Tuesday, November 30, 2010
November 30, 2010: A Picture Update
Friday, November 26, 2010
November 26, 2010: A Russian Thanksgiving
We went all out for Thanksgiving. Everyone signed up weeks in advance to make different dishes, and then Marissa made up a schedule of kitchen use and time for each person in the 3 kitchens available to us. We cooked all day. There was a debate about the appropriateness of playing Christmas music – some people thought it helped to get in the holiday mood, and others insisted you have to wait until after Thanksgiving to play Christmas music. So we switched it up every hour or so, and there was also a really different vibe in each of the 3 kitchens, depending on who was cooking and whose music was playing. We laughed and joked and helped each other chop vegetables and told childhood stories and banded together to keep the fire alarm from going off when the fried chicken caused clouds of smoke.
There was SO MUCH food! For many of us, it was our first time making family recipes without the help of our parents, and we also had to improvise with some ingredients that aren’t readily available here. But everything turned out beautifully. We had a turkey and a chicken and macaroni and cheese and meatloaf and a giant pot of Russian cabbage soup called shee. There was creamed spinach and tomato salad and green bean casserole and fried eggplant and frosted cauliflower (my specialty) and mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberry sauce. For dessert we had pumpkin pie made from fresh pumpkin, apple pie, cinnamon apples, cookies, brownies, and pecan pie. And there was plenty of vodka, sangria, and champagne to go around.
There were between 60 and 70 of us packed into the rehearsal space in the basement of the dorm that’s about 15 feet by 40 feet. The food was laid out on tables, but there were only about 8 chairs lining the walls – we stood to eat and talk. It was a real treat to share this holiday with our closest Russian friends who are students at MXAT and our teachers: in attendance were both of my acting teachers, my Russian language teacher, my stage combat teacher, my movement teacher, and the head of the Moscow Art Theatre School, Anatoly Smeliansky. Dr. Smeliansky gave a toast saying that because of Russia’s rough history, they don’t have any holidays that really mean anything to the people, and he is honored to be a part of this holiday that has a real meaning for us. He also said that we are a very special group of American students, and more than just students he sees us as colleagues. Our Russian language teacher Elena also gave a short toast, saying that this is the 8th Thanksgiving she has shared with the American students, and although she has never been to the United States, it is now a treasured tradition for her.
At home, I tend to take Thanksgiving for granted. It’s just a day to eat a lot of food and see a few friends or relatives. This year, I was reminded what the holiday is really for – it is a chance to share what you can: your time, your food, your company – and appreciate all your blessings. It warmed my heart to be a part of such a large team effort that turned out so well and that was truly appreciated by the Russian people we’ve grown to love here. We’re all still glowing from the success, and I’ve heard more than one of my friends say it was the best Thanksgiving they’ve ever had.
There was SO MUCH food! For many of us, it was our first time making family recipes without the help of our parents, and we also had to improvise with some ingredients that aren’t readily available here. But everything turned out beautifully. We had a turkey and a chicken and macaroni and cheese and meatloaf and a giant pot of Russian cabbage soup called shee. There was creamed spinach and tomato salad and green bean casserole and fried eggplant and frosted cauliflower (my specialty) and mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberry sauce. For dessert we had pumpkin pie made from fresh pumpkin, apple pie, cinnamon apples, cookies, brownies, and pecan pie. And there was plenty of vodka, sangria, and champagne to go around.
There were between 60 and 70 of us packed into the rehearsal space in the basement of the dorm that’s about 15 feet by 40 feet. The food was laid out on tables, but there were only about 8 chairs lining the walls – we stood to eat and talk. It was a real treat to share this holiday with our closest Russian friends who are students at MXAT and our teachers: in attendance were both of my acting teachers, my Russian language teacher, my stage combat teacher, my movement teacher, and the head of the Moscow Art Theatre School, Anatoly Smeliansky. Dr. Smeliansky gave a toast saying that because of Russia’s rough history, they don’t have any holidays that really mean anything to the people, and he is honored to be a part of this holiday that has a real meaning for us. He also said that we are a very special group of American students, and more than just students he sees us as colleagues. Our Russian language teacher Elena also gave a short toast, saying that this is the 8th Thanksgiving she has shared with the American students, and although she has never been to the United States, it is now a treasured tradition for her.
