Day 27...Sunshine on my shoulder...

Today’s posting will be mostly pictures!  We stared the morning going to the Novodevichy Cemetery.  This is where a lot of famous Russians are buried including Boris Yeltsin, Nikita Khrushchev (the guy who banged his shoe), Nikolay Gogol, and Sergi Prokofiev among many others.  We went to see the graves of Stanislavsky and Chekhov in particular and lay some flowers on their graves out of respect and gratitude.  The pictures are of Sienna placing a flower on Stanislavski's grave and the second us Jeffery adding a rose to Chekhov's grave.



I don't know who any of these other grave are for but they looked cool...

 

This shot turned out really great!

TANK for a grave...that's just cool...

If I overheard correctly, this is some famous clown...

I'm going out a limb and saying this might have been a ballerina...

just maybe...

Then we went on two hour boat ‘tour’ of Moscow.  It wasn’t really a tour because there wasn’t any guide that I heard telling us what we should be looking at.  It almost felt like a waste of money because we saw a lot of the same things we had already seen.  But the trip itself was enjoyable and we had good talks sitting in the sun on the deck.

We had the rest of the day to ourselves so Erman took Pegi, Alli, and me to Kuz’minski Park where we spent the rest of the enjoying the grounds.  Pegi and Alli joined the throngs of folks swimming in one of the little lakes on the grounds.  It’s interesting to note that all the water ways were clearly marked with “No Swimming” signs but that didn’t stop people.  I think it’s a Russian thing to do on hot days because I saw people swimming in one of the fountain parks just outside Red Square and nobody seemed to mind.

Another interesting factoid is that Muscovites are very accepting of their bodies and not afraid to show them off… I know this because I saw more bikinis today that I think I have seen my entire life.  Now, in America, generally speaking, there are only a couple body types that you will find wearing two piece bikinis…not so here in Moscow.  I think I saw a total of about SIX one piece bathing suits the whole afternoon.  Women of all shapes, sizes, and ages wear two piece suits to the beach.  Oh, and like many European countries, men tend to wear speedos (or their underwear, I didn’t take any closer looks) except for the younger generation that will tend to wear shorts.  All in all, I’m taking it as good thing that their either very accepting of different body types or they just don’t care.

I'd never seen lilies with yellow flowers until to day...

 

Two duck just chillin' on a branch...

Well, I have to create four new final renderings for design class tomorrow…

(NOTE: you and click on any picture to see a larger version)

Day 25 & Day 26...Double time....

Friday, June 26…

I’m pulling double duty today because I was busy drawing renderings last night and didn’t write anything.  So, I’ll start with Friday and then hit Saturday.  Hopefully this won’t be to long because the days weren’t that eventful…yeah, right!

So, Friday started with a noon class with Victor.  We are each designing a different Chekhov play for the class and we had rough sketch due today with color samples.  He really liked my idea for the last act of my play, The Three Sisters, but he wasn’t too keen on my idea for the third act and he said my first act needs to look more “cozy.”  I think I can do that.  Our final class with Victor is on Monday and we have complete rendering for all four acts due plus he is going to look through our portfolios.  Looking forward to the class…now I just have to create my four renderings!

Next, we headed over the Meyerhold Museum to learn about one of the most tragic theatre stories from the Soviet times.  Meyerhold was an actor in the early years of the MXT but left to begin directing and finding his own method which essentially is the exact opposite of Stanislavsky’s method.  He traveled all over Russia directing and experimenting with his new idea of theater.  This wasn’t part of the tour, but if I remember correctly, Stanislavsky wasn’t too happy about this when it happened but later came to terms with it and even is said to have named Meyerhold his “sole heir in the theatre—here or anywhere else.”  Now, remember that Stanislavsky died in 1938 because this is important later.

In the 1930’s, Meyerhold was an Avant-garde and experimental director trying to work in the time of Stalin’s social realism (we covered this extensively in our History of Russian Cinema class).  Let’s just say that these two things don’t go together.  Meyerhold was a great director and had created some very powerful works but there were some that didn’t like it because it wasn’t this social realism.  In January of 1938, Stalin finally closed down Meyerhold’s theatre and the ailing Stanislavsky asked Meyerhold to become the director of the Opera Theater that he was working on (it now the Stanislavsky Music Theatre…we got a tour back stage that I talked about several blogs ago).  It is said that this, helped prolong Meyerhold’s life of even for just little longer.  He was arrested on June 20, 1939 in Leningrad.  His wife was found dead in their Moscow apartment on July 15, 1939.  Actual, she was found alive after being stabbed 17 times (none near the heart or lungs so she slowly bleed to death) by to plain clothed men to snuck into the apartment, stabbed her, and fled in a plain black vehicle (if you haven’t guessed, she was assassinated).  He was tortured to the point of giving a false confession to being a spy (he later recanted but it was too late) and was executed sometime around early Feb., 1940.  Stalin essentially tried to wipe his name from Russian History.  So, less than a year and half after Stanislavsky died, his heir to theatre had been wiped out because he didn’t play nice with Stalin…

