Theater-Studio

a group of artists organized to provide training in acting skills, conduct experiments in theater techniques, and stage plays. A theater-studio usually consists of people who share the same world view and aesthetic aims. In prerevolutionary Russia, certain theater-studios were attached to major theaters and developed the artistic principles of the particular theater, while others were organized independently to explore new methods of stage expression.

Theater-studios flourished in the first years of the development of the Soviet theater. These included the M. N. Ermolova Studio, the theater-studios under the direction of Iu. A. Zavadskii, R. N. Simonov, N. P. Khmelev, and A. D. Dikoi in Moscow and of S. E. Radlov in Leningrad, and several studios of Soviet nationalities in Moscow and in the republics of the USSR. Several theaters were organized on the basis of theater-studios, for instance, the studios of the Moscow Art Theater. The Young Actors’ Studio was founded in Moscow in 1956 and became the Sovremennik Theater in 1957.