So last night, about 1:30 in the morning, just before I went to bed, the lights went out. I looked out my window and saw lights there. I heard some of the other people in my wing come out of their rooms, and we discovered that the lights were still on in the common room off of which our rooms branch… just the lights in our rooms had gone out. So when they still weren’t working in the morning, I figured we had to tell someone. This is not as easy as one might think, since the women who are in charge of the dorm do not speak English. So, I typed a couple of simple sentences into my internet translator, wrote them down on a piece of paper, and walked down to see the babushka on duty (we call them the babushkas – but they don’t know that. Apparently “babushka” means very old woman… so it’s something that the MXAT students say behind their backs). I apologized for my bad Russian and handed her the note. I’m sure that the grammar was atrocious. It probably translated to something like “Electricity badness dark room 310-315 night please. But she seemed to understand, I cheered, she smiled, and I headed off to school. My ankle was giving me a lot of trouble this morning, so there were a lot of stops along the way. When I stopped inside the underpass at Pushkin square, a man walked up to me and started speaking. I responded with my well-practiced phrase: “I don’t speak Russian.” So he started speaking English – asking if he could take a picture of my beautiful smile, assuring me he’s not from a newspaper. I told him no and hobbled away. Apparently several other members of our group did have their pictures taken, but the fact is, I’ve seenTaken… and the whole thing started with a friendly stranger taking a picture, so hell no! The morning started with our movement class, and though I had to take it a little easy on my foot, I was able to do most things. And in general, things were a little easier this time. I actually successfully balanced all my weight on my shoulder. Next time, I’m planning on trying to straighten my legs into a full shoulder stand! Ah yeah! Vladimir is a task master, but he’s also a big ball of Russian sunshine. Next the people who hadn’t already worked with our singing teacher got a chance to work with her, so I had a little extra time off before lunch and acting class, which gave me time to catch up on my journal. We started off the acting class with two etudes. One group was a forest that caught fire because of a careless smoker. My group was a bunch of people hanging out on the slots in a casino, and mine hit the mega jackpot. Both ended up being fairly successful – but I think Sergei liked ours better. We win! We then worked our way through another set of complex but silly but brilliant exercises that I can’t explain, but can assure you have great meaning in the course of our training. We then finished up with our animal etudes – one of which was a particularly brilliant gorilla performed by the skinniest girl in the world – and finished off with a discussion about panda porn. Of course the only thing better than your Russian acting teacher talking about Panda porn is the fact that his interpreter has to then say “Panda porn” over and over. There were no shows scheduled for tonight, so we headed back to the dorms and just kicked back a bit. Then Aaron, JT and I went to the park for a little PhD discussion time (aka an excuse for JT to smoke a Cuban cigar while having deep conversations about Russian theatre). PS - the electricity was back on when I returned to the dorm after classes. Hooray for communication!
Monday, June 13, 2011
Panda Porn
So last night, about 1:30 in the morning, just before I went to bed, the lights went out. I looked out my window and saw lights there. I heard some of the other people in my wing come out of their rooms, and we discovered that the lights were still on in the common room off of which our rooms branch… just the lights in our rooms had gone out. So when they still weren’t working in the morning, I figured we had to tell someone. This is not as easy as one might think, since the women who are in charge of the dorm do not speak English. So, I typed a couple of simple sentences into my internet translator, wrote them down on a piece of paper, and walked down to see the babushka on duty (we call them the babushkas – but they don’t know that. Apparently “babushka” means very old woman… so it’s something that the MXAT students say behind their backs). I apologized for my bad Russian and handed her the note. I’m sure that the grammar was atrocious. It probably translated to something like “Electricity badness dark room 310-315 night please. But she seemed to understand, I cheered, she smiled, and I headed off to school. My ankle was giving me a lot of trouble this morning, so there were a lot of stops along the way. When I stopped inside the underpass at Pushkin square, a man walked up to me and started speaking. I responded with my well-practiced phrase: “I don’t speak Russian.” So he started speaking English – asking if he could take a picture of my beautiful smile, assuring me he’s not from a newspaper. I told him no and hobbled away. Apparently several other members of our group did have their pictures taken, but the fact is, I’ve seenTaken… and the whole thing started with a friendly stranger taking a picture, so hell no! The morning started with our movement class, and though I had to take it a little easy on my foot, I was able to do most things. And in general, things were a little easier this time. I actually successfully balanced all my weight on my shoulder. Next time, I’m planning on trying to straighten my legs into a full shoulder stand! Ah yeah! Vladimir is a task master, but he’s also a big ball of Russian sunshine. Next the people who hadn’t already worked with our singing teacher got a chance to work with her, so I had a little extra time off before lunch and acting class, which gave me time to catch up on my journal. We started off the acting class with two etudes. One group was a forest that caught fire because of a careless smoker. My group was a bunch of people hanging out on the slots in a casino, and mine hit the mega jackpot. Both ended up being fairly successful – but I think Sergei liked ours better. We win! We then worked our way through another set of complex but silly but brilliant exercises that I can’t explain, but can assure you have great meaning in the course of our training. We then finished up with our animal etudes – one of which was a particularly brilliant gorilla performed by the skinniest girl in the world – and finished off with a discussion about panda porn. Of course the only thing better than your Russian acting teacher talking about Panda porn is the fact that his interpreter has to then say “Panda porn” over and over. There were no shows scheduled for tonight, so we headed back to the dorms and just kicked back a bit. Then Aaron, JT and I went to the park for a little PhD discussion time (aka an excuse for JT to smoke a Cuban cigar while having deep conversations about Russian theatre). PS - the electricity was back on when I returned to the dorm after classes. Hooray for communication!
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