Moscow Art Theater School

The school-studio was opened at the Moscow Art Theater in 1943. The initiator of its creation was Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, one of the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre. On March 21, 1943, the leaders of the Moscow Art Theater met at Vladimir Ivanovich’s apartment: “I invited you to talk about the school.” The idea that he proposed was in essence the testament of the great director and teacher: on April 25, Nemirovich-Danchenko died. On April 26, the Council of People's Commissars decided to perpetuate his memory, and the Decree contained a clause on the founding of a Studio School named after him at the Art Theater. The competition in the summer of 1943 was held in the theater, in the lower foyer, at a long table, as examiners sat the great "founding fathers" - Moskvin, Kachalov, Knipper-Chekhova. Vasily Grigorievich Sakhnovsky became the first rector (Knipper-Chekhova jokingly, but seriously called this director and brilliant theatrical thinker the only truly intelligent person in the Soviet Art Theater. Nemirovich-Danchenko managed to rescue him from exile, return him to the rehearsals of Hamlet). The official opening took place on October 20, 1943. Speaking to the first students, the head of the Art Theater Khmelev cited the words of Nemirovich-Danchenko that sunk into him: “I would give all my strength only to school, because it is of great importance for art ... I would devote the rest of my life to this ". The basis for teaching acting at the School was the Stanislavsky system, aimed at instilling in the actor the keenest sense of living life on stage, the truth of organic acting and spiritual skill.