Talks are in very early stages, but, according to the Boston Globe, something's definitely cooking between MA's American Repertory Theatre and Russia's legendary Moscow Art Theatre.

Emissaries from the Russian company are in the U.S. This week, working on an exchange program with A.R.T., as well as plans to bring Oleg Yefremov's production of The Three Sisters to Washington DC and to Boston's Shubert Theatre this-coming winter.

The Globe story notes that ART managing director Rob Orchard has been traveling to Russia since 1985 to lead theatre management seminars. Orchard and artistic director Robert Brustein traveled to Russia for the Moscow Art Theatre's centenary conference in June.

For its part, A.R.T. hopes to bring its lauded production of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters In Search Of An Author and Carlo Gozzi's The King Stag to the International Chekhov Festival -- making them the first American productions ever staged at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Kati Mitchell, spokesperson for A.R.T., told Playbill On-Line the Boston Globe story was accurate, but that plans were too formative to talk about, and no further information was available. This past season, Broadway got its own Russian Three Sisters when Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre Company presented its version of the Chekhov drama. An all-star American version, with Amy Irving, Calista Flockhart, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Eric Stoltz soon followed as well.

The Moscow Art Theatre was founded in 1897 by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and became famous for trying to explore the inner realism of the actor.

--By David Lefkowitz