Nemirovich-Danchenko School-Studio

Nemirovich-Danchenko School-Studio 

(full name, VI. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko School-Studio of the M. Gorky Moscow Art Theater of the USSR), the highest theatrical educational institution in Moscow. The school-studio was organized in 1943 to train actors using the ideological-creative principles of the school of the Art Theater and the system of K. S. Stanislavsky. I. M. Moskvin, N. P. Khmelev, V. G. Sakhnovskii, and I. Ia. Gremislavskii were important in its founding. The school has two departments—one to prepare actors for work in motion pictures and the theater and one to train stage designers and technicians; an evening division of the latter department was opened in 1961.

Outstanding teachers at the school have included M. N. Kedrov, V. Ia. Stanitsyn, A. K. Tarasova, V. O. Toporkov, I. M. Raevskii, V. A. Orlov, A. M. Karev, G. A. Gerasimov, B. I. Vershilov, and A. N. Gribov. The current teaching staff includes A. I. Stepanova, P. V. Massal’skii, O. N. Efremov, E. N. Mores, V. P. Markov, S. S. Piliavskaia, E. A. Evstigneev, V. V. Shverubovich, and professors V. Z. Radomyslenskii, A. Ia. Zis’, and V. Ia. Vilenkin.

The school has produced such highly qualified teachers as V. K. Moniukov, V. N. Bogomolov, I. M. Tarkhanov, O. G. Gerasimov, N. P. Alekseev, A. N. Petrova, O. Iu. Frid, M. M. Kunin, E. P. Freze, A. N. Ponsov, K. N. Golovko, and E. V. Radomyslenskii.

In the 1977–78 academic year the school-studio had 251 students and 57 teachers, including 11 professors and doctors of sciences and 21 docents and candidates of sciences. Graduates of the acting department, including A. V. Batalov, E. Ia. Urbanskii, L. I. Gubanov, and V. S. Davydov, have formed the core of the companies of the Moscow Art Theater, the Sovremennik Theater, and the young people’s New Drama Theater-Studio and have contributed several artists to the company of the Mayakovsky Theater and many theaters of Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities of the USSR.

The school has a scientific research section, which studies and publishes the legacy of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, the founders of the Moscow Art Theater. The section has prepared and published such works as The Collected Works of K. S. Stanislavsky (vols. 1–8, 1954–61), The Life and Works of K. S. Stanislavsky: A Chronicle in Four Volumes, 1863–1938 (1971–76), and The Days and Years of VI. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko: A Chronicle of His Life and Works (1962).

N. P. ALEKSEEV