Anton and Konstantin

Number of Steps: 13325 (4.21 mi)

I know what you’re thinking, but while I AM talking about Anton Chekhov, I’m not talking about the Konstantin you might expect.  But I’ll get to that later.

Hangin' with Chekhy (I'm pretty sure he enjoys his new nickname)

This morning I got up to skype with the fam (skype has not been good to me this trip… I’m kinda grouchy about it) and then I met up with part of our group and all of the group from Butler to head out to the country to Melikhovo – Chekhov’s estate.  We hadn’t received much info about the trip, and none of the professors were coming, and no one from the MXAT was coming, so I became the defacto leader for the day.  I went to the bus and introduced myself (in Russian) to the tour guide, got the group loaded up, and off we went!  It was a two hour drive there, a two hour tour, and a two hour drive back… so it was a pretty long day.  When we got there, we met up with another guide who only spoke Russian, and our tour guide from the bus translated for her, though it was clear that there were many moments when she wasn’t quite sure how to translate what was being said, so she would just sort of skip things.  I could understand well enough to know that she was skipping – but not always well enough to know WHAT she was skipping.  Still, we walked through Chekhov’s clinic (remember, he was a doctor before he was a writer – and continued to practice as a doctor his whole (way too short) life), we walked through the reconstruction of his house, we saw the grounds, the theatre on the grounds, the summer theatre in the back yard, the little house where he wrote The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, and even the pond that inspired the scene in The Seagull where Treplev’s play is performed.  I’ll admit, the tour was slow going and it was hard listening to the muddy translation, but I actually found the tour to be very enlightening about the kind of life Chekhov lived – and therefore on the kind of lives his characters lived.  I could see those characters existing in this setting, and I really love having that in my memory banks (even if not everyone in the group was particularly interested in the outing).

This is the house where Chekhov wrote The Seagull.  You can tell because there's a plaque behind my head that says so.  I'm Russian, so I can read that sign.

We headed back into town and had a couple of hours before heading down to the MXAT to visit my Russian boyfriend – Konstantin Khabensky – in Three Penny Opera.  This is a totally rockin’, but almost four hour long production of Brechty goodness… and it was as awesome as I remembered it.  A few things had changed, which was interesting to see, but overall it was still creative and energetic and sexy and weird, and I was so jazzed to get to see it again - giant skeleton puppet and all!  And it’s the first thing I’ve seen my Russian boyfriend in this summer… so I know he was missing me.

Stanislavsky and Swans

Number of Steps: 19891 (6.28 mi)

Just another Saturday in Moscow… which started with another movement class involving things like feet behind my head and standing on each other.  This class is ridiculous – you are in so much pain, but you feel so damn good!

After that, I led the group over to the Stanislavsky House Museum for a quick look through the rooms where Stanislavsky spent the last years of his life.  It’s pretty amazing when you see things like the bed where he died and the furniture from his wife’s dressing room and the desk he famously hid under when he was trying to imagine what it might be like to be a mouse (when he was in his 70s, by the way).  My little Russian triumph for the day came in the form of the little ladies who guide you through the house.  On the main floor there are little papers in each room that give you the information about the things in that room.  They have them in Russian, French and English, and the little ladies are quick to hand them to you.  But upstairs… there are no papers.  There is just a very zealous woman who wants to describe everything to you… in Russian.  So she noticed that I was leading the group and started walking me around and explaining things to me… and I actually understood some of them!  Some of them I completely didn’t…and those were the things I just nodded about and did NOT then tell the rest of the group.  But overall, I felt fairly successful.

Month in Moscow 2012 on the stage in Stanislavsky's apartment...note the boys playing it cool in the Stage Right corner.

After our lunch break we headed to acting where we had a bit of training before finishing the movie we started yesterday.  It’s a great movie, and it does a lot to contextualize Chekhov… but I don’t love that we’re taking class time to watch a movie.  Oh well.

After class I headed back to the dorm to change before going to the theatre…because I had time and I looked like crap.  So that combination led to me actually wearing heels to the theatre tonight.  Madness!  Tonight we and the NIU group went to see Swan Lake at the Stanislavsky/Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre.  BEAUTIFUL theatre, gorgeous production… but I have a confession:

I was bored out of my skull.

I appreciate the artistry and beauty and skill involved in what they did up there, but in terms of ways that I want to be told a story… ballet is way down there on the list.  Everything takes ten times longer when you have to dance it… and all the dramatic gestures are straight out of 19^th century melodrama.  I started trying to think about the other ballets that I’ve seen, and I have decided that I’ve seen enough ballets of high enough quality that I have no problem saying that I just don’t like ballet.  I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Boston, I saw Carmen in Budapest, and I have now seen Swan Lake in Russia.  It’s beautiful, they’re talented, but boy howdy… if I never sit through another ballet, I’ll be fine and dandy.