At home, I tend to take Thanksgiving for granted. It’s just a day to eat a lot of food and see a few friends or relatives. This year, I was reminded what the holiday is really for – it is a chance to share what you can: your time, your food, your company – and appreciate all your blessings. It warmed my heart to be a part of such a large team effort that turned out so well and that was truly appreciated by the Russian people we’ve grown to love here. We’re all still glowing from the success, and I’ve heard more than one of my friends say it was the best Thanksgiving they’ve ever had.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
November 21, 2010: First Snow, Holiday Season, Hamlet, and Culture
Christmas decorations are going up everywhere. There is a giant Christmas tree at the entrance to the park just outside the dorm, and another one in the street outside school. The fast food restaurant called Teremok by school is decked out with 2 trees, lights, and garlands. The grocery store I went shopping at today has a decorated tree and a sign that I think says “Happy New Year.” It snowed a little today, enough to stick to the ground. Ilya says it’s supposed to snow for real on Friday (she put her hand up to her waist to demonstrate the amount). I’m happy to experience the universality of Christmas celebration, realizing again that despite the language barrier, people everywhere are still people, sharing joy in similar ways. I smiled to see a family having a snowball fight with the small amount of snow they could scrape off of a car parked on the street. But I miss my family and my own traditions, and although I am welcome here, it’s tough to be away from home this time of year.
I developed and framed a picture of me and Ilya at her fruit stand, and I wrote a little note on the back and gave it to her. I think it made her really happy. She will only be working there for a few more days, and then she closes for the winter because it gets too cold and her fruits and vegetables would freeze.
Last weekend 5 of us went to an ice sculpture museum. It was magical and I have pictures, but I’ll have to post them later. The museum was only one small room, maybe 15 by 25 feet. Before we went in, they gave us special cloaks that made me feel like Snow White. It was very cold inside (we were walking around in a freezer!) and the room was filled with ice sculptures. There were warriors on horses and three-headed dragons and birds in houses and squirrels running through the meadow and a giant dragonfly and a chest of treasures and a big Faberge egg and a log cabin with fruit frozen into ice blocks inside and a photo opportunity where you could put your face into the hole so that you had a different person’s body – but it was made of ice! We stayed inside for maybe 30 minutes, until we couldn’t feel our fingers or toes.
Last night I saw Hamlet performed by a company traveling from St. Petersburg. It was less than 2 hours long with no intermission. Onstage was a giant set of bleachers oriented so that when the actors were sitting on the bleachers, their backs were to the audience. Center stage was a long set of stairs leading up into the bleachers, and at the very front of the stage was a pit with a wooden plank across it. As we walked into the theatre, the actors were already onstage, all dressed in black and sitting in the bleachers waiting for an event to take place. The play opened with 2 officers leading drug dogs through the bleachers, across the stage, and back out. Then Hamlet’s friends carried him through the audience onstage and under the bleachers. He was passed out from drinking too much, and his friends revived him and dressed him in a suit and carried him to the event, which turned out to be his father’s funeral (which took place upstage, through the bleachers, so we really couldn’t see much except the actors’ backs). Hamlet was drunk through the funeral, making a bit of a scene (grabbing Ophelia’s butt, trying to leave to go to the bathroom, and clapping at inappropriate times). After the funeral, Hamlet’s friends poured him more shots, and he drank until he passed out again. Then they staged a hallucination of a ghost – the lights dimmed to blue, they used a microphone passed between them, and there were thunder sheets and a spotlight. Hamlet seemed to me to be legitimately crazy for the rest of the show, with no “pretending to be crazy” as is usually accepted. During the scene when Hamlet stabs Ophelia’s father behind the curtain, her father was under the bleachers and he stabbed him there, and the lights dimmed to almost blackout. Hamlet dragged Ophelia’s father out onto the stage and only when he started stabbing him repeatedly did I realize that it must be a doll, not the actor playing Ophelia’s father. A crowd gathered to watch Hamlet stabbing this body, and in the crowd was an actor in a donkey suit who had appeared earlier in the play within a play. Hamlet dragged the body all the way across stage and adopted a vulgar position with the body, stabbing it even more, when Ophelia appeared. She was already going crazy, singing her song, and when she saw Hamlet, he left and she cradled her father, then dumped him into the pit and threw herself into the pit as though drowning herself.
