VAKHTANGOV THEATER

26, Arbat Ul.

Metro: Arbatskaya

Tel: 241-1679

Despite hard times in Russia's impoverished world of education, the Moscow Committee on Culture has decided to send some rubles to Russia's leading, but ailing, student theater organization at Moscow State University (MGU).

For starters, they are building a new student theater in Park Kultury, a move which, university officials say, will bring more attention to the 200-year-old company, once belonging solely to the university, and not the city at large.

Now to be renamed the "Rolan Bykov Moscow Open Student Theater", or "MOST", the new theater hopes to rekindle an old tradition in the former Soviet Union, that of cultivating national talent on student stages.

Like most theater organizations in the former Soviet Union, the MGU's student collective was teetering from budget cuts and suffering from an image problem. With only a few dollars in the bank account, university officials were forced to find funding elsewhere. More importantly, the once famous theater organization was running out of steam. Its national prestige, they say glumly, was not what it once was.

The city had no qualms about bailing it out. Moscow Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, arrived for the December ceremonies at the old theater, at the Dom Kultury in the grounds of the university, to cut the ribbon together with MGU rector, Vasen Zasurski.

He told a story that everyone knew: how Mark Zaharov, the nationally acclaimed director of Lenkom Theater, started his career on that very stage.

However, many said that the joke was on Luzhkov himself, as, under the auspices of city management, the new theater's budget will most likely be less than before.

No student stage in Moscow has had more of a history than that of MGU, which cultivated the likes of singer Irina Bogushevskaya and well-known, TV talk-show host, Valdis Pelsh, Russia's equivalent of Giraldo Rivera.

The roots of Russian student theater go back to the

18th century when Moscow State University's first curtain went up in 1756. Less than one hundred years later, the MGU theater was granted royal status.

The late Rolan Bykov is a household name in Moscow's modern-day theater world. The actor-turned-director originally made a name for himself with his first play at the student theater in the 1950's, "Takaya Lyubov" or "Such a Love".