Booskaya!

No time can't talk gotta go bus is here.

Last day! Yesterday we had our finals in movement and acting which went pretty well. We also got a quick 3 minute response from our teachers about how we did during the month and what we could improve on.

We then had a "fun" party to celebrate our time there. We had a quick champagne toast and then our instructors had to jet so it was pretty uneventful....and there was no music. Flynn got drunk off of 8 bubbles of champagne...lightweight!

Partied for the last night and then went to bed.

Now our bus is here to take us to the airport! Woohoo! USA!

The Comeback Dog

Second to last day...I'm ready for this to be done!!!

Somewhat of a standard day considering that we were leaving in two days. We had our Ballet final in the morning, which was pretty anticlimactic. We began we by practicing our dance in front of the other group as a warm up. Then for the final, two other people joined us and that was it. Rah!

I spent my last lunch time in the yard of the Kremlin and I was writing in my journal when a bear ran over to me and picked up my pepsi bottle and started to play with it. I then realized that my peripheral vision is terrible and it was actually a doggy.

Now I've been comparing pictures and I still can't tell, but this looked EXACTLY like the dog that followed Jason and Annabelle back to the dorm earlier in the trip.

Either way, he was a cute little pup and he really wanted to play. Sadly though he was really dirty and I didn't want to get fleas or some random dog disease from him. But man, he sure did try...he tried to snag my Pepsi bottle again, along with my journal and then took to licking my face...gross.

After he got done with that, he then repeated the same activity with the girl sitting a little ways away. He must've gotten tuckered out though and decided I was much cooler, so he came back to me and plopped down for a nap. So cute!!! I wrote in my journal for a bit longer and then quietly snuck away to avoid the heartache of leaving him.

We also got to see our LAST RUSSIAN PERFORMANCE!!! This was mostly good in my eyes cause I am theatred out right now...looking forward to a little break before school starts back up in August. It was a student show we saw though and it was pretty amazing. It was actually their final exams and I thought they were phenomenal...but they all probably got C's and D's as they are much MUCH tougher on their students.

Again it was one of the hottest 3 hours of my life! The Russians apparantly haven't found the happy medium between hot and cold as it's either balls ass hot or cold as hell in the rooms.

I likened this session in the audience to a 10 hour International American Airlines flight. Yay...

Flea Market Madness

It's that time again...where I start giving up on the blog. I come home in two days....so ready to come home!!!!

Ok, Sunday was good times. Went to the Flea Market and got some really cool gifts. I doodled a little picture on an American Airlines napkin so I already had my mom's gift taken care of. Maybe I'll frame it, maybe I'll wrap it...hopefully she likes it.

The flea market was pretty crazy though. It seemed to go on for miles. Felt like the Iowa State Fair in some ways...there was even smoked meat smell in the air...AMAZING!

I had a tough time getting my head right for the flea market. I knew of a few gifts I was going to get, but others I bought on the fly. To make it harder, there was EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE. Very bad day for ADD.

On the way out Brian and I remembered that we needed to buy shot glasses, so we took to haggling for the best price possible. We were told not to pay more than 150 roubles and the guy said 300, but after Brian and I got done tag-team haggling, we walked away victors and only paid 200 roubles...though he did try to take 20 roubles out of Brian's wallet. Gotta love markets.

It was a bazaar day. (Brian's joke...I stole it...then told people about it....damnit!)

We saw ANOTHER Chekhov production also...Three Sisters. I didn't know it at the time but it's been running for about 20 years. I don't understand why they keep productions around for so long? Undergrad productions here run two weekends.

Did I just compare Russian professional theatre to American undergrad theatre?

The show was pretty good though...a lot of interesting choices and concepts. They had a rotating stage that was almost like a silly silo. No puking though, so that was good.

It was also the hottest fuckin' theatre I've ever been in. We were in the top row of the balcony with no AC. And it was the standard 3+ hour Chekhov show, so it felt like I was back at the banya a bit...except without any pleasure.

US soccer was playing perhaps their biggest game ever and I managed to find it at the sportsbar. US was up 2-0! They were on the verge of their second major upset in a week! I had to run home, but I made it back for the final 45 minutes, which was also the worst 45 minutes of soccer I've ever seen. They ended up losing 3-2, but it was still the best they've ever done.

Oh well....we're still Americans playing soccer I guess.

This is a picture of a dog that had stolen a purse.
This is a picture of a man being wheeled around playing an accordian...awesome!

PS...Matt Foss, in all his wisdom, alerts me that the Seagull was a huge failure in ST. PETERSBURG, not MXAT. It was actually a big hit at MXAT.