OK, enough sad stuff and onto better things…

So, after the Meyerhold Museum, the designers went and checked out the costume design students’ exam exhibits.  Of…all…the…days…to…forget… my…camera…  These exhibits were freaking amazing!  The costume renderings themselves were on par, if not better, than most professionals I’ve seen in the States (and these are basically college kids).  Then there was their drawing and painting works…I wish I was that good.  And finally, they also make paper versions of a few of their costumes to show how things are put together.  If you didn’t know they were paper, you’d think they were the real thing at first glance.  Like I said, I didn’t have my camera but I do happen to have a couple of pictures from the Stanislavsky House Museum where they have some on display so I’ve put one of those up here.

The rest of the night was pretty boring…I just came back to my room and finish up my renderings for The Wizard of Oz…

Saturday, June 27…

OK, so I really didn’t finish the Oz renderings until about 5am this morning so I got a couple of hours of sleep and just didn’t my costume rendering for class after I got up around 11am.   It was nice to get a little sleep but I’m a little bummed that I missed a chance to catch another museum…

While we only talked about our costume rendering for a couple of minutes, our teacher asked if she could keep them so I guess, that’s a good thing.  We spent the rest of glass talking about what women wore from 1890-1900.  The interesting thing is that is all really come down to underwear…no, really, it does! This was kind of the last decade for the corset but the dresses were being made for the corset because it was still in style.  It was interesting to learn that the theory to corseting was only to reduce the waste by 10 inches.  So, if you were already 30” then you get a 20” corset.  Alli got to be the guinea pig today and she put on an authentic 19^th Century corset.  This picture just goes to show how weird it looks to our eyes but back then, it was the norm…  Another highlight was getting to see and touch a couple of costume pieces from the first production of The Three Sisters from 109 years ago…Yippe!  This is the top to the costume for Olga, the school teacher.

After that, we got to go talk with the chief designer at a theatre not far from the MXT called the Russian Academic Youth Theatre (RAYT) which was build back in the 1820’s.  The designer, Stanislov Benediktov, has been at this theatre for something like 30 years.  He and the artistic director have worked together for so long they have started to stage play in unconventional ways.  For instance, they’ve done a play on the grand staircase leading from the lower lobby to the upper lobby.  They’ve even put the audience on stage and performed the play out in the house!  This is a picture from their last production of The Cherry Orchard where the audience watched the show from the wings.  He said this is one of the advantages of kind of owning the space because you can do unconventional things that you couldn’t do in other theaters because you are just a guest designer.  To top the whole thing off, he even gave us autographed copies of a book of his design work…

Bonus blog...things I miss from home....

Time is running short here in Moscow and I'll be back in Michigan in less than a week...So, much had been packed into the last three weeks that it feel like it's been ages since we arrived.  However, now that the end seems to be approaching like the metro train coming out of a tunnel, there are definitely several things that I am looking forward to when I get back.  Here are some of the tops winners right now...

