Stanislavski's system
The school itself was known as the Theatre Arts Institute. It was founded in 1923 by former Moscow Art Theatre members Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya and stressed Stanislavski's system as its teaching method. Students were taught to be uninhibited, with exercises such as acting as a fish under water, a melting ice cream cone, or (for women) the mother of a sick child praying to the Madonna. Both actors and directors were trained, and Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya became known as the leading promulgators of Stanislavski's ideas in America.