At the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts a unique program has been developed to train directors to stage operas, operettas, musicals and rock operas. The program is differs from the training for directors imparted in music schools because it is aimed at creating stage productions. They study alongside actors of musical theatre, who in our institute aren’t ‘singers who act’ but ‘actors who sing.’ It is with them that student directors make their first work. The program requires students to acquire the skills necessary to tackle the musical score as well as working through the dramatic composition, theatre act, stage space, system of characters, dance and movement sequences and every other aspect of the scenic form. Directors learn to work with actors on the psychological system of the production. The idea of the program and its concept of directing is a synthetic theatre based on music.

Directing class, which students take for all nine semesters of their training, is supported by a set of additional classes that form part of this school of theatre: Stage Movement, Dance and Stage Speech (which help develop the appropriate means of expression in a production), disciplines that provide an education in music and a comprehensive set of disciplines in the humanities, including Philosophy, History of European Literature, History of Russian Literature, History of European Theatre, History of Russian Theatre, History of Visual Art in Europe and Russia, Drama Theory, History of Musical Theatre and one of several foreign languages.

Graduating students receive a Specialist Degree. Each intake consists of about 10 students who study together over the entire course of their training (five years).

The masters of the directing studios are famous theatre practitioners.