1. Water...like at a restaurant, when you sit down and they bring everyone a glass of water...FOR FREE!  Here, you pay for water just like coffee, pop (or soda), beer, wine, or vodka.  And the water (which is just bottled water) is often just or more expensive what some of the other drinks.
2. Refills...as in Free refills of pop or the aforementioned glass of water... This has had a seriously negative impact on my drinking habits when I dine out.
3. Meijer...That's right, I miss the "thrifty acres" superstore chain.  It's nice to be able to go to a store and find what you want.  Admittedly, the idea of one-stop-shopping is a very America thing but you might not realize how much you do it until you are forced to go on a scavenger hunt in a foreign country for something like athletic or medical tape. (Note this goes for just about any chain store like Walmart, Traget, Kmart...wherever you shop most)
4. My truck...she's at the garage getting some much needed brake and alignment work done so she should be in pretty good shape when I get back.  I'm looking forward to just being able to hop in my car and go for drive.  However, if I were ever to move to Moscow, I probably wouldn't bother with a vehicle, the streets are filled with crazy drivers here.  I think I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago but it's worth mentioning again...the only traffic/drivers that I've ever seen that are worse than they are here in Moscow, was in Port Au Prince, Haiti.  And I stand by that statement.
5. A McDonald's double cheeseburger...or more accurately, a McDouble (same thing as a double cheeseburger but with one less piece of cheese).  I love McDonald's and I love the $1 McDouble.  Now, they do have Mickey D's here but its way more expensive.  I've been there a couple times to try a few things there that we don't have in the States but I don't go to that many American Fast food places here because they can be almost double what it costs back home...Street vendors, not that's a different story...
6. Ice...(insert Vanilla Ice's famous tune here)  It is a very rare occasion when you can manage to get a Coke (or whatever you favorite pop is) with some ice in it.  When you do manage to get your drink with ice in it, it's just about the right amount...just enough to keep your drink cold.  That's one thing restaurants often over do in America where it's more likely that you get a little bit of soda to go with your ice...I don't like that, but some ice is nice...
7. Golf...for those that really know me, I bet you are wondering why it took me this long to mention this... Well, truth be told, I do love playing but growing up in Michigan, you learn to cope with the lack of golf through the winter months so that's kind of how I'm treating it here.  However, I get back early afternoon next Thursday and I just might manage to head out to the links if I'm not totally exhausted, it might be nice to get an easy nine holes of Twilight golf in at Ella Sharp Park...
8. Normal daylight times...the four-five extra hours of daylight really mess with your head.  Even after being here for almost a month, it's still weird that it's as light as it is as long as it is.  It just seems a unnatural that you can walk outside and see just fine at 11:30 at night, and it's just plain wrong when you can do the same thing a 4 am! I've woken up at 5am before and frantically had to check my clock to make sure I hadn't overslept because it's so light outside.
9. My cell phone...I brought it with me to use as a time piece but that's not working over here because my phone only works with American bandwidths...I'm sure I'm going to have a ton of messages when I get back...
10. English...It will be nice to go into a store, ask for something, and get it just by talking...  Next time I come to Russia I am making sure I speak the language better because this whole pointing and nodding thing is getting really old really fast.  A better English/Russia book would be helpful as well.

Day 24...Starting to end...

Today marked the end of two classes for our time here in Moscow.  The first was the History of Russian Cinema class which everyone in our group absolutely loved.  Our professor, Galina Aksenova, was great and I could easily take an entire semester long film class from her.  It helps that she speaks pretty good English and has taught film classes in the States for several years.  You could tell that she loves the cinema and loves teaching about it.  She also emailed us a list of Russian films that are available in the States with subtitles for use to expand our knowledge of Russian films.  And she guaranteed that all the movies would be good because she wouldn’t put anything trivial on the list…and after this class, I believe her.

The second class was Material World in Chekhov’s Time taught by Ekaterina Kuznetsova.  She’s worked at the MXT and the school for well over 20 years and the class was all about things like furniture, wall paper, curtains, and lamps.  This might be boring for most folks but for us designers…we’re like kids in candy shop.  The cool thing was that we were able to actually touch authentic period stuff, that’s things over 100 years old (we get to do the same thing in our costume class, actually touching costumes and historic articles of clothing that were worn over a century ago).  Today we got to see (and touch) some fabric samples of things that the theater did in the past for fabric material to use for drapes.  They did (and still do) some pretty inventive things to make fabric look period; stuff like using rice, glue, and gold paint to create decorative dimensioned embroidery; using stencils to add patterns to cheaper fabric; and actually painting floral patterns on cheap, one color fabric to make it look expensive.  It’s all so cool.  We even got to finger through a sketch book that had been bequeathed to her by the head of the theatre’s fabric design department from the middle of the last century.  It was his personal sketch book that contained some of his personal designs for curtain drapery.  I took numerous photos…I liked this particular page because it looks like he just painted a quick little still life over part of it...

Tonight we went and saw movement theater piece.  Movement theatre is theatre with no words but it’s not exactly dance either.  Movement theatre is similar to ballet with respect of telling a story but it’s different because in ballet, the dance moves themselves have a meaning and technique that go along with the story, but in movement theatre it’s more about pure physical expression of emotions and meaning.  Now, that could mean using various dance moves and styles but it’s not limited to them.  This piece in particular told an old Russian tales set in contemporary times.  It’s the story of a nobleman who seduces a lower class woman who falls madly in love him.  He, however, gets bored with her, betrays her love, and leaves her.  She then commits suicide…I’ve to learn that this is a typical ending to many Russian tales.  For this retelling, it started in a movie theatre and progressed for about 75 minutes to the end where she died in his arms, from a broken heart I assume.

Tonight I will be up late working on designs for three different show; Three Sisters for my scene design class here in Moscow as well as The Magic Flute and The Wizard of Oz for Bay View…good thing the show was out by 20:30 and I was able to write my blog early today!

Day 23...Back at it again...

