O, Russia Day!

Today was a new experience for me, as it was the first time that I actually left the dorm on Russia Day.  Generally they cancel classes, and the city is just crowded with people celebrating what is essentially Russian Independence Day, but last year we were actually admonished to stay in our dorm and away from Red Square where there were likely to be anti-government demonstrations.  This year, however, we had classes – which meant leaving the cocoon.  On the way to school in the morning, they were in the process of setting up the floats for the Russia Day parade – so there were half-assembled floats in the middle of the street, and bus after bus of costumed performers waiting to be loaded on.  My personal favorites were a busload of Soviet-era soldiers, and two buses full of 18^th century royalty.  The royalty was great – all decked out in the fancy costumes and wigs, just slumped up against bus windows and such.  Very amusing.

Then we had our second ballet class… which was painful, but probably mostly in a good way… I think… This was followed by singing class, which got a little out of hand time-wise, so the last two of us to work with Marina didn’t really get much time, but even in the ten minutes we got with her, it was wonderful.  Each summer I remember how happy it makes me to sing… and each summer I come home and the reality hits me of who has time and money for voice lessons?  <sigh>  One of these days, I’ll get back to them.

Then it was a quick lunch before our theatre history lecture from Anatoly – always a delight! The magical Russian theatre history elf dropped more awesome knowledge on us!

From there, things got pretty bitchin’, when we were led down the street to an exhibition hall where Dmitry Krymov – the director who created Auction and As You Like It, as well as a number of other amazing shows that I’ve seen in past years, and a number of others that I haven’t seen – has worked with his students to create an installation inspired by about sixteen of his performance pieces.  The title of the exhibit is “Камень. Ножницы. Бумага” (Rock. Scissors. Paper.), and the whole thing is conceived to feel like the inside of a workshop – the floors are layered with unfinished wood, there are toolboxes around, but there are also these amazing art pieces.  None of them cry out “look at this artifact from this play they made.”  The exhibits are standalone artworks in and of themselves…they just happen to share a sort of soulful connection with the shows they represent.  And they were all interactive and tactile and auditory and amazing... It was so freakin’ cool!  We were originally supposed to be escorted around by Krymov himself, but he got stuck in rehearsal, so instead his right-hand lady – Vera – showed us around.  She was so excited about and attached to the work, it was wonderful to hear her perspectives on this director about whom I have heard so much (since my professor is the foremost American researcher on his work). 

In the foreground, this exhibit depicts a moment from one of the performances in which a character cuts a banquet table in half - food flying everywhere!  Amazing!  In the background, you can just make out the legs of a giraffe built out of teacups.   

From there, it was a brisk walk home through a much more crowded street than usual.  Though the barricades from the parade had all been cleared, there were definitely still extra people around.  Way too many for my taste! 

And now… as is my daily refrain… I will try to go work on my @&%*(@&%)!&$*&@(& conference paper…because there are so many things I would rather work on that I’m not allowed to touch until I finish this @%(**$)!%&@ paper!

Zizi the Chicken Saves the Day

Today was kind of a weird day from the get-go.  We started out with a shortened movement class because the entire staff of the MXAT school was having a giant meeting today.  And even though we had 30 minutes less than usual, we rocked big time!  Vladimir is taking us to very cool places in our partner work – we’re climbing all over each other and doing all kinds of crazy balancing!  It’s pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself… and I do.

Then, because of the giant meeting, we had a three hour lunch…which for some people meant lounging or sightseeing or whatever.  For me, it meant booking it over to the Фоменко (Fomenko) Theatre to pick up tickets for productions of Носорог (Rhinoceros) and Три Сеcтри (Three Sisters) later in the month.  There were some hiccups, but I got to meet the woman I’ve been emailing, and I ended up with the right tickets for the right price, so I felt pretty good about the whole thing.  Then I headed back for the end of our lunch break and then our good ol’ acting class, which was really strong today.  Ilja pushed us hard on the concentration games… and we discovered that none of us knows any athletes’ names.  We also did a few more animal etudes – the highlight of which for me was Annie’s hen, who was both hilarious and tragic.  Delightful.

