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!

Bus(t) a Move

I woke up on the morning of the 2^nd to discover that the electric outlets in my room were not working.  Goody.  It turns out that someone had tried to use a hair drier in the wrong kind of converter, and they blew the fuse for all the rooms on this side of the hallway.  Good times.  So after a little Starbucks internet time, I told the woman at the front desk, who told me it would be fixed tomorrow.  Goody again. 

Much of the morning was spent running people around trying to get their money changed or get cash from ATMs, so I was a busy little bee before the group gathered for our bus tour.  Of course, my last errand before the bus tour to get some Sprite at the grocery store across the street for a student who was feeling ill, turned into a mad dash the half block back to the dorm through a sudden torrential downpour.  When I walked out of the dorm, it was completely clear, when I walked into the store about one minute later, there were a couple random drops, when I walked out two minutes later with a Sprite… it was the end of the frickin’ world.  And… by the time we came down to meet the bus fifteen minutes later, it had stopped altogether.  It was a special rain storm just for me!

The bus tour was a nice little refresher of the main sights of the city – and this year it was led by a different guide than in the past two years, so I got a slightly different view of a lot of things, which was neat.  We stopped by Novodevichy Convent, Sparrow Hill, Park Pobedy (Victory Park), The Cathedral of Christ the Savior and finally, of course, Red Square.  As the bus approached Red Square, the skies opened up again, but by the time the bus drove all the way around and parked, it had stopped again.  It was quite a day for rain.

Look!  St. Basil's is right where I left it!

Upon returning to the dorm, I had about an hour to figure out a possible show for the evening.  It was at a theatre I had been to two years ago, a theatre I had never been on my own, and a theatre that is not on any maps.  So, armed with my hazy memory, I led a small group of students to a theatre that I wasn’t sure we could find, and that I wasn’t sure would have tickets available even if we did.  There were some wrong turns, but eventually we found the street, and from there, the tiny theatre that’s tucked away in an alley in a basement drew me right to it.  We were issued free rush tickets, which means we had no seat assignments and would just be fit in as they could find room.  As luck would have it, they did find room, and we enjoyed a production of Торги (Auction), this fantastically imaginative piece conceived by Dmitry Krymov.  It plays loosely with elements of different Chekhov plays as well as with the history of the theatre building itself, which has changed hands many times over the years and was eventually auctioned off and is now mostly a residential building, with this strange theatre space set in a room somewhere in the bowels of the building.  There are mannequins and songs and dances and models and a see-saw and a seagull and all kinds of beautiful images that, even though the show is sort of a deeply coded, opaque piece, made it a thrilling experience for us.  And… a special bonus for me was that one of the actors had been replaced by this brilliant woman who I have seen perform one woman shows in past years.  This was actually the first time I had seen her onstage with anyone else, and I was definitely geeked out! 

After the show we came back to the dorm for a late night pot luck/group meeting and then managed to find our way to bed.  And tomorrow…it begins.

Day 1... part 3

So… here I am… back in Moscow.  How bizarre to feel this familiar with a place this foreign.  It was a long day of travel, with a short layover in New York, and then a 9 ½ hour flight to Moscow.  Sleeping on the plane proved difficult, so I watched the blockbuster hit The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and the actual worthwhile piece of cinema, Anna Karenina.  This year our overseas flight was Delta rather than Air France, and let me just say, I felt the difference.  Service was far more casual and far less service-like.  Our snack was served in plastic bag.  The headphones they gave us did not fit the headphone jacks on the plane.  Boy howdy… give me a European-owned airline any day!

We arrived in Moscow to the brand new terminal, which is absolutely gorgeous.  And they have automated some steps to the immigration process that made life a lot easier.  While we were standing in the terminal, one of the group members thought she heard my name paged.  Of course, that couldn’t be the case.  But it turns out… it was.  Yup – our escort from the MXAT couldn’t find us, and paged me.  Unfortunately we didn’t realize that, so we just stood there waiting until JT searched the terminal and found the other door that we could have come out of where we We met up with Борис, loaded up our way too tiny for us bus, and made the drive to the dorm.  I was pleased to discover that we were on the 3^rd floor rather than the 5^th, as I had been emailed the week before.  When you’re lugging your bags on almost no sleep, those last two floors become your Everest. 

We sorted out rooms and got everyone settled before taking the gang on a tour of the grocery stores in the area, and then we walked them down to the school and back just to give them a frame of reference.  Then we were on our own for a few hours, so we did a little Starbucks lurking so we could let our folks know we had indeed survived the trip – we probably won’t get internet access in the dorm until Monday.  At which point, I suppose, I will post this.  So… I guess that’s a little moot*.  But hey… whatcha gonna do?  At any rate, I earned my keep today leading our way from place to place, helping some students change their money and do their shopping, sorting out keys and rooms with the dorm ladies – feeling so very Russian all the way.

I made a little fried egg sandwich (having been taught to fry an egg before leaving for the airport – Thanks Brian!), and we laughed and chatted through our exhaustion before heading downstairs for a little movement primer to get everyone ready for classes.

