Graduation performances, completing the pedagogical process at the Vakhtangov Theater School, have been staged since 1939 (after the new school building with a well-equipped Student theatre was built in 1937).
Today, the Student theatre is a division of the Institute, in which a team of professionals works: set designers, make-up artists, costume designers, lighting, sound artists, technicians... All of them produce graduation performances together with directors-teachers. For many years, the Student theatre has been preserving the traditions laid down by the older generation of Vakhtangov’s followers: first-year students technically serving the performances of the fourth, final, courses.
The main goal of the graduation shows is to maximize the creative individuality of each student, and many performances cope with this task brilliantly, presenting the Moscow audience with well-equipped young and talented actors.
In the long history of the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute, there are also examples of how outstanding performances were born on the student stage, and "the whole of Moscow came to see them"; it was at the Shchukin school that the life of the Taganka Theater began (the play "The Good Man from Sezuan" by Yuri Lyubimov was the graduation thesis of 1964), drama theaters of the Republic of Tuva and Ingushetia, the Moldovan theater "Luchaferul" and many others.
The repertoire of the Student Theater is updated annually, and Russian and foreign plays, musicals, vaudevilles and operettas are staged at each course…
The school today is full of creative forces and energy, as in those days when great artists – Vakhtangov students - taught within its walls.