Da Svidanya, Seagull

Tonight was a pretty special night. We were able to see the final performance of a 30 year run of the Seagull by Anton Chekhov. Yep, that's right....30 years! It was first mounted in 1980 under the direction of the former leader of the MAT, who died in 2000. He was an amazing man. He was pretty much THE guy, the bridge, from Stanislavski to the modern era of the Moscow Art Theatre.

The show itself was pretty stale....how could it not be after 30 years? The characters have had many different actors come through, so it's not like it's the original cast, but the concept was still the same. The fact that it was directed by the former MAT leader was why it was held over for so long. But it was interesting to see this prodcution.

For those of you that don't know, the Seagull is THE production of the Moscow Art Theatre. It was the first play they ever did there. It was directed by Stanislavski himself and was a huge failure. This also marked the shift in acting philosophies of Russian theatre. This new realistic brand of theatre that Stanislavski was introducing was in stark contrast to the much more presentational acting of generations past.

Feel free to correct any of my horrible historical errors, anyone who knows better than I.

Oh yeah, we also got to go to Stanislavski's house today.

That's right...STANISLAVSKI'S HOUSE!

No big deal really...tons of people have been there right? WRONG! Everyone should instantly find me more attractive for having seen this.

It was the house he lived in up until he died. He was placed there under house arrest after he had been cannonized (which lead to Meyerhold's murder remember?). In the house he staged many plays and even would listen to rehearsals of the MAT theatre over the phone. The man loved theatre. Funny enough he wanted to be an Opera singer at the age of four, but his voice inevitably changed and he wasn't able to achieve his dream. His work and gifts to the theatre world were pretty good consolation prizes I'd say.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Ate McDonald's for the third time over here. All of the other quick places to eat around the school make me want to barf, so I'm stuck with the lesser evil, which ironically enough is McDonald's. Vladamir would be so happy to hear that I'm eating that.

He actually sat in on our acting class today as well. All of the girls instantly got dreamy eyes when he walked him...which is ok cause I had them too. VLADAMIR!

Tomorrow we go to the flea markets, so I gotta get my bartering sleep in. Night for me, good afternoon for everyone else.

The Day Michael Died

I'm the best kind of drunk right now. In fact, only one person that I know knows what kind of drunk I am right now....that person is Scott Lawrence Siepker. I managed to find this German restaurant (ala Hessen Haus) and they served Augustiner, a beer that Scott and I had in Munich. Man, this beer is amazing. I didn't think they served it outside of Munich, so I was EXTATIC when I found this place that had it!

The restuarant itself is really cool...felt very much like Hessen. I ate there alone, but it was probably best because I had time to just be by myself and enjoy the atmostphere. The meal itself was only OK, but the beer and my surroundings made it a very enjoyable meal.

The big news of the day is that Michael Jackson has died. I really don't know how to react. Michael Jackson is my childhood. My mom and dad would blast that while us kids would dance to it. It's so surreal....I almost don't believe he's dead. I haven't thought about him much in the last 10 to 15 years, but when I heard it just hit so close to hom.e. As my brother pointed out, it's a lot like Heath Ledger...you feel like you lost someone that's closer to you than he actually is.

A Russian student at the MAT came up to me, Christina and JT while we were eating lunch at said he was so sorry to hear about Michael's death. I thought that was such an incredible gesture....a Russian guy telling giving his condolences to us simply because MJ was our countryman. I don't know how to react, but either way Michael was an amazing performer that I will miss very much.

This now brings the total of celebrities that have died while we've been over here to four: David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and now Michael. I'm afraid to ever even think about coming back to Russia for fear of losing other people. It's been a very weird month.

So I missed a day of blogging...big whoop. Not much happened. We went to see Cherry Orchard at the MAT. 22 of us went, 6 of us stayed until the end. It wasn't the most amazing show we've seen here, but it was nice to see something a bit closer to home. The acting was much more text driven and subtle, a lot like it is in the states. The coolest part of the show is that they used the actual MAT curtain as the set...the reason being that this was the only place left in the world that was still around when the play was born in the late 1800's. A very original concept.

I did my "given circumstances" etude, which is where you are yourself in any sort of circumstances, real or fake. I chose a Chiefs playoff game that they lost on a controversial call...not too far from home.

Today was a pretty good day though. We had our singing final which I am so glad is over. Working with Marina is pretty stressful, but I survived and it wasn't too bad...always worse beforehand. But now it's over and I feel like it's smooth sailing until we leave.

Truth be told I'm pretty excited to be coming home for a variety of reasons. I miss people and can't wait to get back to American food and culture. Sometimes it takes being away from home to realize that.

