About the academy

The Academy is a multidisciplinary art school organized by MELKONIAN Theatre ARTS Foundation affiliated with Moscow Arlekin Theatre. Moscow Drama lyceum has existed for five years and it has branches in several cities in the former USSR. The founder of MOSCOW DRAMA LYCEUM and Theatre Academy is Serguei Melkonian a world-class director, theoretician and practitioner of stagecraft.

Serguei Melkonian founded his Theatre and actors studio ARLEKIN (named for the Italian Comedia Dell`Arte character Arlecchino) twenty years ago in the heart of Moscow. Unlike other professional theatrical companies in the former USSR, “Arlekin” was neither sanctioned nor regulated by Soviet state agencies. Overcoming incredible odds in its struggle with the totalitarian regime, it not only survived but prospered, bringing its special qualities to first European and then American theater patrons.

After successful guest performances in the USA in 1991, the theater has taken an international status. Its professional staff includes more than one hundred members. Unlike majority of it's peers, it boasts three live bands (string, instrumental, and folklore), a Theatrical Academy. Most recently it has organized a theatrical club of political impersonators, something unheard of in the Moscow of short time ago.