The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; Russian: Московский Художественный академический театр (МХАТ), Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr (МHАТ) was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to regularly put on shows implementing Stanislavski's system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre and drama.
It was officially renamed the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre in 1932. In 1987, the theatre split into two troupes, the Moscow Gorky Academic Art Theatre and the Moscow Chekhov Art Theatre.