Tip's In Russia!

Well I know that I haven’t really kept this up to date as of late, but I’m leaving wonderful Moscow in about 6 hours. So 32 days, 16 plays, 3 weeks of classes, 3 days in St. Petersburg, 1500 pictures, and a whole bunch of lessons later, I’m heading home. We went to the cemetery today and I spent a while sitting at Stanislavski’s grave and just thinking about the past month. And I figure the best way to wrap up this blog is to just put up some of my favorite/most inspirational things that I wrote down in my journal over the past month. Look out for a bunch more pictures on facebook when I have real internet and I’m sure anybody who is reading this will be able to just talk to me about anything I missed in the blog if your heart so desires. Anyway, a wrap-up:

“Acting should be easier, lighter, higher and funnier. We can’t treat Stanislavski as an icon or the theatre as a church. Stanislavski never said to be more serious!” ~Sergei

“We should all try to fly. An actor should not walk across the stage—he should float above it” ~Vlad

“SMILE!!!” ~Vlad

“I’m more interested in the process, not the result. What is the result of a play? The curtain closes. That’s uninteresting. The interesting part is the process” ~Vlad

“An actor stays in the time when he was in love or when he loved himself” ~Misha

“Chekhov is never easy—if it’s easy for you then you’re doing something wrong” ~Misha

“Chekhov is always there to help you. When you are having fears, doubts, or problems, return to Chekhov. He will give you what you need. He’s an actor’s greatest friend” ~Misha

“Casting according to type is a cliche. People love cliche—thousands will come to see your show. But it’s uninteresting. To fight against type is to fight against cliche” ~Anatoly

“First and foremost, the theatre should bring joy to you, the audience, and everyone on stage with you. You must love every moment you have in the theatre and your joy will spread to everyone around you” ~Sergei

List of all the shows I saw:

The Seagull (MXAT)

The Blue Monster (Satirikon)

Carmen (Stanislavski Music Theatre)

The Cherry Orchard (MXAT)

Marat/Sade (Taganka Theatre)

Threepenny Opera (MXAT)

Richard III (Satirikon)

Richard (Variations done by students of MXAT School)

Old Fashioned Land Owners (MXAT New Stage)

The Golden Cockerel (Bolshoi)

Hamlet (MXAT)

Katya, Sonya, Polya, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya… (Meyerhold Center)

King Lear (Satirikon)

The Little Mermaid Ballet (Stanislavski Music Theatre)

An Extraordinary Concert (Obraztsov Puppet Theatre)

The Master and Margarita (MXAT)

And finally…my favorite Moscovite award goes to: Nastia! With Misha as a very close second.

This has been quite the trip. And I feel like I’m a bit different of a person for it. We’ll see what the upcoming year brings…

So I’ve been without internet for awhile again, so sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve seen a TON of shows in the last few days so I guess I’ll start with that.  Cal and I went to go see a show called “Old Fashioned Land Owners” at the MXAT New Stage. It was a very simple and psychological show with very minimal dialogue (which actually helped since I don’t speak Russian) about a family whose mother dies and the father degrades into a nonentity while the children ignore him and live out their lives. Very beautiful, fantastic performances, and strangely reminiscent of the first 10 minutes of Up.  We also went to a preview performance of “The Golden Cockerel” at the Bolshoi. I think I’m starting to develop an appreciation for opera. The talent there is absolutely amazing. And they had CROUCHING PIROUETTES at the end of Act 1. Those blew my mind. And the woman playing the Czarista sang almost all of Act 2 by herself and reached notes that I didn’t think the human voice was capable of making. Oh, and the theatre is absolutely gorgeous and it’s not even the original Bolshoi. The original is still under construction so they just went ahead a built a whole new gorgeous theatre dubbed “The New Bolshoi” until they get the original up and running again. Makes me wonder what the “real” Bolshoi looks like on the inside. Some of us also went to see a show called “Katya, Sonya, Polya, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya…” at the Meyerhold Center. I was completely lost during this show (probably more so than any other) but it was fascinating to watch—lots of elements of magic and diversion along with a deep story to it, as far as I could tell. Probably the coolest part of the show was the 7 male actors were already onstage when the audience walked in. Only they were in their street clothes just chatting with each other. Then some designers came out and the actors slowly got into costume, hair, and make-up onstage while the audience was being seated. Then all of a sudden, these ordinary men had morphed into their characters. It was a work of theatre in itself. Oh, and they sawed a girl in half in the first five minutes of the show. But anyway…we also went to the ballet of “The Little Mermaid” at the Stanislavski Music Theatre. It was good, but not exactly what I was expecting. There seemed to be a lot more Modern dance than classical ballet, which was cool, but I was really hoping to see a “real” classical ballet while I was here. It really took me until Act 2 to really get into the show since I’m not used to that style of storytelling. But overall, it was a cool experience. Finally, we saw the incredible Konstantin Raikin play Lear. Also the same actor who played Buckingham in Richard III played Gloucester…ridiculous. Raikin is a powerhouse of an actor…his Lear and Richard were unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He’s also doing a 2 hour, one man show of “Notes from the Underground” by Dostoevsky right now, which, unfortunately, I won’t be able to see.  The show was a little more straightforward than Richard was, but still incredible. And the last scene was so moving that I can’t really put it into words…ask me about it in person.