From there, things got complicated again.  Five of our group had tickets to see The Cherry Orchard at the MXAT for tonight at 7:00, so they had time to hang around, eat, do whatever the heck they did.  The other eleven of us, however, had to book it to the puppet theatre to see the 6:00 showing of Необыкновенный Концерт (Extraordinary Concert).  This is a show that opened in 1946… which is kind of mind-boggling.  It was charming, but I have to admit, it was a little boring.  There was a little poorly translated English in the program, so I could follow things from act to act, but it was basically a puppet variety show… the first act in particular was pretty boring.  The second act picked up with trained animals and magic and lion tamers and such.  Zizi the Chicken – who sang “pizzicato” along with her trainer’s accordion – was definitely the highlight for many of us.  And the lion named either Snickers or Sneakers was pretty awesome too.  The puppets were lovely, but the show was very much a product of another time.  I’m glad I saw it, but I’m also glad I didn’t pay any more for it than I did (400 rubles – or about $12).

In the lobby of the puppet theatre - super cool!

After that, we just headed home, and that was that.  The rest of the evening was mostly spent with a lot of laughing with the group – it’s nice that, about a week and a half in, we still seem to find each other amusing.  

A Light Day?

Today was sort of a low-key day with no show in the evening, and only half of the group having singing class, so I had the morning to myself… which meant that, instead of doing something like sleeping in or working on my paper, I ran around in circles getting tickets for the rest of the group.  I was able to pick up 11 tickets for a puppet show for Tuesday (5 folks will be seeing Вишневый Сад [The Cherry Orchard] at the MXAT, so I wanted to find something else for the group.  The lady at the counter was adorable – I was very effective in communicating what I wanted – the number of tickets, the price, etc.  But I think that I may have been too agreeable, and she was worried that I was just saying “yes” to everything, so before she printed the tickets, she wrote down the number and the price and held them up to me – yes… it was exactly what I had asked for.  We’re communicating, adorable box office lady, don’t be afraid!  Then I headed over to a different theatre to get 8 tickets to Смерть Жирафа (Death of Giraffe) on Saturday – another piece by Dmitry Krymov – the director who did Auction and As You Like It that we’ve already seen.  It’s a weird little piece that I saw two years ago…I’m looking forward to seeing if I understand any more of it this time around!  On Saturday the other half of the group will be attending Синее Чудовище (Blue Monster) at the Satirikon, so we’re all pretty busy!  I also grabbed myself a ticket to a new production of Кориолан (Coriolanus) which is playing on a night when everyone else is seeing something I've already seen twice.  I do like the show they're seeing, but I'm really curious about this production, so I figure I will deliver them to the theatre that night, and then head off to my own weird little Russian theatre experience.  I'm really looking forward to that little treat for myself!

Then we had acting class wherein we spent a good thirty minutes gushing to Sergei about the Seagull we had seen the night before, before getting into training and etudes.  There were some pretty good ones today.  A koala and a peacock made particularly good showings today!

Then we headed back to the dorm for our potluck/group meeting/me taking everyone’s money to go get more tickets tomorrow.  I’m definitely earning my keep this time around!

The evening culminated in chatting instead of working (oops) and then sitting in the stairwell so I could get enough internet to send an email to a theatre with which I have been corresponding entirely in Russian (GO ME!).  Apparently this was the time that all the Russian students were coming home, so it was a little awkward… but whatcha gonna do?  Our internets are behaving badly… I will do what must be done!

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD... Я Чайка!

