You watch Russia game very nice!

Russia was playing Finland in soccer today for some big match. No idea what match, but we went out to a bar and caught the last half hour of the game. I love watching soccer in other countries cause everyone is in to it...everyone. The game had started while we were in the dorm but we could hear explosions of cheers from our windows.

We were warned to get away from city centre where a lot of people would gather to watch the game. Soccer fans are rowdy everywhere and if they lost then it apparantly gets quite dangerous...broken windows...flipped cars....fires. Not many good things. But luckily we were way up north by our dorm and Russia won 3-0....so hopefully the MAT is still there.

The bar we went to was in the basement and the ceiling had a very odd shape. Looked like reinforced two foot long half-pipes in rows. I don't know why but I wondered if this bar was perhaps a bomb shelter back in WWII, or maybe built during the cold war or something. Kind of a crazy thing to think about.

Another crazy thing was our server. He spoke English, but really more of Borat English. He joked with the two girls at our table and took down our beer orders. Apparantley our server also understood Americn sarcasm.

Server: "So where you guys from?"

Us: "USA."

Server: "Oh...good National Team. (Walks away immediately)

Servers friends: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

We got made fun of for USA Soccer! This is when I realized that all Americans are immune to being made fun of for soccer. We just don't care.

We saw a weird interpretation of King Lear right after class. It was directed by Tadashi Suzuki...which for some reason I get confused Takeshi Kawabata.....Karabata! He's a pretty big deal in the theatre world and he was trying to incorporate his style of acting into this production with Russian actors. I didn't really like it too much....the actors are brilliant i'm sure...but the movements were very controlled and thus the show wasn't as physically expressive....which makes it hard to understand when you don't speak Russian. All in all, not the best show I've seen over here, but I'm still seeing Russian theatre and it still was a great experience.

The highlight of our classes was our lecture with Anatoly, who runs the Moscow Art Theatre.(Dont' remember if I've mentioned him before). We had class in the lobby of the theatre and were sitting in the very room where Stanislavsky first read The Cherry Orchard to the company. THE VERY SPOT! I think this was the first time that it really hit me that we are at the center of the theatre universe.

He also went on to give a beautiful explanation as to why certain people have their pictures up in the lobby and others don't. During the soviet era, if you were ever arrested you couldn't have your picture up at the time. Meyerhold was arrested as I explained before, so he's not in the main grouping of pictures. He also pointed out that Russia is constantly trying to change the past. Therefore with new regimes, pictures are taken down and others put up.

There is one specific photo known as the Spring of the Moscow Art Theatre photo or something like that, which had every major player involved in Russian theatre early 1900's. It was a very well known photo to everyone. But Meyerhold was in it, so it had to be altered. Behind him in the picture there was a lady with an umbrella, so a very skilled artist managed to extend the umbrella over Meyerholds body and thus eliminate him from that historic photo.

"Behind all of these pictures, there are umbrellas," he said. Such a sad but beautiful way of putting it, but very emblematic of Russian history.