Anyway…I’ll post more about classes when I get a chance, I can’t write anymore right now.  

Yesterday turned out to be our last ballet class since our teacher has a performance on Saturday.  It looks like it’s going to be replaced with either an extra movement class or a tour of Stanislavski’s house.  Either would be cool.  We worked mostly with contact improv and I was actually pretty pleased with my results.  For my first one with Nancy (it was rehearsed beforehand as homework and we came up with the idea of being window-washers) he said that it was really good character work but not really dance.  I was ok with that—I’m never really going to be a dancer and I’m more interested in character work and the movement aspect of dance anyway.  Then we had to make up another one on the spot and it had to be based on “two friends saying goodbye for the last time”.  Aaron and I came up with the idea of a soldier dying after being wounded in battle and his squadmate watching him die.  I thought that it was pretty awesome, especially with only 5 minutes of prep. 

After that was Sergei’s class, more exercises and etudes.  I’m getting a little confused because today he was telling people they were focused too much on plot and not enough on character.  And the day before he told me the opposite.  I guess he just wants a good mix of both. 

After that, we saw the MXAT’s production of Hamlet (pronounced “Gamlet” because Russians don’t have an “H” sound).  It was directed by the same guy who did Richard III at Satirikon and I could definitely tell right from the first scene.  However, I thought that Richard used the elements that he incorporated way better.  I understood the reasoning for his choices in Richard, but in Hamlet, they seemed to be there just because it’s his “style” (it’s worthy to note that Richard premiered in 2004 and Hamlet in 2006). But it was still a really interesting production—almost unrecognizable as Hamlet at some points.  It was heavily edited and a lot of scenes were switched around.  Most notably, the “To be or not to be” speech came at the end of the show—right before the final scene.  After thinking about it, I think it might actually make more sense there…but seeing it done in English would help. And the scene in Act III between Gertrude and Hamlet was AWESOME and that’s my favorite scene of the show.  The same actress who played Mrs. Peachum in Threepenny Opera played Gertrude in this show and she is just absolutely incredible.

Today was another movement class with Vlad (SMILE!!!), which is always tough but definitely rewarding.  After lunch, we had another lecture with Anatoly.  He talked about the founding of MXAT and their original production of The Seagull.  Anatoly just has so much history memorized and knows so many little facts and details, it’s amazing.  He mentioned that Nemrovich-Dachenko also wrote an autobiography which tells the story a bit differently than “My Life In Art”…I’ll have to check that out.

Then we had acting with Misha and worked on our monologues.  He told me that I had the right inner emotion, but the words were coming too easy for me.  Solyony’s pain is as intense as a woman giving birth—he is compelled to confess his love to a woman who doesn’t love him back and he has never truly loved before.  I’m really glad that I chose this character to work on—he has an amazing dichotomy to him.  Misha told me that “He loves like a god and hates like an animal”—heavy stuff.  I also have to write out the inner monologue for the character.  More to work on.

Finally, I saw a heavily abridged version (it was an hour and a half) of Richard III, simply titled “Richard” done by the third year students.  Great work and it really showed off how amazing the training is here.  Probably the most interesting part of the production was that they actually had two Richards, one male and one female, each portraying the different sides of him.  Watching the two interact with each other was fascinating.

Anyway, all I have is acting with Sergei tomorrow since I don’t have to go to voice.  I forget if I’m seeing a show or not.

