 Orphaned at the age of eleven, he found salvation in the theatre, and at fourteen he began to work in the Mariinsky Theatre.In 1928 he joined a group of young actors in the Guild of Experimental Drama; after its dissolution he joined a traveling agitprop theater for which he began to write plays.He moved to Moscow in 1930; in 1935 he wrote the play "Dal'nyaya doroga" (A long road) and in 1939 "Tanya", his two most successful plays.