After the primer, the grad student ladies decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather, and we went out to Corner Burger (yup…that’s just what it’s called) for a little food and beer.  I’m not so good with metric measurements, so when she asked if wanted the big or the small beer, I shrugged and decided I had earned a big beer.  Well…she wasn’t kidding!  Definitely two hands required to navigate that puppy.  Then it was a hard crash and a very solid night’s sleep.  It’s a slow start, which is good, giving everyone a chance to get acclimated.  But as I told them… Monday we’re going to get fired out of a cannon, and we’ll hit the wall on July 1.

* Okay… actually I’m posting this from a Starbucks.  So… there that is.

PS - my super sad realization as I unpacked? In all the changing from this bag to that bag to this one again... my pedometer got left at home!  Now I'll never know how far I walked each day!  Sadness!  

Arrested What in the Hell!?!

Here's the story of a TV audience who lost a great show, and the one totally non-existent blogger who had no choice but to procrastinate from all the other stuff she should be doing by blogging about the long-awaited return thereof.

Okay, let me begin by saying...

SPOILERS ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE.

Now, first let's make note of the fact that the casting - in particular for the 1982 flashbacks - was fricking genius!  I'm not a fan of either Kristin Wiig or Seth Rogen, but both were perfect as Lucille and George.  And young Barry... THANK YOU!  There was so much great casting.  Who could possibly be Liza Minelli's brother, if not Tommy Tune?!  A particular standout for me was Mary Lynn Rasjskub's character... an excellent gag that I will not spoil just in case one of the three people who might read this hasn't seen the episodes and still progressed beyond my warning.

There was a lot of great payoff from the original series.  Roles were reprized, running jokes were resurrected and alternately beaten to death or had the breath quietly wrung from their respective alvioli (her?).

And I have to say... the relationship with Google over the course of the episodes was pretty amusing.  I'm going to have to something search that one.

In general, I would say that the arc took some time to get moving.  From the first episode the elements were all there, and the construction was every bit as clever as in the original three seasons, but I wouldn't say it was as funny.  There was so much ground to cover since last we had seen the Bluths, so much foundation to lay before we could understand how everything was going to fit together.  The pace was break-neck most of the time, so a lot of the jokes didn't have time to land.  Add to the overflow of exposition the fact that we watched all fifteen episodes in two very long sittings, and we've definitely got the feeling of drinking out of a fire hydrant, despite the fact that nothing seemed to be happening per se.  Since each episode centers on one family member's personal journey, I initially felt the absence of the manic interplay that made these strange, self-involved characters so watchable.  It is especially difficult to watch Tobias without much interplay with the other characters.  Gotta love David Cross, but MAN... Tobias is rough.  There were tastes here and there, but it wasn't really until the seventh episode - the first to feature the incomparable GOB - that I started to feel the Arrested Development rhythm settle in.  That episode brought in some of the first truly hearty laughs for me...and a healthy helping of "DID THEY JUST DO THAT?!?" From that point on, we got increasing dollops of overlap, but I still wanted more.  I guess I felt like characters were too often absent from each other's episodes.

We were left hanging on a lot of people for a long time - not even getting a Buster episode until the penultimate one.  And George Michael took a long time to have his say as well.  But as much as we were left hanging throughout the fifteen episodes, the final one leaves us dangling by our pinkies off of a cliff over we don't have any idea what...but you can just barely make out that brown area and its points.  Question upon question has piled up on us, and almost none has been resolved.  If they're campaigning for a season 5 or a movie... well... that's great.  But what the hell was up with George, Sr's identity crisis (my theory is that is has something to do with the sweat vs. the lemonade)?  What about Maeby's arrest?  What happened to Lucille 2?  How are Michael and George Michael going to sort out their little...er...father/son squabble?  Will the truth about fakeblock ever come out?  And who brings their girlfriend a cactus?  Who really sabotaged the tomb (my theory: Ione Skye was looking pretty shifty!)?  And while we're at it, what's up with Tony Wonder and GOB?  Talk to me about the Lindsey/Sally Sitwell campaign!  What happened to Tobias and Marky Bark?  How about poor DeBrie?  What about the wall?  And seriously... the cactus?  Come on!

Seriously... there had better be someone greenlighting a next whatever as we speak... and if the Bluths all just  end up coming together in some lame church in an alternate reality, I'm going to punch Mitchell Hurwitz AND J.J. Abrams right in the mouth.

Because let's be honest... I'm still a little mad at J.J.

Prospecting

Today I sent off what I hope will prove to be my first usable draft of my dissertation prospectus.  Truly a terrifying thing to do - especially since the draft prior to this one didn't really go over too well.  The problem with caring enough to write a dissertation about something is how completely invested you become in every morsel you put on the page.  There's the stuff I know is terrible, the stuff I know is great, the stuff I hope is great, the stuff I cross my fingers and wish will somehow be the magical connector between this toothpick and that wad of bubble gum.  And none of it comes easily.  Or maybe some of it does, but then I have to overthink it and unmake whatever bit of ease there may have been.  It's an ugly journey, getting a doctorate. When other people ask if they should get a PhD, I laugh and tell them only those who are a special kind of stupid take this particular road... but it's true.  There's a kind of stupid reserved especially for smart people.  And it's the stupid that leads you to pursue a doctorate and take comprehensive exams and diagnostic exams and qualifying exams, and to write a dissertation... so yes... I am that special kind of stupid.  So I sit in front of my computer, surrounded by my books, hoping that their mere proximity will send the information seeping into my pours... knowing that another book is coming in the mail tomorrow.  And I blog... maybe as therapy, maybe as narcissism, maybe as an antidote to boredom...and I wonder...