It rained all day and canvas shoes do absolutely NOTHING to protect your feet from it.  I might as well been walking around barefoot. Oh well.

Had another film history class today and we actually got to watch an entire film this time.  It was called The Cranes Are Flying and it was from 1957.  It was incredible. It was the rather cliche story of “boy and girl are in love, boy goes off to war, girl marries boy’s relative while he’s gone, boy goes MIA and the girl is still in love with him and miserable with her life and wondering if he’s alive”. But the film was so well done, I still found myself dragged into the story and characters.  The cinematography was also amazing.  I’m not usually a fan of older films but I think I’ll find myself revisiting this one.

Then we had acting with Sergei.  The games are definitely getting more complicated but, of course, that just means that we’re getting better at them.  That’s Sergei’s motto: “When you do something well, make it harder”.  Then we moved on to etudes of people.  I did a homeless drunk and the consensus seemed to be that although my character was good, I needed a bigger event and change in the etude.  Which I definitely put more time and thought into developing a really distinct character rather than the plot.  More to work on, I suppose.

Sergei also talked about what he calls the “Russian Virus”.  He said that there’s always some people who really take to the culture and end up having to learn more, read more, and come back.  I might have it.  I’m loving everything about this city so far and I’m thinking that some day I’ll want to return.  I’ll have to be content with catching up with Russian authors when I get home.

After class, we headed to the Satirikon to see their production of Richard III starring their artistic director Konstantin Raikin.  We had to take the Metro to get there during rush hour. This means sitting in an overloaded subway car full of soaking wet misery.  However, this production of Richard was absolutely unreal.  The teachers here keep using the Stanislavski quote “simpler, higher, lighter, funnier” and this production embodied that phrase.  Richard was essentially played as a comedy—which made the horrific things he does all the more terrifying and poignant.  Raikin’s Richard can be summed up in two words: manic glee.  He took absolute joy in every action and was loving every horrible thing he did.  Then he would go from insane laughter to furious anger at the drop of a hat.  It was incredible.  The death scenes were incredibly striking.  The assassins acted out Clarence’s murder by violently throwing glasses of wine at him until he was covered in red.  Hasting’s head is wrapped in newspaper and taped shut while the murders pose for pictures with the body.  And the two princes’ playful pillowfight is interrupted by a storm of sheets while the assassins beat them to death with their own pillows.  I feel like these descriptions don’t even do justice to the staging, but it’s the best I can do.  The technical elements were also impeccable.  The use of shadows was extremely effective and you could feel the sound effects in your body.  During Margaret’s prophecy, they had the best stage snow I’ve ever seen.  And all of the furniture in the show was also either disproportionate or misshapen, further highlighting Richard’s deformities.  

Anyway, tomorrow is ballet, then a tour of the MXAT theatre, acting, and then seeing Hamlet at the MXAT.  Should be good.  

Today started bright and early with a 10am movement class.  I really like having movement in the morning—it kinda wakes me up for the whole day.  I can already feel a difference from only 2 classes and Vlad has noticed the difference with everyone too. We did a bunch of partner work today which made me realize that either I have a hard time trusting or a hard time finding my balance—which, either way, needs to be fixed.  I found it interesting that when we moved the exercises from the floor to doing them on top of chairs, I was much more successful.  I supposed it’s because when you’re on top of a chair, you HAVE to get it right—or else you’re going to fall on the floor.  You have no safety net if you mess up.  

After that, I had to work my song with Marina.  I think the fact that she doesn’t speak English helps because I don’t really have time to get into my head and worry about it.  All of a sudden, I’m in this room with this insane Russian woman who doesn’t care about my problems and wouldn’t understand them if I tried to tell them to her and I have to sing and just wait for her to start yelling at me.  Somehow, it works.  I did pretty well with my song and now I just have to memorize it.

Today was an awesome acting class for the group.  I think that we all got re-energized yesterday and everyone was really alive, excited and having fun.  We were getting kind of worn out by the end of last week.  We did more exercises and animal etudes.  We’re starting with people etudes tomorrow.

Seeing Richard III tomorrow—SUPER pumped for that.          

So today is Russia Day! I guess there’s going to be some big event or something in Red Square tonight—and I’m pretty sure that Linkin Park is playing at it lol.  We went on a really nice boat tour down the river here this afternoon and the rest of the day has basically just been catching up on sleep and homework.

