The Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute or simply The Vakhtangov School is a state educational establishment of higher education. It means that applicants of every year have a unique opportunity to study for free, at the expense of the government financing.
Of course, it’s not simple to become our student. One has to go a long way from the first auditions to the final creative contest and the last entrance examination. Every year a lot of applicants from different cities of Russia come to the doors of the Institute and by the beginning of July they know who of them are chosen. Every year out of 5000 applicants from 30 to 80 are enrolled at the Acting Department and 20-25 are enrolled at the Directing Department. Of course, they are not only from Moscow. If we take a map of our country and mark all cities and regions from which our students come, the map will be all covered with marks. Students come from Saint-Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Smolensk, Tula, Vladivostok, Krasnodar, Omsk, Perm, Kaliningrad etc. In our school we also used to have foreign students: from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Korea, USA, France, Germany, Israel, UK.
We can prove that The Vakhtangov School is alive by the fact that our graduates work in the best theatres of Russia. It won't be a mistake to say that it's hard to find a single theatre in Russia where our graduates do not work. A lot of them start doing films, participating in film and theatre festivals and getting their first awards and prizes when studying in the school.
Though Institute has the status of a State educational establishment the quantity of students at the Acting Department, for instance, is not very big. We know each other in person and try to live as a family. All winnings and troubles of the students and graduates are our winnings and troubles. We are always happy to see them again in the school and they know it. Years pass, the graduates obtain scenic experience, they want to share their professional knowledge and they come back in a different quality - they become teachers of our school!