Why didn't I buy that wine while I was out yesterday?

<sigh>

Three...

Three trips to Moscow... Ah, ah, ah!

It occurs to me that we leave in about ten days for my third tour of duty in Moscow.  It's an odd mixture of knowing exactly what to expect and having absolutely no idea what to expect.  I try to take the advice I gave the students going in this year's group: don't base your expectations on what anyone has told you about previous years... this will be its own experience, and it will be special and it will be yours and it will be exactly what it is and nothing else.  

But I can't help but speculate, wonder, remember the awesome and the awful memories... it's the burden of knowledge that comes with my very strange and very frickin' cool position.

I have to say, I'm nervous about a lot of things though.  First, I'm nervous that I know so many of the people in this year's group so well.  It has a lot of room for great fun and wonderful shared experiences, but it also has added potential for conflict.  I'm sad about leaving my brand new apartment after only three weeks, disappearing for a month, coming back for two and a half weeks, disappearing for a week and a half... and then FINALLY getting to start living here.  We've done a good job of settling in and setting up the common areas so it feels like OUR place, but it's still just a little strange - by the end of June, I will have lived in the dorms at the Moscow Art Theatre FOUR TIMES LONGER than I have lived in my apartment.

WEIRD.

And don't get me started on leaving my kitties in their new digs with their fuzzy new roommates... without Mommy to protect them!  Of course Brian will take excellent care of all the fuzzy children, but I can't help but do the worried mommy thing.

Still... these are the minutia.  These are the burrs under my saddle that will be wiped away when I set off down Тверская on the familiar walk to the MXAT school, when I see the now familiar faces of the phenomenal teachers, when I rise to my feet at the end of a show, tears in my eyes because of the sheer beauty of the thing.

I'm going to miss my new home with my awesome roomies (especially the tall, human-shaped one), but I'm going to have yet another amazing Russian adventure... and it will be unlike the others that came before it... and it will rejuvenate me for another grueling year of PhD studies... and I will fall in love with Moscow and my fellow travelers all over again!

Of course... before then I have to write a conference paper and pack and get my s**t together for my prospectus... and prep for my summer job (yeah... I have a job in the middle of all this madness)...so... uh... how do you say, "gulp!" in Russian?

Dove

I feel the need to exorcise my feelings on the recent Dove sketch campaign that has been floating around the internet.  And since I don't want to get into an endless comment string on facebook, I just need to work out my thoughts in my little corner of the web... which - let's face it - is really pretty private for a "public" space.

Anyway, I posted this link on my facebook page, because when I watched it, the message hit home for me.  I have a very problematic relationship with my perception of my body, and it was a reminder that I can choose how to see myself.  It remains an uphill battle for me, but it was nice.

Of course, then come the backlash posts, proclaiming that this experiment that touts itself as so great and understanding is superficial and sexist because it's suggesting that beauty is the only way in which women value themselves.

So here's my response:

I do agree that the campaign is problematic... but we have to remember that - for whatever else it is - it is a campaign marketing beauty products.  It's not a social movement to eradicate make-up or whatever.  Dove is marketing a product that deals directly with our physical appearance and our perception thereof.  So being angry at them for focusing on beauty is silly.  Their cream is something you put on your face, not your brain or your soul.  They can't help you there.  Their products are designed to make you feel better about your appearance.  They are not designed to make you a better person.  Bare Minerals did a campaign a few years ago where they chose a bunch of "real people" to be their models, supposedly based only on their resume of awesome person-ness... yet somehow they were all still smokin' hot (My favorite was the porcelain-skinned, willowy, ginger, volunteer fire fighter).  I do wish that our society as a whole put more value in things that weren't appearance related, but I think we sometimes lose sight of the pragmatic fact that it's a message geared toward a specific marketing end, and if we expect a commercial - however well-intentioned or whatever the scope - to be more than a commercial, we're bound to be disappointed. So if they go beyond saying "buy our stuff" to saying "stop being so hard on yourself, you're pretty great, and also buy our stuff," then hey... let 'em.  At least the women in the ad aren't soulless stick figures with blowing wind and abrasively cheerful pseudo-runway music.  And at the end of the day, they still have to sell their stuff.  And if it makes a few people feel good about themselves or even just makes one lone blogger pause the next time she looks in the mirror before shifting into self-criticism mode... bonus.  So is it a perfect campaign?  Of course not.  But I don't think Dove is saying "beauty is the only value," I think they're just saying that beauty is their realm... and the message they're putting out about that particular realm is more positive than most.