OK, St. Petersburg has totally thrown me off my schedule…but I will fill you in on that later.  I have a ton of work to do and no time to do it over here.  Between classes, museum trips, and plays, there’re only a couple of hours each day to do any kind of work.  And the work that I have to do not only involves things like writing this blog, but also things like editing photos, drawings and renderings for classes here, and, oh yeah, drafting and drawing for the shows I’m designing for Bay View this summer.  I could use a couple of days to catch up on work…

In fact, I gave up the chance to go on a little excursion this morning with the other designers just so I could have a couple of hours to work on some sketches for Oz.  I got so into that by time I realized that I should probably set my alarm to let me know when I need to leave for our History of Theater class…well, the class had already started.

Then, we were going to have an unofficial painting class to finish our paints from last week…well, the students here are in the middle of their exams (more like a designer jury) and the paint room has been turned into a storage/last minute work room for their projects so that ideas went out the window.  At least I used the time to work on more of my Oz sketches…

The highlight of the day was seeing The Seagull at the MXT!  To put this in a little historical context…you can go here: http://www.mxat.ru/english/history/ for the longer version but I’ll summarize it like this.  When Stanislavsky directed The Seagull in 1898 for the MXT, he changed the history to theatre.  What I’ve been learning over here has led me to understand how he and his team essentially created a whole new way of doing productions form the sets to the acting.  That influence is still going strong today…

This particular show that we saw, hauntingly beautiful.  The run originally open way back in 1980 and will turn 30 next month on the 9^th of July.  Of course, they’ve had to do several recasting changes in that time period.  In fact, Dr. Thomas said that this was almost an entirely new, and younger, cast from just last year, but they don’t do that very often.   Nevertheless, it was a freakin’ awesome show… Oh, and I should probably mention that I got to watch the show FROM THE DIRECTORS BOX!!!  That’s one of the special side seating boxes you see in older theatre buildings…yeah, I got to sit there…

The show opened with the “stage” gazebo that is used in the first act gliding forward while various layers of scrim (a special kind of theatrical fabric that you can see through when things are lit behind it) where lifted out of its way kind of like curtains.  Then there was a long platform that had different furniture on it depending on the scene that would move down stage while the gazebo moved upstage through the long platform…OK, the long platform was really three platforms with gaps between them so the gazebo could travel over in on its own little track system.  Also, when the long platform was all the way down towards the audience, there were two side platforms that would slide in behind the longer one while a scrim drape came down to separate them so you could have people in three different rooms.  This was really nice because Chekhov (the playwright) often has groups of people move off to adjacent rooms for a little bit to isolate a small grouping on stage.  So, in this production when a player would go into the music room, you could see and hear him playing the piano (softly) while the main action of the play continued on stage. 

One cool effect lasted the entire final act.  First, they did the first three acts then took an intermission before the final act as opposed to the usual break after the 2^nd act.  At least it had an intermission, after an hour and fifty minutes I was beginning to think that they weren’t going to have one.  In one sense it logical to put the intermission there because the first three acts happen relative close in time whereas the forth act takes place two years later.  So, as the current opened, it revealed the main character standing on the gazebo with torn and tattered curtains (because they’d been left up for two year outside) that where blowing in the wind.  The gazebo moved upstage and the wind kept blowing on the curtains tossing them around the whole act until the main curtain finally closed to end the show.  It was really eerie but fit the mood of the show perfectly.

The show ended with a cool little bookend as well.  They added a short little scene onto the end of the play where an actress who had a long monologue performance on the Gazebo stage for the other characters in the first act repeat part of that scene.  The book end was that all the other characters (well, almost all) were onstage frozen in the final tableau while this actress was on the gazebo giving her speech as the “stage” slowly moved forward like it did at the beginning.  Brilliant!!!

Day 20a,,, A little night music...

At midnight, when we finally made it back to the hostel after the ballet (it was a crazy post performance experience), instead of sitting down and writing about the play we headed out to the party and watched fireworks.

Here's the short version... 1. Started the day at the Hermitage...did you know that it's an art museum?  I always just thought it was a bunch of rooms with stuff from the days of the Tsars.  2. St. Issac's Cathedral, stunningly beautiful Orthodox Church even though it looks like a cross breed between an Orthodox cathedral and a Catholic cathedral (I'll explain later) and you can even go up (262 steps) to the exterior of the central dome and take in the city from roof level. 3. Crocodile cafe where we had some good food but sloooooooow service. 4. Prokofiev's ballet 'Cinderella' at the Mariinsky Theater with an interesting mix of classic and contemporary dance styles. 5. Fireworks and a fight...Fireworks. good...Drunk Russian men brawling during the firework, bad.

