His father was from Bessarabia. In 1978, Lev Shekhtman immigrated to the United States. His American Directorial debut came in a 1979 with N. Gogol's "Marriage" (Н. Гоголь "Женитьба") at Lexington Conservatory Theater (Lexington, New York). The same year he began teaching Acting and Directing at the New York City-based Sonya Moore's Stanislavski Studio of the Theatre. His New York City Directorial debut was a 1980 Playwrights Horizons production of "Heat of Re-Entry" by A. Tetenbaum. The same year, Shekhtman and his former students opened 'Theater in Action, based in Manhattan, which he ran and managed up until 1990. The theater contained two theater spaces.One functioned as a Main stage, and the other as a Theater school, where Shekhtman taught Acting and Directing. The company's repertoire included works by Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, Albert Camus and Jack London, Nikolai Gogol and Berthold Brecht, modern American playwright Michael McGuire, and renowned Russian playwright Grigory Gorin. His Western Hemisphere premier of Gorin's "The House That Swift Built" opened with the presence of the author in 1986. Mr. Shekhtman in the course of his career also collaborated with several famous theater companies (The Manhattan Theater Club, The Public 'Theater, The American Place Theater and the McArthur Theater in Princeton, NI).