Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943) was, together with Konstantin Stanislavski, the co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT) in 1898 — one single person carrying a hyphenated double surname, not two separate people. The toasting scene plays on a joke well-worn among Russian theater students and drunk audiences alike: someone unfamiliar with the name (or simply drunk enough not to care) splits «Nemirovich-Danchenko» in two and proposes a separate toast to each half, treating a single legendary director as though he were a matched pair of equally great men.
Nemirovich-Danchenko