Well, the fireworks didn't start until about 1:45am because of what called "White nights" (the sun sets but doesn't go far enough below the horizon for it to get dark). So, its about 3am now, we check our of our rooms at 7:45am, and I need a shower...

Look for more later...

Day 19a...I feel the need for speed...no, wait, that's not right... sleep! That's what I feel...

Well, I made it to St. Petersburg...but it was a long long day...

 So long in fact, that out of self preservation, I will not be doing a full entry today and till be heading to sleep as soon as all the videos and photos from are transferred from the camera to my laptop.  Let's just say that the overnight sleeper train didn't sit to well with me added to a little nasal cold that I'm fighting and I think that equals one night of as much sleep as possible to recoup...

Until tomorrow...

Day 18...Time's fun when you're having flies...wait a second...

OK, real quick entry today because we are leaving for St. Petersburg in about 40 minutes!!!

Our first class of the day was our third History of Russian Film class…I don’t think I can really express how cool this class is.  I am so thankful that I took a film theory class one summer at Spring Arbor University because this is like an extension of that class.  First, it’s pretty interesting learning about how films from a different culture to begin with, then you add all the Soviet propaganda that had to be in the films adds even more to the storyline.  Second, today we talked a little about how the history of the Russian dualistic mind set (things are either black or white, good or bad, no gray area, nothing in the middle) can be traced back to the long tradition of Russian Orthodoxy.  I just thought that was kind of interesting.  And lastly, we get to watch movies in class!  That’s just awesome no matter what.

Today we entered the world of the ‘talkie’ films and our professor is emphatic that silent films didn’t morph into talking films, silent films died and talking picture shows were born.  The film that we got to watch in its entirety today is called The Cranes are Flying.  It was a beautiful film both in the storyline and in the cinematography.  If you ever are in the mode for a Soviet era black and white film…I’d suggest you go for this one!  While it was filmed after Stalin had died and right at the beginning of the ‘thaw’ on censorship in films, it was interesting to see all the communist ideals portrayed.  Things like the optimistic, tragic hero (someone who dies but is remembered for standing up for the common greater good) and the sense of the joy within the collective whole.  Very interesting stuff if you ask me.

We had short lunch followed but another History to Theater class with Anatoli.  Generally, he continued to talk about Stanislavsky today talking about his book “An Actor Prepares.”  The big idea I got out of this talk was the idea that acting is a physical action and no amount of book knowledge is going to make you a good actor.  Oddly enough, he said that the students there at the school don’t even read it…instead they learn Stanislavsky’s “System” from the professors and not from the book.

I feel I had a big breakthrough in our painting class today (which we found out was our last one)!  I forced myself to think more generally and pushed myself to think big and bold and just to start painting.  Thankfully the new still life we had allowed for that a little more easily than our last one did.  My goal was to paint the whole thing in the one class (that was my goal even before we realized it was our last class).  I nearly succeed too!  The only I have left to paint are the leaves and stems on the flowers.  Most of us are going back next Wed. to finish up this painting because we have a little free time that afternoon.  The colors aren’t perfect but I was working with a limited palette and under a personal time crunch so I’m ok if some of the flowers aren’t as bright violet as the really ones.

Well, we leave for the train in 20 min. so I better get going…

Day 17...A day of days...

What a fabulous day from the great city of Moscow…OK, well, almost fabulous day.  Great because I got to check off a few things off my to-do list but not so great because it was another rainy day over the city…

First thing checked off the list today was something that I added once I got here.  Our painting instructor strongly suggested that we visit the Old Tretyakov Gallery because it houses the art work of the great Russian painters from pre-20^th Century times.  The stuff in this museum is just as good as anything you’ll see in any other museum.  You just probably won’t recongnise many of the artist because the art world really didn’t start paying attention to Russian art until the past couple of decades.

One of my favorite pieces is a work by Alexander Ivanov (1806-1858) called The Appearance of Christ to the People (The Appearance of the Messiah).  It is a massive paint at just under 25ft. wide and 18ft. tall!  He spent most of his career (from 1837-1857) dedicated to this one piece creating over 600 smaller drawings and oil sketches of various details.  It is an amazing piece of art!  You’re not allowed to take photos in the gallery so you’ll just have to live with internet versions where the colors aren't nearly as beautiful…although I did find one with some people in the frame looking at the painting (probably taken from a phone that turned out better than the one I took with my phone).  Also, you can see a piano in the corner by the painting so you can get a good idea of the size...