A Midsummer Night's Rhino

Number of steps: 15024 (4.74 mi)

So… what do you say about a day where you have to choose your second favorite piece of mind-blowing Russian theatre?

This morning I didn’t go to class.  Instead, I met up with Vanessa (the other grad student on the trip) and JT for a special preview of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the director who brought us Demon (one of the first shows we saw here).  Well, let me tell you that what I saw was by no means A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it also wasn’t NOT A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It was this crazy explosion of wackiness and metatheatre and art and circus and an amazingly trained dog and music and love that manifested largely in giant puppet Pyramus and Thisbe.  I would try to explain it, but there is no way I could.  The show opened with half the cast plowing through the audience toting a giant tree – knocking us and all of our chairs out of the way as they went.  They also came through with a big fountain complete with water pouring out in all directions…the first ALL rows will get wet!  These items disappeared and were never spoken of again in the show.  And then we watched… I’m not quite sure what…but it was magical.  AND…while we were there we not only got to meet the director (Dmitry Krymov…who is some sort of crazy genius), but we also got to meet the woman who performed the Medea piece that we had seen the night before.  She was beautiful and kind and friendly and wonderful… so cool!

We headed back to school, having missed ballet class (I can’t say my soul is crying much over that one) and our last theatre history lecture (my soul IS crying about that one).  But we were there as the lecture ended, at which point Anatoly (the head of the MXAT school) gave us each a copy of the MXAT school family album that he had compiled for the 60^th anniversary of the school 10 years ago.  He personally signed each copy, kissed each of us, and posed for a photo.  Our hearts were so full of love for him and this place in that moment… it’s probably best that he gave these to us today rather than a week from now.  I’m not sure you would be able to convince us to leave.

WSU Month in Moscow 2012 - 10th Anniversary Class - with Anatoly Smeliansky

Acting class was a bit of a misfire today.  We discussed the show we had seen, did one exercise and sat down to watch Unfinished Piece for Player Piano, this Russian film that is quintessentially Chekhovian in style.  We didn’t finish it, but it was fun to see it again.

From there, I went with two students and our MXAT liaison Nastya to see Носорог (Rhinoceros) at the Фоменко (Fomenko) Theatre.  It was a crazy cool (albeit a little too long) production with some amazing effects, a super cool rhino at the end of the first act, really upsetting social commentary, brilliantly creative staging… it was great fun!

Now I’m trying to gear up for a couple of super full days coming up leading into our last week here in Mother Russia!

Medea and More!

Number of Steps: 19035 (6.01 mi)

This morning we started out with another phenomenal film history lecture.  We finished the 1956 movie The Cranes are Flying that we started during the last class – I saw it last year, and it was just as lovely and moving as it was the first time.  We talked through a few other directors, and even some prominent women directors of the middle of the 20^th century, which is always something that floats my boat.

At lunch I ran to a theatre to pick up a couple more tickets for a show we were planning on seeing tonight… and I remembered that I have yet to blog about one of my favorite things about the Moscow metro system: and it is the fact that every day around 1:00, as if synchronized in every station, you can see the little subway cleaning guys running their little subway Zambonis back and forth across their respective stations.  Gotta love that Russian efficiency!

Acting class was low key today.  We did some training exercises and some etudes – nothing to really write home about.  At this point I think we’re trying to sort through all the notes from each etude, trying to create the perfect piece that will answer all of their desires…but that piece doesn’t exist, and we just have to be happy in the struggle and muck!

After class I ran over to another theatre to pick up tickets for a show tomorrow night.  This particular excursion involved asking for directions in Russian… and then being made fun of by some Russian women in the lobby of the theatre who were amused that I didn’t speak much Russian.

At any rate, the show we saw tonight had a later start time than the usual 7:00 curtain fur Russian theatres: this show began at 9:00.  The play was called Театр Медеи (Theatre Medea).  It is a piece written for two women about actresses playing Medea – one before the murder and one after the murder – but both roles were performed by one virtuoso actress.  She says it's because she's interested in that line between sanity and madness, and wanted to play around on both sides of it.  I actually saw her last year in another one woman show called K.I. from Crime.  I do think K.I. was a better, more dynamic piece, but this show tonight was still enthralling.  It was just her in an empty room with a chair, and the small audience on pews.  Her face and eyes are so alive, when she makes eye contact with you – and she does at many points throughout the performance – it feels like it’s just the two of you there in the room together.  She’s magnetic.  And the few times that she stood up from her chair and moved around the space, she was so amazingly powerful!  It was a fantastic evening of theatre, followed by a giant petulant drunk woman sitting on Vanessa in the metro.  So really… tonight had it all.  The next three days are about to be break-neck pace... so buckle up folks... we're about to do Russia up right!

