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:
Hey Jenny, it's Jon. Happy late B-day.
ReplyDeleteWow, you're getting to see some amazing shows! You describing the ending to king lear made me well up something on the inside.
Awesome what you're doing over there in Russia.
your fan,
-Jon