Much of the action of the play took place behind the bleachers, so we couldn’t really see it. There were 2 extended party scenes like that. The play within a play was entirely behind the bleachers, and King Claudius comes running, screaming out and down the stairs and through the audience when he is struck with guilt at having killed Hamlet’s father. The duel at the end begins behind the bleachers and finishes in view of the audience. The play ended as it began, with 2 officers leading their drug dogs through the bleachers, across the stage, and back out through the bleachers.
The play left me with a multitude of impressions: They cut it and completely changed it. It’s a story of one long, drunken hallucination. It’s a practical joke with tragic consequences. It’s the immense frustration of seeing everything from Hamlet’s point of view – he never has the whole story, and he can never see anything clearly: thus the bleachers in the way, obscuring our view. This impression was intensified even more for me because I was in the very last seat in the second balcony, and when I was sitting down I couldn’t see the front of the stage, and when I was standing up I couldn’t see the platform at the top of the bleachers. The people in front of me spent about half the show standing, so I did too. But rather than annoying me, it turned the show into an interactive experience for me, where I was struggling to get the full picture, just as Hamlet is doing. For me, it was a dark and thought-provoking way to twist a (perhaps) over-told story, to highlight completely different ideas.
Today I went to 2 art galleries and a cathedral. There was a church service going on inside the cathedral with a choir singing, and the acoustics were beautiful. The cathedral was large and impressive with vaulted ceilings and colorful decorations depicting Bible stories, much like the cathedral I saw in St. Petersburg. I visited the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art and the New Collection added on in 2006. The Pushkin contained art and artifacts starting with Ancient Egypt and going through the 19th century. It wasn’t terribly large, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff. I loved the New Collection. It was almost exclusively French Impressionist work, with full rooms of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Gauguin, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Picasso. There were 3 floors that displayed pieces systematically and progressively through time, starting with about 1850 and ending at about 1980. The museum was not at all crowded, so I lingered and soaked it all in. Art museums (especially good ones) are a refreshing break from TV!
I developed and framed a picture of me and Ilya at her fruit stand, and I wrote a little note on the back and gave it to her. I think it made her really happy. She will only be working there for a few more days, and then she closes for the winter because it gets too cold and her fruits and vegetables would freeze.
Last weekend 5 of us went to an ice sculpture museum. It was magical and I have pictures, but I’ll have to post them later. The museum was only one small room, maybe 15 by 25 feet. Before we went in, they gave us special cloaks that made me feel like Snow White. It was very cold inside (we were walking around in a freezer!) and the room was filled with ice sculptures. There were warriors on horses and three-headed dragons and birds in houses and squirrels running through the meadow and a giant dragonfly and a chest of treasures and a big Faberge egg and a log cabin with fruit frozen into ice blocks inside and a photo opportunity where you could put your face into the hole so that you had a different person’s body – but it was made of ice! We stayed inside for maybe 30 minutes, until we couldn’t feel our fingers or toes.
Last night I saw Hamlet performed by a company traveling from St. Petersburg. It was less than 2 hours long with no intermission. Onstage was a giant set of bleachers oriented so that when the actors were sitting on the bleachers, their backs were to the audience. Center stage was a long set of stairs leading up into the bleachers, and at the very front of the stage was a pit with a wooden plank across it. As we walked into the theatre, the actors were already onstage, all dressed in black and sitting in the bleachers waiting for an event to take place. The play opened with 2 officers leading drug dogs through the bleachers, across the stage, and back out. Then Hamlet’s friends carried him through the audience onstage and under the bleachers. He was passed out from drinking too much, and his friends revived him and dressed him in a suit and carried him to the event, which turned out to be his father’s funeral (which took place upstage, through the bleachers, so we really couldn’t see much except the actors’ backs). Hamlet was drunk through the funeral, making a bit of a scene (grabbing Ophelia’s butt, trying to leave to go to the bathroom, and clapping at inappropriate times). After the funeral, Hamlet’s friends poured him more shots, and he drank until he passed out again. Then they staged a hallucination of a ghost – the lights dimmed to blue, they used a microphone passed between them, and there were thunder sheets and a spotlight. Hamlet seemed to me to be legitimately crazy for the rest of the show, with no “pretending to be crazy” as is usually accepted. During the scene when Hamlet stabs Ophelia’s father behind the curtain, her father was under the bleachers and he stabbed him there, and the lights dimmed to almost blackout. Hamlet dragged Ophelia’s father out onto the stage and only when he started stabbing him repeatedly did I realize that it must be a doll, not the actor playing Ophelia’s father. A crowd gathered to watch Hamlet stabbing this body, and in the crowd was an actor in a donkey suit who had appeared earlier in the play within a play. Hamlet dragged the body all the way across stage and adopted a vulgar position with the body, stabbing it even more, when Ophelia appeared. She was already going crazy, singing her song, and when she saw Hamlet, he left and she cradled her father, then dumped him into the pit and threw herself into the pit as though drowning herself.
