Pre-history of the Department of actor mastership at the Lithuanian State conservatory: the development of the Lithuanian theatre school in the first half of the 20th century

The history of Lithuanian theatre school (actors' training) started relatively late – in 1916 (under Juozas Vaičkus' private initiative in St Petersburg), and developed with little exceptions under the influence of the conservative/pre-directorial theatre school's principles until 1929 (Konstantinas Glinskis', Borisas Dauguvietis', Antanas Sutkus' educational practice at the State Theatre's Drama School). It allowed for the formation of a quite solid start-position for the beginning of Lithuanian theatre, but soon exhausted itself, i.e., it started provoking certain doubts concerning its insufficiency for developing new forms of artistic expression. Responding to this necessity, educational strategies in Lithuanian theatre began to change their course; from 1929 the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski and his followers (Andrius Oleka-Žilinskas'and Michail Chekhov's educational practice at the State Theatre's Drama School) were introduced, and became legitimatised as the basis of the Lithuanian theatre pedagogical system aleady in the late 1930s, and were institutionalised as the main component of the Lithuanian actors' training program in 1952, when the Department of Actor Mastership at the Lithuanian State Conservatory was founded