Next, we got a back stage tour of the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT)…totally awesome to see the behind the stage workings after seeing several different shows there.  The amount of storage space needed is amazing when you think that they have 24 shows that are playing in repertory on the main stage only, 20 shows on the small stage, and 13 one the ‘New’ stage!  I can’t even really begin to explain all the cool things that they can do on that stage…it just boggles my mind.  I could talk for a long time about all of it but I’ll limit myself to just one (I know…amazing in and of itself).  They have a whole extra stage upstage of the regular stage that has a huge double turn table in it.  It’s a central disc with a secondary ring around it and they can both move independently of each other…while the whole stage platform is moving downstage towards the audience!  Unfortunately, most of my pictures didn’t turn out so no photos of this.

To top the whole day off…St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square!!!  Yippee!!!  And you can take pictures inside!!!  Oh, happy day!  Thankfully, since the weather wasn’t the greatest, it wasn’t too busy inside the church so you could move around easily.  The only bad part is that most of the iconostasis’ in the chapels are protected behind glass (or Plexiglas) shields so most of my pictures ended up with really bad reflections in them…sad face… So for pictures I’m posting a photo of the shrine over St. Basil’s burial place and part of a wall showing some of the various ways that St. Basil’s has been painted in the past.  Did you know that the red brick façade is really just painted red and not the natural brick color?  Well, you do now.  Also, interesting note…When Napoleon took over the city in 1812; he ordered that the Cathedral was to be blown up!  Thank God that’s one order that never was carried out!

Last note for tonight…There is this restaurant just down from the theatre apparently has some amazing hot chocolate and we felt today was a good hot chocolate kind of day so we tried it out.  So, they bring you a bowl of steamed milk and a little cup of molten chocolate and you mix them together!  Pretty fun if you ask me…although it was kind of pricy for hot chocolate but worth the experience at least once.

Well, tomorrow night we head off the St. Petersburg on the night train at 11pm so there will only be one more blog before that trip.

Day 16...Busy, busy, busy...

Well, it was a rainy day here in Moscow…not any heavy rain, just an on and off lazy kind of rain.  If nothing else, at least it helps keep the dust and pollen down.

We started the day with a three hour and 15 minute drawing class…I am not a drawing artist.  The way my brain works is not conducive to drawing, Russian style.  In my limited (and mostly self taught) drawing experience, I’ve generally been in the shading camp where you don’t draw lines but use light and dark shading to create depth and perspective.  Here, they tend to start out very line oriented where you created shading with line instead of blending.  I think I’ve done some pretty good drawing but they take me a long time because I tend to be very detail oriented.  When something’s not right, it just drives me crazy because I think it should be perfect.  This mentality is a little messed up considering that the only formal art training I’ve ever had were in elementary and middle school along with a one semester drawing and painting class in grad school (interestingly enough, taught by a Russian) that was much less intense than this class.  I’m learning to push myself to try being less detailed oriented but it’s really hard to break both physical and psychological habits and ways of thinking at the same time.  The other challenge is that we are working on just one still life for all four of our three hour classes…at least we’re half way through!

Our second class today was in History of Stage Design.  We talked mostly about Chekhov’s play Three Sisters which I really liked because that is the show I’m working on over here.  What was even cooler was that our teacher mentioned that they did certain things in the play that are the exact same idea that I had!  Overall, in our two classes, we’ve pretty much just covered the early designs for Chekhov’s plays but our last two classes will be spent looking at design in the Soviet era and the later 20^th Century in Russia.  I’m really looking forward to that!

We went and saw the play Poplars in the Wind at the Satirikon Theatre tonight.  If you want to hear a long rant about the crazy tram busses here in Moscow, just let me know…  The play was kind of interesting.  This was the first small cast show (only three characters) we’ve seen here.  What’s interesting is that the theatre stage is huge but there was only three actors using the space.  When we saw Richard III at the same theatre, they used the whole width of the stage (a good 150ft. wide) but for this one, they added a false proscenium and cut the stage down to a more manageable 60-80ft.  It was hard to watch in a certain respect because they were speaking in Russia, which I don’t, and there wasn’t a lot of action because its three old guys who all have movement problems.  The set was a relatively simple gazebo like structure with a large bronze statue of a Great Dane plus three other female statues to the sides.  From what I gathered, I think that the characters either thought the statues moved from time to time or they were trying to get them to move.  Either way, at the end of the play they manage to get the dogs head to turn to the audience and the three statues came to life and turned to the audience and started to slow flap their arms.  I wish I could say that the female statues were women who stood still on stage for over two hours without moving (because there was not intermission, third show so far) but during the last scene change black out, the three statues where replaced by women dressed to look like the statues.  I might not have noticed the change before they moved if one of our guys hadn’t pointed it out to me.

Well, I think it’s time to do a little drafting for The Magic Flute before heading off to bed.