Today started out with a little skype back to home base in Ypsi… for which I am so very homesick!  But I got to skype with both Brian and Chloe, so it was a pretty good call.  Then the rest of the day was fairly low impact with a little headway being made on my conference paper (ever so little, but I’ll take what I can get).  Then… the big finish to our Chekhov-palooza weekend.  Yes, tonight we got to go see my favorite thing in the entire world – The Сатирикон’s production of Чайка (The Seagull).  It is four and a half hours (including the three intermissions), and it is the most exciting, breathtaking, inventive, heart-wrenching thing I have ever experienced ever.  I was enraptured the whole time, leaning forward in my seat, scribbling notes, weeping openly… I can’t believe how lucky I am to have seen this show at all, let alone THREE TIMES!  There were things that had changed, things that had been refined, things that had grown deeper… it was such a rewarding evening at the theatre!  I could hardly stop crying at the end of the show – and I think I started to see more glimpses of Dead Man’s Cell Phone (the show I’ll be directing in the fall) in this play, which gets me really excited to work on my script.  I do have my script with me, and I will work on it, but part of me feels like I’m not allowed to until I do my conference paper.  But still… I am starting to really feel the creative atmosphere of Moscow seep into me, and I can’t wait to unleash it on this script!

From our deliciously devastating evening we headed back to the dorm where I was able to do a quick skype with my parents before another etude meeting and some work for class tomorrow.  Really, all I want to do is to stay up all night writing my thoughts about the play… but that would be a little irresponsible.  So for now, I will post a photo… and I will think happy thoughts… and look through youtube for an idea for my second animal etude.

All the Chekhov

Today was a very Chekhov sort of day.  And I don’t mean that we sat around drinking vodka and pondering our unrealized dreams.  Nope.  Today at 10:00 we boarded a little bus out to the country town of Мелихово (Melikhovo) where Chekhov had a little country estate.  In the seven years he lived there, he kept himself busy with 1) being the doctor for 25 towns, 4 factories and a monastery; 2) taking care of his large extended family; 3) taking the census for an island of mostly prisoners that had never been counted before; and 4) writing little trifles like The Seagull and Uncle Vanya.  It was a lovely day, and really did a lot to put his plays in their proper context, but I think most of us would have enjoyed ourselves more had it not been for the extreme volume of mosquitos following us and ravaging us at every opportunity.

After the tour, we hopped back on the bus and Annie and I strolled down to the Ленком (Lenkom) Theatre to see if I could get a few tickets for tonight’s production of Вишнёвый Сад (The Cherry Orchard).  Turns out I could… so ten of us headed back down to the theatre later on to see the production.  It’s certainly not the best production I’ve seen, nor the best production of this particular show, but it was very interesting stylistically, and left me with a lot of questions about their approach to the text.  The play was heavily underscored, and sometimes we weren’t sure where specific music choices had come from (I dubbed the recurrence of some strangely electronic, pounding music “Chechno”).  But regardless of the specific acting and directing choices, the set was a force to be reckoned with.  It was highly mechanized – the glass walls moved all over the stage and rearranged themselves throughout, there was a sort of broken cyc created along the back with what seemed like reeds or metal poles or something to that effect… and in the end… well… the set earned its paycheck in a big way when, after Firs is left alone in the house, the house (in the words of Kassy) “ate him, fell over, and exploded.”  The spectacle of it was pretty impressive.  Really… there were more than a few times when we audibly reacted to the set alone.

After that, aside from a quick detour into the grocery store to get some ice cream, the night was pretty much over, and I sat down to try to convince myself to get some work done.  So we’ll see how that goes.  Tomorrow we will continue the Chekhov-palooza with a trip to the Satirikon for my favorite thing in the world… their production of The Seagull.  Be still, my heart!

I am the Goldfish, Goo Goo ga Joob.

This morning , about half way to class, we got a pretty substantial downpour going... so most of us were pretty drenched by the time we got to film history.  I was particularly grateful for my umbrella today, since I had to stand outside the building to usher people in, since this class is not in our usual building.  As we wound our way into the classroom, we passed dozens of nervous young Russian actors who are here for their callbacks to the Moscow Art Theatre School.  