Much of the action of the play took place behind the bleachers, so we couldn’t really see it. There were 2 extended party scenes like that. The play within a play was entirely behind the bleachers, and King Claudius comes running, screaming out and down the stairs and through the audience when he is struck with guilt at having killed Hamlet’s father. The duel at the end begins behind the bleachers and finishes in view of the audience. The play ended as it began, with 2 officers leading their drug dogs through the bleachers, across the stage, and back out through the bleachers.
The play left me with a multitude of impressions: They cut it and completely changed it. It’s a story of one long, drunken hallucination. It’s a practical joke with tragic consequences. It’s the immense frustration of seeing everything from Hamlet’s point of view – he never has the whole story, and he can never see anything clearly: thus the bleachers in the way, obscuring our view. This impression was intensified even more for me because I was in the very last seat in the second balcony, and when I was sitting down I couldn’t see the front of the stage, and when I was standing up I couldn’t see the platform at the top of the bleachers. The people in front of me spent about half the show standing, so I did too. But rather than annoying me, it turned the show into an interactive experience for me, where I was struggling to get the full picture, just as Hamlet is doing. For me, it was a dark and thought-provoking way to twist a (perhaps) over-told story, to highlight completely different ideas.
Today I went to 2 art galleries and a cathedral. There was a church service going on inside the cathedral with a choir singing, and the acoustics were beautiful. The cathedral was large and impressive with vaulted ceilings and colorful decorations depicting Bible stories, much like the cathedral I saw in St. Petersburg. I visited the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art and the New Collection added on in 2006. The Pushkin contained art and artifacts starting with Ancient Egypt and going through the 19th century. It wasn’t terribly large, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff. I loved the New Collection. It was almost exclusively French Impressionist work, with full rooms of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Gauguin, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Picasso. There were 3 floors that displayed pieces systematically and progressively through time, starting with about 1850 and ending at about 1980. The museum was not at all crowded, so I lingered and soaked it all in. Art museums (especially good ones) are a refreshing break from TV!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
November 11, 2010: Hot Weather and Hard Work
The last 2 days have been unseasonably warm: it was 15 degrees Celsius as I was walking home last night. Although it's nice to peel off my coat and linger outside, I somehow feel like something is wrong - like we should be bundling up and shivering and drinking tea and huddling together for warmth. I've been away from home for 54 days, and I'm experiencing a paradoxical undercurrent of knowing I fit in and feeling loved and supported, while still feeling isolated within a crowd. My friends have become my family. Moscow has become my home. I visit Ilya every other day to buy fruit, talk about the weather, name the classes I took that day, and answer her questions with smiles and "I don't understand"s, or sometimes broken attempted responses. I saw a rat on the street and a man talking to himself, and I'm starting to recognize the old women with wrinkled faces bundled in rags who shiver and hold out dirty cups for kopecks. I gave a man directions to Tverskaya street last night in Russian, even though he switched to English as soon as I started to speak:
Man: "(Unintelligable Russian question.)"
Me: "Izvenitye?" ("Excuse me?")
Man: "Where is Tverskaya street?"
Me: (Pointing) "Tam." ("There.")
Man: "Thank you."
Impressive, yes? I'm practically fluent!
In Acting, we do etudes and etudes and etudes: in groups, in pairs, and solo. We're starting to focus on etudes relating to our scene work, and I'm playing Liuba from The Cherry Orchard. This week I did a solo etude in which Liuba tries to poison herself (which happened shortly before the play begins) and an etude in which my scene partner tells me my son has just drowned in the river (which happened 6 years before the play begins). Perhaps this is contributing to my general feeling of discontent.
