MeyerHOLD the phone

Saturday School...yeah. Today we had a lecture for about two and a half hours about the life of Something Meyerhold...very influential person in the theatre during the Twentieth Century before he was brutally tortured and hanged. The sad thing is that he didn't do anything wrong, but Russia cannonized Stanislavsky's teachings and apparantly the best way to have them rise out is to suppress everyone else's voice. Many others have died in this same way.

A lot of my fellow students were bored pretty much right away, but I was enthralled and inspired the entire time...I guess that's what a good night's sleep does for you. She talked about Meyerhold's use of Biomechanics and theatre and using your body more and more to help tell the story, something which is absolutely prevalent in Russian Theatre. We looked through collections of photos and costumes that were used during his life time and I really learned a lot about who he was. I think we also have 3 more saturday's of learning about him too, but I could be wrong.

Acting class went pretty well as usual. The concentration games are becoming easier and easier to do...again, sleep could play a part in this. All 22 of us had to perform an Animal etude, which basically means that we pretend to be an animal and have this animal go through some sort of simple event. I chose to be an overweight ferret by the name of Noodle, which was inspired by an overweight ferret by the name of Noodle. My event was that I was eating and I got "picked up" and had my belly rubbed until I was finally released and could go back to eating my food (Honey Corn Flakes). It was weird.

It was nice to have the night off. Six of us walked a different way home in search of a restaurant called Lookin, but sadly we didn't find it, so we went back to the dorm, lost a few of our party, gained a few others, and went back to the Middle Eastern Restaurant. I got these lamb dumplings that tasted too similar to dorm food, so I hated my life for a little while. For desert I ordered Chalk Chalk, which roughly translates to "leftover-macaroi-and-cheese-looking-dish-that-tastes-like-dry-rice-crispie-treates." Again, it was weird.

This was a collar popping night for me...I know...for shame...but 2/3 of J-Crew was sporting it so it felt ok...and I was in a different area code. We went and had a few drinks at a place called Temple Bar, which was nothing like Temple Bar in Dublin, but I did get to drink a beer out of a dinky Guinness glass. I planned on stealing said glass, but I noticed Muzzah Russia had a camera in the corner (like there's a camera in most every place...including one on me right now while I type this blog) so I decided against it...sigh.

It was our night off and the place closed at 12:30, but clubs in the city will stay open to 6 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. Four people were brave enough to pull the all-nighter, I was not. But kudos to Chris, Katie, Jason and Justin for doing it, although I think they were pretty tired this morning by the time they got to be at 6:15...I believe they were legally dead until 11am.

Russia fun fact: Moscow was named after the Moscow River, not the other way around. And nobody actually knows what Moscow means, but the name is apparantly Scandanavian in origin.