Let me start by saying...I hate writing about myself. Especially in the first person...
I was born and raised in New York City, and started acting at a very young age. Upon finishing 8th grade, I auditioned for and was accepted to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts, knowing full well I was making a life choice to pursue acting as my career. After graduating from the Drama Department in 2000, I was invited to travel to Moscow with a group of my classmates from LaGuardia to participate in a great experiment; the first ever, full time, four year American course of students to study and graduate from the Moscow Art Theater School. To date, it has been the only one.
After we graduated in 2005, we formed Studio Six Theater Company, taking our name as the sixth studio from the Moscow Art studio tradition. To think we share a lineage with people like Michael Chekhov (the first studio) is astounding to me, and a reputation we will forever be struggling to live up to. It is at once a great honor and a great responsibility.
After our inaugural season in Moscow, I was invited to stay on at the Moscow Art Theater School as a simultaneous interpreter, a position that soon developed into 'teaching assistant'. Since then, I have acted and directed on both continents, in both languages, in multiple Russian and American theaters (please, don't make me list them...). I have worked as an assistant director/teacher on diploma shows and scene work at the school. In 2008 I returned to Moscow to officially continue my training as a future teacher/director with a Masters degree in Acting (Магистратура). I will graduate with my second degree of higher education from The Moscow Art Theater School in winter of 2010.
I have been a junior teacher at the Stanislavsky Summer School in Cambridge, MA, given seminars at Skidmore University, been a guest lecturer at Peachcraft Acting Studios in New Jersey, and led workshops at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.
And all the while trying to keep my butt onstage...
The dream is to follow in my teacher's footsteps, being at once a successful actor, teacher, and director...to serve the theater on both continents.
People ask me "Who do you consider yourself to be? Are you a teacher? Are you a director? Are you an actor?"
My answer is always first and foremost an actor, but I always find that such questions and such answers can have the effect of limiting oneself....And who wants to do that, anyway?
-A