Галина (Galina) is as delightful as ever, and it was a lot of fun to get a refresher on Russian history, and to watch some of these little film snippets again, with an even deeper understanding of their place in history.  I can’t remember if I posted this link last year, but who cares… I’m posting it now/again: The Cameraman’s Revenge is so much awesome, I can’t even begin to explain it! 

After our lecture we had lunch before hitting acting class with some successful etudes and intense training games.  Each day we’re working harder and harder, gaining a lot of headway, I think.  We’re on animals already, so we had a bird and a slug and a swan and a giraffe… and I was a goldfish.  There are always so many details that we think through, and then so many details that we have the “I should have thought of that” moment during our feedback… and then the delicious moments of “wow, I never would have thought of that.  The level of feedback on our exercises is so in-depth and insightful… every little encounter teaches us so much!

UPDATE: We had a little moment of excitement when an announcement began playing in Russian over the PA system in the dorms this evening - then it was repeated in English: there is a fire emergency, please proceed to the nearest exit.  This kept going over and over, so we put on shoes and headed down the stairs, where we met a few Russian students who insisted everything was okay.  It turns out that there was some small puff of smoke that set the system off... and the woman working the door - who is new this year - didn't know how to turn it off.  It went on way too long, but eventually we returned to our regularly scheduled chilling.  It was exciting for about 30 seconds though.

After class we had another non-show night, so the PhDs had a little conference in the park with JT.  On our way to find a park bench, JT insisted that we meander, walk slowly, take it all in – this was, of course, explicitly for my power-walking benefit.  He kept slowing us down and pulling is back and urging us to just appreciate where we are.  We had a very nice scholarly conversation about the shows we’ve seen and the work we’ve been doing in class – all over some beer, chips, salted fish (for those who like that kind of thing), and it was topped off with a few mini Cuban cigars that JT had bought for us.  It was pretty cute, the five of us sitting in the park with our beer and cigars and heady discourse.

And from there, I decided it was time to get some work done.  So naturally… I decided to blog.

Hitting the Ground Running

Well... as my lack of blogging might suggest... we have been busy little bears here in Moscow (no unicycles yet... sorry Dennis).

Monday we started classes with a brief theatre history lecture from the incomparable Анатолий Смелянский (Anatoly Smeliansky) – the dean of the Moscow Art Theatre School.  He always makes this first lecture in the lobby/photo gallery of the Moscow Art Theatre. Surrounded by images of some of the greatest actors and other theatre artists in modern history is a pretty inspiring and humbling way to kick off the month.

From there we jumped straight into singing class with Марина (Marina) – the utterly lovable voice teacher with more energy than any single human should probably have.

At lunch, I showed the group to the cafeteria and left them on their own as I started my month as cruise director by running out to the Театр на Таганке(Taganka Theatre) to get us tickets for shows for the next two nights. For Monday night I got Марат и маркиз де Сад (Marat/Sade) and for Tuesday, Добрый человек из Сезуана (Good Person of Szechwan). Aside from asking for 60 tickets instead of 16 (the words are very similar), I think my partner in the box office and I did very well getting it all sorted out, all things considered.

So after booking it back, we had our first acting class of the month with Сергей and Илья (Sergei and Ilya), in which this group made it clear that they were here to do some serious work and to have a really good time together. In general, I’m seeing pretty great ensemble already, and I have high hopes for the rest of the month.

The schedule on Monday was a little unusual, so we got out of class at 6:00 and needed to leave for the theatre at 6:15. It was a mad dash with the whole group through the subway at rush hour to the theatre, where we arrived with minutes to spare. After a little confusion with a woman who had bogarted a couple of our seats, we settled in for the show…which was spectacular. It is an energetic, inventive, exciting production of what can be a very talky, idea-laden play. There are acrobatics, hard core tap dancing, whips, tandem violins, upside-down clarinet playing, other amazing music… it’s a pretty impressive show.