I struggle in ballet. Larissa told us through a translator about her career in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre and how her dad always said that art is equally about technique and radiance. I'm inspired and continually awed by the fact that I'm studying with such a beautiful and accomplished ballerina, and frustrated that I'm not better at the dances. I suppose I should be easier on myself since I've only been dancing for 8 weeks, but it's difficult to be radiant when I'm tripping over my own feet. I stayed after class yesterday to practice a dance step again that we've been working on since the beginning of the semester. I was sweating and crying and getting it wrong repeatedly, and Larissa was clapping the rhythm and adjusting my body and shouting "again!" and saying "maladiets!" ("good job!") even though it wasn't. Finally she told me to stop, and I said "ya haichu dyelat" (I want to do it). She smiled and kissed me on the cheek and told me it was OK and said we would work together again after class on Monday. I don't know if I'll ever learn all the steps, but I hold within me a feeling of hard work, struggle, and immense care from a lovely artist who wants me to succeed.
Man: "(Unintelligable Russian question.)"
Me: "Izvenitye?" ("Excuse me?")
Man: "Where is Tverskaya street?"
Me: (Pointing) "Tam." ("There.")
Man: "Thank you."
Impressive, yes? I'm practically fluent!
In Acting, we do etudes and etudes and etudes: in groups, in pairs, and solo. We're starting to focus on etudes relating to our scene work, and I'm playing Liuba from The Cherry Orchard. This week I did a solo etude in which Liuba tries to poison herself (which happened shortly before the play begins) and an etude in which my scene partner tells me my son has just drowned in the river (which happened 6 years before the play begins). Perhaps this is contributing to my general feeling of discontent.
I struggle in ballet. Larissa told us through a translator about her career in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre and how her dad always said that art is equally about technique and radiance. I'm inspired and continually awed by the fact that I'm studying with such a beautiful and accomplished ballerina, and frustrated that I'm not better at the dances. I suppose I should be easier on myself since I've only been dancing for 8 weeks, but it's difficult to be radiant when I'm tripping over my own feet. I stayed after class yesterday to practice a dance step again that we've been working on since the beginning of the semester. I was sweating and crying and getting it wrong repeatedly, and Larissa was clapping the rhythm and adjusting my body and shouting "again!" and saying "maladiets!" ("good job!") even though it wasn't. Finally she told me to stop, and I said "ya haichu dyelat" (I want to do it). She smiled and kissed me on the cheek and told me it was OK and said we would work together again after class on Monday. I don't know if I'll ever learn all the steps, but I hold within me a feeling of hard work, struggle, and immense care from a lovely artist who wants me to succeed.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
11-04-10: My Birthday, St. Petersburg, and Another Busy Week
Last Thursday was my 30th birthday. I tend to be overly dramatic about these things, and I've been dreading this day for months. But it's a little hard to be unhappy about getting older when I realize everything I'm doing with my life, and when I'm surrounded by an incredible ensemble of people who care about me. For my birthday, Darren and Lydia made me gluten free cookie bars that were some of the most delicious sweets I've ever tasted. I'm not sure I'll be able to duplicate them at home because they included a couple of Russian ingredients (chocolate butter and some sort of peanut buttery legume confection). I had no idea they had made me these treats (they did it in the kitchen across the hall rather than the one right by my room) and they brought them to acting class and everyone sang happy birthday to me. I cried, but it was more from happiness than from overdramatic despair at the tragedy of getting older. I'm a million miles away from home, but I'm surrounded by an amazing group of friends who went out of their way to make sure I felt loved on my birthday.