Day 15...a little break would be nice...

I have a chance to actually write by posting early today. We didn’t have a show on our schedule tonight and we couldn’t get tickets to the one we wanted to go see because it was already sold out. So Pegi, Alli, and I decided to make dinner and stay in tonight because we are exhausted. We did go with a couple of other folks after class to a large food market where we picked up some fresh veggies for dinner. Then we came back, cooked it up, and had a delicious meal. It was a large penne pasta with a tomato sauce that we added fresh sautéed garlic, onions, peppers, and carrots along with a few left over tomatoes from a previous meal that we diced up and added to the mix. Alli made some garlic bread with fresh chopped garlic and I made a variation of eggplant parmesan. I didn’t have parmesan so I used an unknown cheese that I had purchased for sandwich but I don’t read Russian so I have no idea what kind it was. All in all, it was a good meal and we even had leftovers.

Our first class this morning was Movement class at 11am…physically demanding but I’m learning a lot. Principally, the Russians have a theory about movement on stage where every action needs to be a conscious decision so it doesn’t become just aimless movement. For instance, we do several exercises where we start with a simple motion and build to the point where we are leaping into the air. When we are merely going through the motions, by time we get to the leaping, it just sounds like twenty one people pounding on the ground. However, when we are making the choice to try to stay in the air and only lightly touch the ground as we return to the air, the sound goes from heavy thumps to a light pattering of feet as we float in the air. Plus, personally speaking, you feel more in control of the motion, you feel lighter, and it becomes an easier motion of action. The exercised we do are all about controlling the body and becoming aware of focused motion where you are totally in tune with what you are physically doing, where you are on stage, and your relation to everybody and everything on stage. It’s amazingly cool stuff…

Then, for the afternoon, we had our second Stage Composition class with Victor. All we did was talk about our plays that we are going to be doing a “design” for in the class. We only got to three of the five plays but I learned a bunch about things I could be thinking about while reading the play. Peter went first talking about The Cherry Orchard, I was second talking about Three Sisters, and Cara finished up the class talking about Ivanov. First we would talk about the show and things that we thought were important (like there needs to be a piano in the drawing room for Tusenbach to play) for each act and things like the time of day, time of year, and location of the play. Then Victor would ask us prying questions about why we included some things or about something that we may have missed then follow it up with “Why?” Essentially, he made me think about things in my play that I hadn’t thought about, which I guess is kind of the point for the class. Well, next class we are to start bringing in drawings and choices about color. I think we are all looking forward to it.

I didn't take to many pictures today but these were a couple of cool looking buildings that we passed while on our market shopping trip...and I just couldn't get Peter (the actor) and Carollette out of the frame, oh well...

Day 14...what a jam packed two weeks it's been...

I went for numerous multi-mile hikes in preparation for my time here in Moscow and I never once got a blister.  But now that I’m here, I seem to be in a constant battle with the little devils.  Just when one heals up, I get another…I just feel like I can’t win.  They’re not horribly painful or anything like that, they’re just a minor nuisance that I’d rather live without.

I slept in today, kind of anyway.  I was up really late last night working on my blog so it was nice that I didn’t have to be up until ‘noon’ish.  The bad part was that I kept waking up at random intervals all morning.

We went to the Stanislavsky House Museum today and it was really educational.  I could write for a while about things we learn but I try to hit just a few highlights.  This house is actually only where we spent the last 17 years of his life.  He came from a wealthy merchant family and lived next to the family factory near Moscow, but after the October Revolution things changed dramatically.  Eventually, under Communist rule, his family’s factory was taken over by the government and he lost all his wealth.  This is significant because he had used his money to help support the still relatively young Moscow Art Theatre.  To help the MXAT survive, he took in on tour for several years in Europe and the US.  When they eventually came back to Moscow, the government gave him this house to live in so they could prop him up as the supreme example of a theater director.  He only had the entirety of the top floor while the first floor was jam packed with ‘normal’ Muscovites living under the Soviet regime.  Today, the first floor is part of the museum and acts kind of like a gallery to him and the MXAT.  Right now there is an exhibit of the previous head of the design program at the MXAT School, A. D. Ponsov.  Here’s a few of his costume renderings from the exhibit.

We saw Gogol’s play Marriage at the MXAT tonight.  It was a pretty entertaining comedy. It was easier to follow the play having read through a synopsis beforehand.  The set was kind of interesting; at least it looked like a more traditional approach to a stage set anyway.  It was two platform sets connected together by a wall in the back that pivoted to one side or the other depending on which set was down stage.  Then they were also connected together on the down stage side by a couple of walls that kind of functioned like an accordion that created a third room for the show.  It was quite clever and I might have to steal that idea sometime…  Here’s a couple pictures I got off the theater’s website.