The day nothing happened

We had ballet this morning and Larissa was in no mood for our sloppiness. She was particularly hard on Justin, but she did tell him she loved him so it's ok. The thing about Larissa is that she comes down on us for not doing the steps in order....but every class she changes the order so what are we to do? Well I guess just take it...this is all we've come up with. She's such a nice lady and you can tell she cares so there's really no reason to complain. Also she speaks only 13 words of English so we would never get our point across.

We had a good acting class again. The fun exercise of the day was reading random bits of War and Peace by Tolstoy aloud as the text for a certain character. The text was unimportant...the point of the exercise was to get your point across with actions. The different characters we saw were auctioneers, football coaches, men professing love to old translators, and informercial personalities. I have yet to go and now have to think of a new character...Brian stole my football coach!

JT escorted us to a theatre to see Lady with a Lapdog, which is an adaptation of a short story by Chekhov. JT also mentioned that the actress we would see in the play was on his "list." That's right...our 60+ year old teacher (gosh I hope I didn't overshoot that guesstimation) divulged part of his "list" to us. For those not picking up what I'm putting down, this "list" is a compilation of people one can sleep with in the highly unlikely event that one of them would actually like to sleep with you.

Um, I think that's all that's interesting that happened today.

I made pasta for dinner.

Flynn just burnt her sinuses with salt water.

I took a cool picture of Rob with his crazy goggles on.

Rob bought a bootlegged copy of Wolverine.

I'm drinking from a mug with pigs building a brick wall on it.

Whoa, that's messed up...I've never noticed that before.

Back to the Grind

We were back to our normal schedule today after the St. Petersburg trip. I was the first to go for singing lessons today and it went ok. There's something about Marina that makes people tighten up I think and I'm definitely in that category. I sqeaked out my song and I was glad to get the work in. I was also fotunate enough to get to work again towards the end of class on a duet with Kerianne, but sadly it was at the expense of Justin getting to work. What really sucks is that our next class is our final, which I don't think Marina was aware of. If we don't have another class it's gonna be pretty messy for our performances.

Movement is probably my favorite class here. There's something about Vladamir that makes everyone want to work harder and smile while you do it...the smiling is usually cause he tells you to. He's got a very relaxed and carefree way about him when we're doing the exercises. But he couples this with a serious side that teaches us the importance of doing these exercises and to do them correctly. He pointed out our four day break from class and how it not only effected us physically but mentally as well. Our minds were the bigger problem and that was the reason we failed at some of the counter balancing exercises.

Both etude groups had really good etudes today. The first group (that I wasn't apart of) portrayed flowers in a garden that were being attacked by weeds, only to be rescued by gardener Brian. The second group (that I was apart of) was a human heart that was going through a heart attack. I felt like this was far and away our best day of etudes as it was the first day that both groups weren't humans putting themselves into familiar and predictable situations.

We all raved about the etudes during response time only to have Sergie bring us back to earth by saying he didn't like it. As disappointed as we were, this is exactly what good teachers do and what I truly want from our teachers back home. We did some good work andtook a few steps forward, but if we were to simply be patted on the back I think we all would have settled with where we were at. Good teachers always keep pushing you forward.

He did have a good point about the etudes though. The "flowers" in the etude were children's illustrations of flowers. Each one needed an individual personality and a need for something. Same with the weeds...there needed to be a reason they were attacking the flowers. Why these flowers? Were some flowers more delicious than others? And for our etude, it was a bit unclear with what we came up with for Rob, who was the guy having the heart attack. It wasn't exact enough, and that is what the theatre loves...precision.

We saw Shylock at Etcetera theatre where we saw Ubu Roi. It was pretty much just Merchant of Venice with a different name, but I didn't know what the heck was going on cause I don't know the show. Got in a little cat nap though, this time against my will...damn warm theatres put me to sleep.

This was the first time we were on our own for transportation as well, which was exciting in a lot of ways. I kind of took the lead in getting us around as I was the only map carrier in the group. And I ended up riding the metro by myself the night before after an excursion down south.

I followed the Moscva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the Winds
Of Chaaaaaaaange

I literally did the first verse of Winds of Change by The Scorpions...it was awesome.

But back to tonight. The Metro wasn't all that hard to navigate around once you've done it once...just as long as your map is up to date and has all the freaking stops! But everyone made it home safely, so i guess it was a success.

Russia Fun Fact: A word about Borsch. Borsch is a very popular soup in Russia. Made from mainly cabbage, potatos, and beets, it doesn't sound like it might be all that appealing. But damn is it good! Tomato paste is also used as one of the main ingrediants...add some sour cream to that and baby...you got a stew goin'!