“Russia’s most famous drama school, the Moscow Art Theater School, will graduate its first class of Americans on Monday, including six alumni of the LaGuardia High School for the performing arts in Manhattan. The drama school is the training grounds for the Moscow Art Theater, where Konstantin Stanislavsky developed his famous method for actors and where most of Chekhov’s classic plays, including The Cherry Orchard, were first staged… In a kind of extreme form of Stanislavsky method acting – which is based on personal experience and immersion in emotional depths – the LaGuardia students came to Moscow as teenagers in 2001 with no Russian language skills and no ties to the country but a love of theater and a passionate Soviet émigré acting teacher who inspired their leap of faith.”