Moscow Academic Art Theater’s Studio School offered its Laboratory Classes in Tomsk on March 23-24

4 april 2022

Moscow Academic Art Theater’s Studio School goes to Siberia. Discovering new names! is the name of a project that introduced Tomsk’s residents to an exhibition featuring works by students of the School’s Department of Stage Design and Theater Technology, along with a concert titled The White Square put on by the class led by Igor Zolotovitsky and Sergey Zemtsov (Year 4 acting class), and the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream based on the comedy by William Shakespeare and directed by Anton Kiselius.

The Laboratory offered acting and stage speech master classes led by the professors of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School specially designed for Tomsk’s budding professional actors. The Laboratory’s final event included first-round auditions for aspiring Tomsk students wishing to enroll in the acting course at the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School.

The Laboratory offered by the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School was organized with the support of SIBUR within the framework of its social investment program, the Formula for Good Deeds.

The first event that took place on March 23 in the Tomsk theater’s building was a series of master classes for professional actors. The project was opened with the master class on Basic Elements of Stanislavsky's System: Attention and Partnership, presented by Ilya A. Bocharnikovs, Vice Dean of the Acting Department:

The master class was built around some kind of provocation, as we wanted to make its participants to think back about their own university years. During the class’s first five minutes, they seemed to be very skeptical and were sizing me up with suspicion, but afterwards they got so carried away that appeared to have stopped even thinking about who of us was a teacher and who was an actor. We really had a good time, and I hope they had fun, too, because that’s what I myself got for sure during that hour and a half, Ilya Bocharnikovs noted after the master class.

The next to follow was a master class on Breathing, resonance, and diction delivered by Alexandra Nikolayeva, Associate Professor of the Stage Speech and Voice Training Department at the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School. The class was attended by more than 20 actors of Tomsk’s professional theaters and troupes.

As part of the Laboratory, a press conference for journalists representing various media outlets was held to present a project titled Moscow Academic Art Theater’s School goes to Siberia. Discovering new names! The press conference was attended by Igor Zolotovitsky, Rector of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School, Vladimir Pleshkov, General Director of Tomskneftekhim, Ilya Bocharnikovs, Deputy Dean of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School’s Acting Department, Olga Nevolina, Dean of the Department of Stage Design and Theater Technology, and A.I. Fokin, Dean of the Production Department. Speaking at the press conference, Igor Zolotovitsky noted that the project sought to showcase all the departments of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School to its prospective students from Tomsk, including its Acting Department, the Department of Stage Design and Theatre Technology, and the Production Department, through its shows, exhibition displays, lectures, and master classes. This is expected to offer potential applicants from Tomsk and Tomsk Oblast a chance to better understand themselves and think about their future:

We are very grateful to all the enterprising people behind this who have made this event possible. SIBUR's social investment program is about investing in our future, in changing the country’s cultural landscape, Igor Zolotovitsky commented.

Vladimir Pleshkov pointed out that its support for educational and cultural projects had always been one of the top priorities of SIBUR’s social investment program:

We believe that culture is capable of making a significant and systemic contribution to our city’s steady development, to improving the level of comfort of its environment and the quality of local life. By implementing our projects in this area, we are trying to introduce local residents to the best practices of cultural life. We choose as our long-term partners some of the most illustrious and respected institutions such as the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School.

After the press conference, Igor Zolotovitsky and Olga Nevolina attended the opening of the exhibition of students’ works:

The exhibitions that we hold in Russia’s regions are especially important and interesting for us. Regional theaters tend to have the most acute demand for creative talent. And we try to do our best to meet this demand by running professional development programs for employees of regional theaters and various advanced training programs. About half of our students come to us from a variety of different Russian cities. We hope that Tomsk’s young spectators will be inspired by our exhibition. It is often exhibitions such as this that help them discover their calling, Olga Nevolina noted.

After the White Square concert had drawn to a close, all interested spectators who gathered in the Grand Hall of the Tomsk Drama Theater could take part in a discussion with the actors and professors of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School offering them a unique chance to ask all of their questions about the show and the learning process at the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School. At the end of the meeting the school’s students shared what cities of Russia each of them came from. It turned out that more than half of the class came from Russia’s outlying regions. The final day of the Laboratory was dedicated to holding the 1st round of auditions for applicants from Tomsk and Tomsk Oblast wishing to enroll in the Acting Department of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School. The auditions supervised by the faculty of Igor Zolotovitsky’s and S. I. Zemtsov’s class were held in the Governor's College of Social and Cultural Technologies and Innovations. Based on the results of the first round of auditions, 7 applicants from Tomsk went through to the Acting Department’s second round of auditions.

In addition, the Governor's College of Social and Cultural Technologies and Innovations became a venue for a lecture given by A.I. Fokin, Dean of the Production Department, intended for future theater managers, and a lecture given by Olga Nevolina, Dean of the Department of Stage Design and Theatre Technology, put on for aspiring stage designers. A total of more than 40 prospective students of the Moscow Art Theater’s Studio School from Tomsk took part in the lab’s events.

Here are some excerpts from the feedback offered by the events’ participants:

These were some very useful career guidance lectures. They helped us understand what it is that they teach at the Production Department and the Department of Stage Design and Theater Technology. We are going to send our applications there this year and will try to prove our worth!

I had been to lots of different meetings focusing on the process of admission to universities of culture and to other institutions of learning, but these ninety minutes were the most useful and detailed of them all. I will definitely be looking forward to an opportunity to travel to Moscow this year to take my entrance exams there because I am a senior in an art college and I want to continue studying culture management.

The Moscow Academic Art Theater’s Studio School goes to Siberia. Discovering new names! project included a survey of the theater-going audiences in the Tomsk region. To that end, more than 300 spectators attending the White Square and A Midsummer Night's Dream production were polled right in the hall of the Tomsk Drama Theatre. Further analysis of their answers to the questionnaire will help better understand the interests and preferences of theater lovers and to develop new socio-cultural projects and build more effective communication with audiences in the future.