Bernthal's first theater teacher, after catching him fabricate that deathbed story, sent him to the Moscow Art Theatre as both a punishment and a revelation. His teachers there had performed illegal plays in subway tunnels and abandoned buildings during times when public gatherings were outlawed, risking prison for art they believed in religiously. That combination of danger, reverence, and masculine cultural respect for the arts hit Bernthal differently than anything America could have offered him at that age.