kingston, Washington and many other cities of the globe. At the international festivals in Moscow, Tashkent, Varna, Mistelbach, Paris, Delhi, Istanbul, and others, performances of the Tashkent theatre received recognition and diplomas of the recognized masters of the art of puppet theatre of many countries of the world. The unique expressiveness of Samuil Strashnov's puppets was always accentuated.
Not any lesser glory was received by the dolls of the animated films. These films participated in the international film festivals in Moscow, Tashkent, Berlin, Venice, Gabrovo, Istanbul, and more. It is enough to say that the film, Billiard Story, was awarded third place and the corresponding diploma at the international film festival in Turkey.
With his immigration to the USA in 1992, the master could not bury his talent and past experience. Soon he began actively participating in the work of a Russian puppet theatre, "Rainbow", and also an American marionette theatre, "The Puppet Parlor Theatre", in Chicago.
He left life so early, hardly having celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday, but the bright legacy of his creativity continues to live in many doll and puppet museums of the world. In Tashkent and Moscow, Plovdiv and Varna, Udaipur and Calcutta, Lubek and Huzum, Vienna and Seattle remarkable creations of the talented master, Samuil Strashnov, have settled forever.
New York, NY, September 2002.