Two for One!

Number of Steps: 19733 (6.23 mi)

Oh… there’s so much pressure, not having blogged yesterday!  What to focus on!  Eek!

Well, yesterday was another crazy intense day of movement with Vlad (there FOUR of us with our feet behind our head… GO TEAM RUSSIAN DUMPLING!...though in our dumpling state, we are fairly helpless).  Then we had another day of acting with a fairly successful etude, some good exercises, some good individual etudes… it was a fairly strong day.  We got a great speech from our wunderkind assistant acting teacher Ilja about the dangers of getting "dusty" or complacent as an actor.  And he also mentioned that in Russia, actors never joke around about the parts they are currently playing.  He said that "the theatre will answer you."  Very interesting thought!

Then we went to see Marriage at the MXAT.  Now, I had seen a version of this earlier in the month at the Lenkom, and these two productions were very different, and both wonderful in their own ways.  It was a neat opportunity to see two such different interpretations of the same script so close on each other’s heels.  This one was very clean and crisp, and it ended up having some very clever and poignant moments particularly at the end, even as it had plenty of great schtick throughout.  And by the by… let me tell you a little bit about the set.  It was frickin’ awesome!   It was like a pop-up book that moved silently and seamlessly from room to room.  Really pretty ingenious.  And the costumes!  And what they were able to DO in those costumes!  Very impressive stuff.

Today was singing – which was fine, though I could tell that she was going to run out of time, so I hung back, allowing all the other folks to go before me so that they would have the benefit of her time.  Sometimes it sucks being a responsible educator instead of being all selfish and jumping in front of my little undergrad babies.  Then it was ballet… which has really become the thorn in my side.  He hates us, we’re frustrated, both of those facts ooze out of all of our pores…it’s a rough way to spend an hour and a half.  AND, he started 10 minutes early today with no warning, and was really mean to the people who came in “late.”  <sigh> 

My lunch break consisted of another successful ticket buying excursion.  I’m getting so good at buying tickets to things!  I’m ready for my Russian citizenship!  Is there a separate level of citizenship that just applies to purchasing tickets to cultural events?  Because I would totally qualify for that!

Acting went pretty well today.  The big highlight was that our etudes today were to perform each other.  We drew names out of a box last week and today we presented ourselves to each other as each other.  A few of them were pretty hilarious.  And I’m pretty sure no one’s feelings got hurt, so all in all, it was pretty successful.

Then we gathered with the other two theatre groups and walked – all 40-ish of us – to Old Arbat Street and the Vakhtangov Theatre for a production of дядя Ваня (Uncle Vanya).  With this production I complete my collection of seeing the major Chekhov plays actually IN Russia.  Sadly, no one ever seems to do Ivanov… so I guess I’ll just have to come back again some time to polish off the whole set.  This production was very inventive and interesting.  There was clearly a lot of imagination on the part of the actors and director, and it was fairly easy to follow, which is always nice.  One particularly horrifying aspect of the evening came in the form of the woman sitting next to me who received AND ANSWERED three (yes… that’s THREE) phone calls during the show.  She would actually talk on the phone during the performance!  Then, right before intermission, she replied to a text message telling them that she was at the theatre (yes, I read her text).  Theatre cell phone etiquette is definitely a problem here in Mother Russia.  Luckily, she and her friend didn’t come back for the second act, so I was able to put my indignant stare away for the remainder of the show.  Overall, it was a really interesting production.  The stage was SOOOO deep, and they really used the space well.  And they had some wonderful physical bits that did a lot to bring the inner lives of the characters to the surface.

After the show a small group of us walked back through the gorgeous evening (it was 11:00 and still just feeling like the beginning of dusk (Happy Solstice, by the way!) .  It was that perfect temperature with just a tiny breeze… it was a really nice walk, and a great way to end the day.   Now… on to bed, and on to tomorrow!

Deep thought: I think that, in some ways, know a little Russian makes it a little harder to understand the plays we see, because I really do understand some of the words, but not enough to string the sentences together.  So it’ll be “Blah blah blah blah blah blah potato blah blah blah blah brother blah blah squirrel blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah love.”  And then my brain tries really hard to create meaning out of the random words that popped out.  Whereas when I understood less, it was easier to just let it wash over me.  Well… lesson learned.  I guess for the next time I come (and yes, there will be a next time) I’ll just have to learn to really speak Russian!