By ANNA O’DONOGHUE

Moni Yakim's movement class for actors is the stuff of legends—or horror stories. He takes his students through a series of physical and imaginative exercises with names like The Spanish Inquisition that stretch actors to their literal limits. As students stand on tiptoe, arms extended into the air, shouting their names toward some secret goal in the sky, Moni walks around the room, encouraging limbs to extend further, stillness to deepen, movements to sharpen.

Costume sketch by Anna-Alisa Belous for Diary of a Scoundrel for the character Kleopatra Lvovna Mamaeva.

There is a physical state that Moni teaches—feet together, arms at sides, spine erect, weight slightly forward on toes—that he calls "present." His work demands full presence of mind, body, and spirit, and each day in the studio presents new challenges for actors, as they are asked to dig into their inner resources for greater resolve, focus, and strength. Walking into Moni's class is an exciting, daunting thrill: each day you know that something huge will be asked of you, and that you will be asking huge things of yourself, but you don't know what yet. It's an unlived adventure.

Group 36, the third-year drama students, are about to enter a new adventure with Moni, stepping into the rehearsal room with him as well as the classroom. He will direct their third performance project this season, a key project in the actor training program. Says Kathy Hood, administrative director of the Drama Division, "This slot in the third year has traditionally been set aside for a project in which the demands of the play are slanted towards physical expressiveness, comedic timing, and very specific characterization." This project, known as the "physical comedy" slot, was directed for years by Chris Bayes, who was the division's clowning teacher; it was always a big crowd-pleaser and a chance for actors to find a new comedic and physical freedom. This year, that slot will be filled with Diary of a Scoundrel, a rarely performed work by 19th-century Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. Known as the Shakespeare of Russia for his linguistic idiosyncrasies and innovations, Ostrovsky was a contemporary of Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, and is considered the first theatrical realist and the father of Russian drama—hardly a predictable choice for slapstick comedy. But Moni has wanted to direct Ostrovsky's work since 1989, when he traveled to Moscow and learned about the playwright's legacy. Ostrovsky was extremely prolific, penning more than 50 plays, but most of them are viewed as too particularly Russian to be relevant and accessible to American audiences.

Diary of a Scoundrel, though set in Moscow in 1860, is an exception, dealing with themes that are all too present in our (and any) culture. The play follows Gloumov, a well-born but poor member of the merchant class, as he attempts to scheme and wheedle his way into a wealthy marriage and comfortable job. Gloumov is ambitious, charming, clever—and entirely unscrupulous. As he flatters and maneuvers his way among the vain and ridiculous upper-class society figures that fill the play, he keeps a diary of his experiences and manipulations—a diary that may, if discovered, lead to his undoing.

A sketch by Anna-Alisa Belous for the character Neel Fedoseitch Mamaev.

The upper-class characters to whom Gloumov must appeal are archetypes, extreme embodiments of selfishness and self-delusion. While the play is technically a "realistic" one, taking place in Ostrovsky's everyday world, rooted in his present-day society and concerns, the people in it do not behave naturalistically. The play's style is high satire, filled with extreme characters and farcical encounters. Is it funny? This may be the "comedy slot," but Moni isn't so interested in that. "I can't think of it as 'This is a funny play; I have to make people laugh.' I don't know how to do that," he says. "All I know how to do is try to find the truth of the situation and bring it about. Because every farce has its basis in truth. If it doesn't start from something that is enclosed in the human condition, then it becomes an exercise in nonsense. It's about finding the core, the depth, and the humanity of it—and still going as far as these people go. That's the challenge, the delicate balance. And if it's funny, it's funny."

Kathy Hood agrees: "Scoundrel is not so much 'ha-ha' funny—but the extreme characters demand great physical life, and because of who Moni is and the work he does, a lot of physical expressiveness will certainly make it into the project. What's more important than comedy is giving the students a chance to stretch their bodies and imaginations, and Moni is really the perfect person to do that. This play will be a new extension of the comedy project."

There is no doubt that Moni will take this project in a new, unexpected direction—but don't ask him where that will be. "God knows what will evolve in this rehearsal process," Moni says. "The way we cast this play—and we made an effort not to do it in the expected ways, to give people the roles they would not usually and easily take on—I have no idea where it's going to take us. That is what excites me: discovery. What we are going to find out. I see it as untapped treasure."

Moni has directed (or, as he says, "semi-directed") the play before, but that experience only intensifies his feeling of the unknown ahead. The rehearsal period for his production last year with students at Circle in the Square Theater School, where he also teaches, was too rushed for real exploration. "We had to just plow through, and it left me very unsatisfied. I feel like we just scratched the surface. So I am going into this process a virgin, really the same as the actors, to discover the play."

Alexander Ostrovsky's Diary of a Scoundrel Studio 301 Wednesday-Sunday, Feb. 22-26, 8 p.m. Tickets not available to the public. Extremely limited standby admission only. Line forms one hour prior to the performance.

Though he has decades of experience directing all over the world, Moni is adamant about not holding to a plan or formula. He had not even intended to resume directing at Juilliard after a decade-long hiatus, but stepped in to fill a vacancy last year and led the third-years through In the Realm of Chelm, a musical fable that he also wrote. He found his unanticipated return to Studio 301 a joyful experience, and felt that "perhaps I also contribute something else to the students as a director, other than what I do as a teacher."

His actors wholeheartedly agreed. Will Pailen, a cast member in Chelm last year, calls Moni "a real actor's director. He gives you total freedom to explore. Before the process, Moni had totally blocked the play; he knew exactly what he wanted for every moment. But during the process, he threw it all out and let us do what we did. A director with that spirit, who lets you do that—it's golden, man." Group 36 actors know how lucky they are: ensemble member Ravenna Fahey is "thrilled to be working with Moni." For actor Brian Smith, it's a dream come true; he had seen a tape of Moni's 1990 production of Brecht's Happy End and was "blown away. I just thought, 'Wow. It would be so amazing to have him direct us—but it'll never happen."

It's happening. Moni shares his students' enthusiasm, saying that his only fear is "perhaps that we will be caught—that's what scares me always—in blandness, in thinking that things are easy, so we don't dig deeper. I am horrified by that, always. When I see people who are as avid and hungry as I am to find what the play can offer, I get excited by that."

Anna O'Donoghue is a third-year drama student.