Yesterday we had the dreaded 2 and a half hour ballet class.  It wasn’t too bad, I don’t think, once we got past the ballet section.  The stuff that we’re doing is basics that I’ve already covered with Kathy and Tammy, but our teacher is extremely precise and has no patience for us.  He told us for some of the leg stretches that we have to go to our maximum and then a little bit further.  And if your legs aren’t shaking from tension, then you’re not at your maximum.  After that, we got into the Russian Folk dance section, which is tiring, but not quite as intense. 

After that was Misha’s class.  We played some more games (more reasons to love Misha—he sings the theme from The Godfather while we play some of the games) and then we started work on our monologues.  He outlined in detail how to approach a monologue and a role from Michael Chekhov’s technique and how to find the Atmosphere.  One of the really interesting questions that he has us asking is “What specific piece of music can follow the monologue?”  After that, I did my first reading of my Solyony monologue from Three Sisters and he gave me a whole new way of looking at it.  The monologue is when he confesses his love for Irina, but Misha pointed out that it’s not exactly a romantic monologue.  Although he is speaking of his love for her and praising her beauty, Irina sees a monster.  Solyony says at the end that he will kill anyone who stands in his way—and he does at the end of the play.  So we must know that he is willing and capable of that from the very beginning—it must have that intensity.

I saw the MXAT’s production of Threepenny Opera last night after dinner.  That show blew my mind.  It was a full-on Brechtian production of the show.  It was highly theatrical—the characters would sing their songs directly to the audience using microphones placed on the stage, there were also cameras on the stage that projected on to the back wall, the actors interacted with audience members throughout the show, pianos being chainsawed and broken onstage, and it even featured an enormous skeleton that was the height of the entire stage at the end.  The MXAT’s fly space must be ridiculous because the skeleton flew right down and right back up.  I sat with my mouth agape for the last twenty minutes of the show.  Instead of being pardoned at the end of the show, Mack is actually hung onstage, sent to hell, and then pardoned into heaven.  The last image of the show was an enormous carpet hung off the back wall of the stage and Mack walking straight up the back wall into heaven.  It was incredible—and it really says something when you can sit through a 4 hour show in a different language and never get bored.