Tuesday morning was our first day of movement with darling darling Владимир (Vladimir) – the giant Russian dude who makes us contort our bodies, and makes us love him all in one fell swoop.  He ran us hard through the beginning of training, and I find that I have still retained the ability to become a Russian Dumpling. That’s right, 20-year-olds! This old lady has a few tricks up her sleeve!

In acting class we started our object etudes already – and I would say that they were generally pretty impressive.  From purses to ragdolls to paper towels to umbrellas and all points in between… there was a lot of very cool work going on!

Then, because we were back on a normal schedule, we had a nice leisurely hour for dinner, took a nice, civilized (though still rush hour) subway ride to the theatre, and even had time for a little mini-lecture on Brecht before the play began from me and one of my fellow PhDs. This production was first staged in 1964 and has been the flagship production of this theatre ever since.  There are a lot of wonderful things about it – the Brecht-ness of it is very clear and understandable, the acting is great, the set is cool, the lighting is gorgeous – but it’s a very talky play, and it was hot, and we were in the top of the balcony, and it was 3 hours long… so it was a battle sometimes to stay awake. But overall, it was a very cool production, I was conscious for about 90% of it, and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.  The Good Person of Szechwan is one of my favorite Brecht plays, so it was cool to get to see it here.  I would venture to say I learned a thing or two about Brecht by watching it! 

Wednesday saw our first dance class, led by a seemingly transformed Ренат (Renat) – our resident dance master. Historically, he has been a little stern and frustrated with us, and he tends to push too hard too fast without quite enough instruction. But Wednesday morning he came in with a smile and a great attitude and patience and we had a great time. He was actually the teacher I expected not to remember me… but what do you know… he did!  AND… he even complimented me on my form on one of the exercises… at which point I died from sheer happiness and shock.

After Dance we came back together for singing where we were assigned our songs for the month.  I have “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady. It’s something I’ve done before, but it is going to be a hoot to work on with her – as is everything! And, of course, it was another strong day in acting, as we already started through our second set of object etudes and were assigned our animals.  Things are moving really fast in acting class this summer, and the group seems to be keeping up, so that is super cool!

And then…we headed off behind our escort Аня (Anya) to see Как вам это пон равится по пьес е Шекспира сон (“As You Like It based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Dmitry Krymov)… and had our minds completely blown. He sort of took the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Midsummer and smooshed it all up, expanded it, made it achingly beautiful, terribly funny… and a little dirty… and wrapped it in a cloud of awesome.  I had a chance to see this same show in previews last summer, and it did not disappoint on the second viewing. Things had been added, refined, cut and enhanced… and it was amazing. Oh… did I mention that the entire thing is performed by two giant puppets? There are no words for the beauty and sheer creativity of what we saw Wednesday night… but we were just beside ourselves.

On the walk home our escort got us a little lost, but we eventually made it home, and I crashed hard.

Today (yes…I’m finally catching up with myself… HUZZAH!) started out with another day of movement, which threw in a little extra challenge for me because our translator was late, so I became the… I won’t say translator… I’ll say interpreter for the first half of class.  It was quite an experience.  It was a combination of knowing Владимир and the exercises, some actual vocabulary knowledge, and a few wild guesses, but I got us through. I was actually a little impressed with myself. I expect they will be offering me a job any day now. But anyway, eventually the translator appeared, and helped us through some of the tougher exercises – which are also advancing quickly.  This group wants to work together.  I’m proud of them!

Next up was a theatre history lecture about the history of the Moscow Art Theatre and the different iterations through which it has come over its 115 year history. Very cool stuff.

Then, it was another wild day of acting as we moved from objects into animals…and as I pondered the real beauty of people moving chairs around a room in unison. We had no shows to see tonight… which was strange, but also gave us a much needed break for things like blogging and grocery shopping and having a nice cold beer with dinner. I’m still on the lookout for more shows to see... I got some good ticket news for us tonight… and am hoping to have more coming in the next few days. Much to do!