Ilya Uralov

Ilya Matveyevich Konkov (; 1872 – 16 October 1920) was a Russian stage actor better known under his stage name Uralov (Уралов).

Biography Born in Orsk to the family of Orenburg Cossacks, Konkov spent his youth travelling all over Russia, undertaking menial jobs. While in Ashkhabad, in late 1890s he joined a visiting Ukrainian theatre troupe. In 1904 he was invited to the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in Saint Petersburg where he made himself a name in plays by Maxim Gorky, in particular, Summerfolk (as Dvoyetochiye, 1904) and Children of the Sun (Chepurnoy, 1905).

In 1907 Ilya Uralov (as he was now known) joined the Moscow Art Theatre where his premiere parts included Varlaam (in Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov, 1907), Someone in Grey (The Life of Man, 1907), the Mayor (Revizor, 1908), Bolshintsov (A Month in the Country, Ivan Turgenev, 1909) and Grigory (The Karamazov Brothers, after Dostoyevsky's novel, 1910). In 1911 Uralov left the theatre to join Alexandrinka; Stanislavsky later called MAT's decision to let him go a 'regrettable mistake'.