So my internet hasn’t been working the last couple of days so I have a bunch of catching up to do! I can’t remember the last time I was this sore and exhausted. Arnica is my best friend right now. We have to walk over a mile and a half to class every day and then do crazy Russian stuff and then walk back. I’ve been going to bed before midnight just about every night at this point. But anyway, enough complaining. I’ve had two movement classes with Vladimir this week. He’s insane. He’s enormous and Russian and reminds us of Drago from Rocky IV. His class is all about body awareness, but it’s awareness through intense physical exercises. Some of his stuff is straight out of Insanity…we’re doing high knees and butt kicks and jumps and everything else. Only instead of Shaun T giving words of encouragement, we have an extremely large Russian man screaming at the top of his lungs for you to “SMILE!!!”. We have to smile because we’re not allowed to show when we are suffering on the inside. He also has us going through exercises he calls “Discovering a New World”, where we are putting our bodies into unusual and inverted positions just to see what we can do. Last class ended with us doing a “shoulder stand”, where we were completely inverted with our right shoulder being the only point of contact with the floor. We also do a lot of balancing exercises with partners—eventually moving to doing them on top of chairs for an added challenge. For all of this insanity, however, he has a definite purpose. He told us ” We should all try to fly. An actor should not walk across the stage—he should float above it” I also had another singing class with Marina. She gave me a song called “Volare” to sing. I’ve never heard it but evidently it’s some sort of old standard. Dean Martin sang it, I think. So I have that to learn by next week. Nastia would sing with us if we didn’t know the song to help us learn it and she has a beautiful voice. I’m convinced that there is nothing that she can’t do. We also had a Russian Film History class this week. We covered basic Russian History before we got into Film History and that was awesome. However, we then moved into silent films and that just isn’t my cup of tea. But it was interesting to hear about all of the innovations made by Russian directors and we watched one amazing silent film called “The Cameraman’s Revenge” which evidently was a huge influence on Tim Burton. I’m really excited to get into the more modern stuff, though. We had another lecture with Anatoly yesterday. Only it was more of a dialogue than a lecture, which was awesome. We discussed the new production of The Seagull for awhile, which was great because it really gave me a new understanding of what the director was trying to do with his deconstructed production. I also got a better understanding of why the Russians hated it so much. We also talked a lot about your personal artistic aesthetic—like if it’s ok for a director to change a play as much as the director of The Seagull did. Now, to Acting. We’ve been working on etudes mostly in Sergei’s class. We started with objects and moved on to animals today. So far, I’ve done a balloon, a washing machine, and a fish. When Sergei gives notes afterwords, he really makes you think of things about the character you’re playing that you never would have considered. God is in the details, he says. We also start the class every day with concentration and attention exercises. I’ve been writing down all of the exercises and a bunch of amazing quotes from Sergei every day. One of my favorites was: “You must do everything in the theatre as if it was either the first or last time you do it. The most dangerous phrase in theatre is ‘as usual’. Everything must be extraordinary or else it’s uninteresting”. I really don’t understand why we don’t start with etudes in American training (at least from what I’ve seen/heard). They’re wonderful, simple acting exercises which really get you into your body and keep you out of your head. The Russian students basically do etudes for their entire first year…they really don’t speak in their acting until their second year when they start doing scenes. Next week, we’re going to start working on Three Sisters and act out the dreams of the characters and also play scenes that aren’t in the play but happen between the action of the script. It sounds like it’s going to be really interesting, especially the dream exercises. We also start doing monologues with Misha tomorrow, which I’m really excited about. We’re going to start putting the Michael Chekhov technique into practice and Misha is just able to bring out all of the joy and passion for theatre in me. So tonight I saw a production of Marat/Sade and I’m consistently amazed by the physicality of Russian actors. Knowing Vladimir’s movement class, I’m not surprised anymore. There were wonderful acrobatics and climbing up on the prison bars on the stage and all kinds of other stuff. And we only paid 50 rubles ($1.80) for the tickets and we got amazing seats! I literally can’t believe it. The Metro is terrifying during rush hour, by the way, and we got pretty lost trying to get there. Then Dave had go through the struggle of explaining to the lady at the ticket booth that we wanted 8 tickets to the show tonight. It was a mess. We’re seeing Threepenny Opera tomorrow, which I’m really excited for because the production is supposed to be incredible. Oh, and I have 2 and a half hours of ballet in the morning. I’m going to die.

So today was basically the most touristy day of the trip so far.  We took a bus tour around Moscow and saw Red Square, Novodevichy Convent, and the Observation Hill while the guide explained a lot of other sites around Moscow from the bus.  I know this sounds cliche but it really is incredible to see things that were built in the 1400s or 1500s since we only have like a 250 year timeline in America. But I think that the pictures basically speak for themselves.  The Hell’s Angels were out in full force at Red Square…must be a convention or something.  And trying to explain what a fraternity is to a Russian student was REALLY difficult.

Afterwards we saw The Cherry Orchard at MXAT. I think that I liked it the least out of all the shows I’ve seen so far.  It was definitely much more “Chekovian” than The Seagull was.  I think my main issue with the show was that it was done with an extremely minimalistic sense.  There was literally no set—everything was done with curtains and a few chairs and benches.  But for me, The Cherry Orchard is so much about the physical place—the orchard and the estate—that removing it completely took something away from the show.  They may have been trying to focus more on the interpersonal relationships through this concept, but it may have gotten lost in translation for me.  The acting was top-notch, however.  

We got the basic schedule of shows we’re going to see.  We have the choice between Richard III or King Lear at Satirikon (I’m going to see Richard, of course) and we’re seeing a final project of Richard from the MXAT students.  We might get a chance to see both Shakespeare shows if we pay for the second one but I think we have to talk to Nastia about that.  We’re also seeing Hamlet and Threepenny Opera at MXAT.  Then we’re seeing Master and Margarita by Bulgakov and another show which is based on several short stories by Salinger. MXAT is paying for all of these for us and we should be able to see more shows if we want to buy the tickets like we did for Carmen (which I’m definitely planning on).

Anyway…tomorrow is my first movement class (which I’ve heard is really intense), singing, and then acting with Sergei again.  Our group planned an etude about a gumball machine, so that should be fun. And I’m thinking that I’m going to do a balloon blowing up as my personal etude.  We’ll see how it goes!