And on my birthday evening we saw a play called Opus 7 that was a performance art piece that blew my mind. It had 2 acts, and between acts one and two they moved all the chairs into a different configuration and totally changed the space. Act 1 was wide and narrow with a long white cardboard backdrop. The ensemble entered with instruments and sang a haunting, strange song while the main girl appeared through the middle of the cardboard backdrop. She cut slits in the cardboard for her hands, feet, and eyes. Then she wriggled backwards through the eye slit and rolled onto the stage. The play was a performance art piece in tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. Perhaps the most moving moment for me happened near the beginning of act 1: all the members of the ensemble spread out across the stage and created a person on the wall. First they each threw a bucket of black paint onto the white cardboard. Next they stapled black paper shoes and hat onto the person, and then a curl of hair on each side. They cut a big arch around each person with a knife, and there was bright white light shining through from behind. Suddenly, the ovens turned on as there was an overpowering blast of smoke and shredded newspaper that knocked each cardboard person down. The shredded newspaper filled the space and fell onto the audience. It was shocking and sobering and beautiful. There were multiple projections of people standing and waiting in an empty room, and as a moving projection of a Nazi guard moved across the whole backdrop with his echoing footsteps on the hardwood floor, each person disappeared and left the room empty. At another point, a whole pile of shoes was dumped through a hole in the cardboard. The ensemble members painted a crowd of children holding hands and then arranged the shoes in front of them. There was one pair of bright red shoes, and one of the actors walked those shoes across the stage to join the crowd of children. Then the actor joined the painted children by attaching his coat to the wall, and one of the other actors painted a child's arm up so that the adult was holding hands with the group of children. Suddenly, the man was killed, and the actor wriggled out of the coat, so we were left with the image of the crowd of children holding hands with an empty coat jacket. The second act included a 20-foot puppet woman who transformed into a Nazi general and started shooting at everyone, including the girl who had been her child. The piece was inspiring and moving and different from anything I've seen before.
It's difficult to form concrete impressions of St. Petersburg because we were only there for 2 days. We took a 10pm train Friday night and arrived in the city before 7am Monday morning. Saturday morning we had a bus tour of the city that was more about bonding over our mutual confusion and exhaustion than actually learning about the city. St. Petersburg is so far north that it didn't get light until about 10am, so after traveling for so long and not sleeping well and then riding around in a bus, it was an almost out-of-body experience for me. The highlight of Saturday was an afternoon tour of the Hermitage, perhaps the best art museum in the world. It's a palace with beautiful giant rooms filled with art. Partly from the sleep deprivation, but also because the overwhelming nature of the experience, I was moved to tears to realize how lucky I was to be there, in this huge famous palace, looking at paintings by Monet and Renoir and Van Gogh and so many others. That night, 8 of us went to a Georgian restaurant. The food was good and the company was great, and it was fun to have a night to relax.
Sunday we took a trip to Pushkin, about 45 minutes outside of St. Petersburg, to visit another famous palace. It was huge and beautiful. My favorite room was decorate all in amber -- pieces of amber that covered the walls and columns completely, and also formed picture frames into the wall that held colorful mosaic art. The grounds were beautiful as well, and we walked through the gardens. It was nice to be out of the city and enjoying the fresh air, and although we were all bundled up, it really wasn't too cold.
This week I saw King Lear, and although it wasn't my favorite play as a whole, the ending was the single most moving moment of theatre I've ever experienced. Lear's 3 daughters die in the play, and the older 2 have already died. There are 3 pianos at the back of the stage, and the 2 dead daughters walk onstage and sit at the pianos facing out, and collapse like rag dolls against the keys. Lear is in the field with his third daughter as she is dying, and he lifts her into his arms and carries her over to the last piano and sets her down on the bench. At first she is sitting up straight, but then she collapses like a rag doll against the keys like the other 2 sisters. Lear sees and lifts her up straight again, but the falls back again. Then he notices the second daughter and lifts her up straight. As he does, the third daughter collapses, so he lifts her up again. He notices the third daughter as well, and the four of them do perhaps a 2-minute dance in which the 3 daughters are collapsing and Lear is lifting them up again. Most of the time, the daughters collapse back against they keys, but sometimes they roll all the way to the floor or over the benches. The dance is accented by discordant crashes against the piano keys as the bodies hit them. The dance was underscored by loud violin music with a heavy bass beat. It made me catch my breath and sit forward and cry, and it is an artistic moment that will stay with me.