Day 13...How much?

Today was a long day on my feet.  I did get to sleep in a little today, not that it helped much…I been waking up right around 6:30am every morning not matter what time I went to sleep so I usually just rollover and go back to sleep until my alarm goes off around 8ish.  Today I did that and proceed to wake up every 20-30 minutes for the next two and half hours. I finally gave up about 15 minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off and just got out of bed.

One of the first fun parts of the day was the flea market we went to in order to check it out.  Once you made your way through the first third where all the touristy stuff is, that’s where all the good stuff was.  Our most commonly asked question was "How much?"  There was tons of painting in all sorts of styles, great handmade artisan work, and pretty much anything else you could imagine.  Instead of trying to describe the kind of stuff you could find I thought I’d just post of pictures…

Just about the whole Wayne State group went to the market.  We got there about half past 11 and Dr. Thomas was meeting the people who didn’t want to navigate the metro in their own at 2pm to go back to the dorms…Pegi, Alli, and I were there until they started closing shops up at 5pm.  BUT…I got my Russian hat, in fact, I got three hats.  I bought two, a nice little wolf fur hat and wonderfully comfortable red fox hat, and the guy just threw in a third on for no extra charge.  I probably hadn’t negotiated hard enough and he felt bad for me.

We had to be down at the theatre at 6:45 to get tickets for the show tonight so we hauled it back to the dorm and made a quick little dinner from what we had laying around in the fridge.  I made some nice little grille tomato, ham, and cheese sandwiches along with some tomato wedges to eat, Alli made a yummy chicken based noodle soup to which we added some rice, and Pegi got some fresh fruit from a little sidewalk place around the corner from the school.  It was a good dinner all around.

We saw a play called Kizhe at the MXAT’s new black box theater.  I haven’t really got a clue as to what the plot was but the visuals of the production were really amazing.  The walls were just plain old OSB plywood, the uneven, bumpy floor was made of fiberglass, and the rolling platform was painted with a smooth glossy finish.  I just really liked the way the show looked because that’s the creative direction I’m trying to head in as a designer.  The costumes started out in all hues of white but were predominately black by the end of the play.   I must see if I can find the script…

Today was something similar to Russian Independents Day, but it’s a lot less fanfare the our 4^th of July celebrations.  However, there were going to be fireworks and so several of us thought we’d try out the O2 restaurant on the top of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.  We managed to find a great seating area with on the corner of the building so we had a great view of the city but it was horribly expensive.  Our group of four had one large bottle of water, three drinks, and two orders of side dishes and it came to a grand total of 2410 rubles…that’s $75!  Oddly enough, the bottle of water was the most expensive item at 770 rubles or $24/  Now that’s what I call a view with a price… Here’s a panoramic shot about 10pm as we were waiting for the fireworks.  Just click on the picture to get the full view...

Day 12...seeing is believing...

This has been another long day, and I’m really tired so I’ll give you the brief version and post of photos for today.

We went to the New Tretyakov Museum of Art this morning.  It is where the 20^th Century Russian art is displayed.  There was definitely some cool stuff there…I gotta start taking my cell phone with me to ‘sneak’ some photos of stuff I like.

Then we had our Chekhovian Costuming class at the “Yellow House” were they make and house all the costumes for the MXAT.  Today we focused on men’s clothing of the period and it was rather educational.  We also got to see and touch actual articles of clothing from over a hundred years ago, including an actually military artillery jacket that was used in numerous productions in the early years of the MXAT.  Really cool stuff.

We then had a couple of hours before our show for the night so I took a nap in the green room of the America Studio and then tried dinner at MacDonald’s here in Russia.  I think I had their version of the Big ‘n’ Tasty…it was really big (the burger itself was about 4” in diameter) and it had bacon, which was good, but also had an interesting sauce on it instead of ketchup and mayo like it is in the States.  I might go back to try a Russian Big Mac but that will probably be the extent of my Moscow Mickey D’s experiences.

For our show tonight, we got to see the final performance for the graduating students from the Moscow Art Theatre School.  They’ve been performing (and refining) this show for the past two years.  It’s kind of a vaudeville/variety kind of show comprised of numerous smaller pieces to highlight their abilities.  The first half focused mostly on movement based thing like dance and choreography while the second half focused on acting.  Personally, I loved the first half…they did some pretty amazing things, some poetic and beautiful while others were comedic. There was some really good stuff from the second half but it’s a little hard to fully enjoy when you don’t know exactly what they are saying.

Well, that was little more than I anticipated so I hope you enjoyed…