Personalities of the Moscow Art Theatre

IT is at last definitely settled that the Moscow Art Theatre is to come to America. The final arrangements have been made with its American manager, Morris Gest, and the company left Moscow in early September for a preliminary tour in Europe. The Art Theatre is at present swinging around the circle of Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Paris and in December is to sail for the United States.

The New York engagement of this sober parent of Balieff's Chauve-Souris will begin shortly after New Year's; will continue eight weeks in a theatre still undetermined; will enlist the services of the two founders—Stanislavsky and Nemirovitch-Dantchenko—as well as the entire first line of the company, including Mme. KnipperTchehova, Maria Germanova, Vassily Katchaloff and Ivan Moskvin ; and will have a representative repertory picked from its twenty-four years of ceaseless activity, notably: "Tsar Fyodor Ivanovitch", a spectacular historical tragedy by Count Alexei Tolstoy, cousin to the author of "Redemption"; "The Lower Depths," by Gorky; "Uncle Vanya", "The Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard" by Tchekov, and special matinees made up of plays by Pushkin, Dostoievsky and Turgeney.

THE Moscow Art Theatre, which has been called "the world's first theatre" and "the greatest realistic acting company in the world" in coming to America is venturing out of Russia for only the second time in its long history. When it crossed the frontiers of Russia before—in 1906—it was to visit Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna. The motive back of that journey was to escape momentarily from the economic chaos and depression which ensued after the 1905 Revolution, just as one ol the reasons for the present tour is a vacation from the rigors of another post-revolutionary Moscow.

The American engagement of this extraordinary theatre will be unique in our annals as host to foreign artists of the stage. Heretofore we have imported and entertained individual players, playwrights, designers, directors,—or sometimes a celebrated actor or actress at the head of a more or less supporting company: Duse, Bernhardt, Irving, Terry, Coquelin, Salvini. But the Moscow Art Theatre comes to us as a grouo, as an institution,—as, in short, a complete theatre. It is the first time that we have picked up a cooperative group, where personalities count even less than in a jury room and transported it bodily overseas, seas.