Here are a few pictures:
Above: at the Kremlin
The puppet woman from Opus 7
Friends on the train: from top, Lydia, Grady, Tess, Rebecca, Katie, and Marissa
Church of Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg
In a trench from WWII outside of St. Petersburg
And on my birthday evening we saw a play called Opus 7 that was a performance art piece that blew my mind. It had 2 acts, and between acts one and two they moved all the chairs into a different configuration and totally changed the space. Act 1 was wide and narrow with a long white cardboard backdrop. The ensemble entered with instruments and sang a haunting, strange song while the main girl appeared through the middle of the cardboard backdrop. She cut slits in the cardboard for her hands, feet, and eyes. Then she wriggled backwards through the eye slit and rolled onto the stage. The play was a performance art piece in tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. Perhaps the most moving moment for me happened near the beginning of act 1: all the members of the ensemble spread out across the stage and created a person on the wall. First they each threw a bucket of black paint onto the white cardboard. Next they stapled black paper shoes and hat onto the person, and then a curl of hair on each side. They cut a big arch around each person with a knife, and there was bright white light shining through from behind. Suddenly, the ovens turned on as there was an overpowering blast of smoke and shredded newspaper that knocked each cardboard person down. The shredded newspaper filled the space and fell onto the audience. It was shocking and sobering and beautiful. There were multiple projections of people standing and waiting in an empty room, and as a moving projection of a Nazi guard moved across the whole backdrop with his echoing footsteps on the hardwood floor, each person disappeared and left the room empty. At another point, a whole pile of shoes was dumped through a hole in the cardboard. The ensemble members painted a crowd of children holding hands and then arranged the shoes in front of them. There was one pair of bright red shoes, and one of the actors walked those shoes across the stage to join the crowd of children. Then the actor joined the painted children by attaching his coat to the wall, and one of the other actors painted a child's arm up so that the adult was holding hands with the group of children. Suddenly, the man was killed, and the actor wriggled out of the coat, so we were left with the image of the crowd of children holding hands with an empty coat jacket. The second act included a 20-foot puppet woman who transformed into a Nazi general and started shooting at everyone, including the girl who had been her child. The piece was inspiring and moving and different from anything I've seen before.
It's difficult to form concrete impressions of St. Petersburg because we were only there for 2 days. We took a 10pm train Friday night and arrived in the city before 7am Monday morning. Saturday morning we had a bus tour of the city that was more about bonding over our mutual confusion and exhaustion than actually learning about the city. St. Petersburg is so far north that it didn't get light until about 10am, so after traveling for so long and not sleeping well and then riding around in a bus, it was an almost out-of-body experience for me. The highlight of Saturday was an afternoon tour of the Hermitage, perhaps the best art museum in the world. It's a palace with beautiful giant rooms filled with art. Partly from the sleep deprivation, but also because the overwhelming nature of the experience, I was moved to tears to realize how lucky I was to be there, in this huge famous palace, looking at paintings by Monet and Renoir and Van Gogh and so many others. That night, 8 of us went to a Georgian restaurant. The food was good and the company was great, and it was fun to have a night to relax.
Sunday we took a trip to Pushkin, about 45 minutes outside of St. Petersburg, to visit another famous palace. It was huge and beautiful. My favorite room was decorate all in amber -- pieces of amber that covered the walls and columns completely, and also formed picture frames into the wall that held colorful mosaic art. The grounds were beautiful as well, and we walked through the gardens. It was nice to be out of the city and enjoying the fresh air, and although we were all bundled up, it really wasn't too cold.
This week I saw King Lear, and although it wasn't my favorite play as a whole, the ending was the single most moving moment of theatre I've ever experienced. Lear's 3 daughters die in the play, and the older 2 have already died. There are 3 pianos at the back of the stage, and the 2 dead daughters walk onstage and sit at the pianos facing out, and collapse like rag dolls against the keys. Lear is in the field with his third daughter as she is dying, and he lifts her into his arms and carries her over to the last piano and sets her down on the bench. At first she is sitting up straight, but then she collapses like a rag doll against the keys like the other 2 sisters. Lear sees and lifts her up straight again, but the falls back again. Then he notices the second daughter and lifts her up straight. As he does, the third daughter collapses, so he lifts her up again. He notices the third daughter as well, and the four of them do perhaps a 2-minute dance in which the 3 daughters are collapsing and Lear is lifting them up again. Most of the time, the daughters collapse back against they keys, but sometimes they roll all the way to the floor or over the benches. The dance is accented by discordant crashes against the piano keys as the bodies hit them. The dance was underscored by loud violin music with a heavy bass beat. It made me catch my breath and sit forward and cry, and it is an artistic moment that will stay with me.
Here are a few pictures:
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