Acting students from Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) are to train in the Chekhov and Stanislavski technique with a Russian director with an unbroken link to the two great men themselves. Leonid Verzub was a long-term student of Maria Knebel, an assistant to Konstantin Stanislavski and friend and collaborator with Mikhail Chekhov, Anton Chekhov’s nephew. In 1979 Leonid Verzub was awarded the title of Honoured Artist of Russia and Theatre Director of the Highest Category. He visited CSU’s Wagga Wagga campus yesterday (Monday 20 November) at the behest of his former student Dr Ashley Wain who is now a lecturer in the CSU’s VPA. Verzub was here to meet the acting and design students with whom he will work next year when he directs the Australian premiere of Stars in the Morning Sky at the Riverina Playhouse. “It is a really rare opportunity for the students to work with someone who is a master director in one of the strongest and richest theatrical traditions in the world,” said Dr Wain.