Moscow Art Theater, Second

(second MkhAT), a Soviet Russian theater that was in operation from 1924 to 1936. It was an expansion of the first MKhAT studio, which had been organized in 1912 by K. S. Stanislavsky and L. A. Sulerzhitskii. Those who worked in the studio and later in the second MKhAT included B. M. Sushkevich, M. A. Chekhov, A. D. Dikii, S. V. Giatsintova, S. G. Birman, M. A. Durasova, A. I. Cheban, V. V. Gotovtsev, O. I. Pyzhova, I. N. Bersenev, L. I. Deikun, V. A. Popov, and N. N. Bromlei.

From 1924 to 1927 the theater was headed by M. A. Chekhov. Among the productions staged were Leskov’s The Embezzler (1924), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1924), Belyi’s Petersburg (1925), The Flea (1925, an adaptation of a story by Leskov), and Faiko’s Evgraf, the Adventurer (1926, the first production dealing with a contemporary theme).

In 1928 a group of actors headed by A. D. Dikii left the theater. In that same year, M. A. Chekhov went abroad and I. N. Bersenev took over management of the theater. The staging of Afinogenov’s play The Eccentric in 1929 was a great artistic and ideological achievement. Some of the other important works staged were an adaptation of Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs (1929), A. N. Tolstoy’s Peter I (1930), an adaptation of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Liberator’s Ghost (1931), an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Insulted and Injured (1932), Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1933), A. K. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1934), Fletcher’s The Spanish Curate (1934), and Deval’s A Prayer for the Living (1935).