Day Seven...Relective, Fast, and Furious!

I started today off by visiting Christ the Savior Cathedral for the morning service with a couple other folks on the trip. The church is just gorgeous! Interestingly enough, it is only about 10 years old. The original was torn down by Stalin (because the Communist had outlawed churches so who really cared anyway) and they were going to build a massive monument/build in its place that, at the time, was going to be the tallest building in the world. That never happened so it ended up being a really large open air pool until the early 1990’s after the fall of the USSR. They rebuilt the church as close as they could to the originally using sourses from all over the world. I thought the exterior was beautiful…then I walked inside! The Icons that cover the walls are a little different than what I am use to seeing in Orthodox Churches but stunning none the less. Then there was all the different marbles set in wonderful patterns on the walls and floors… Words can’t do it justice by a long shot. Unfortunately cameras are not allowed in the church so you’ll just have to suffer with this exterior shot.

The music was also simply stunning. I have several different ROC services on CD’s that I often listen to but hearing it in real life in an authentic setting…priceless. I’ve sung my fair share of ROCM and this just warmed my heart. You can’t help but think that there is a Creator after having listened to that.

We spent the afternoon on a bus tour of famous sites in the city. The first stop…Christ the Savior Cathedral! Go figure…well, it allowed me to get some pictures that I hadn’t been able to capture in the morning so it was all good. Oh, I forgot to mention that there is an awesome museum of historic ROC relics, icons, and other stuff that I hope I can get a chance to go back and look at…and it’s all under the church! Ok, well technically the museum is under the plaza that surrounds the church. Under the sanctuary there is a smaller sanctuary with more traditional looking icons on the wall.

We stopped at a couple of other places but I think my favorite of the tour was Victory Park. It was opened in 1997 for the 50th Anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and as an honor to the 30,000,000 Russians that lost their lives. We only had a couple of minutes there so I’m hoping the designers can go back some time because I could probably spend a couple of hours walking around the park taking pictures.

We ended the evening with a performance of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Lencom Theatre. To be truthful, I wasn’t that impressed with the performance. The only actor that I thought did a spectacular job was the guy who played Billy. His consistency and mannerisms were spot on throughout the performance. They also either used a very different adaption, made a ton of cuts, just simply changed parts of the story, or some combination of the three because there were some elemental keys to the storyline that they left out that really hurt the overall impact of the show. The set, however, was pretty cool; walls of white “tiles” with vents hanging in the air…very sanitarium like. The cool thing was that the tiles were actually made out of a white opaque plastic so there were times when some of them were backlit to change colors, and I’m so stealing that idea for some show in the future.

This is just a funny little photograph of some flowers that I took with the Moscow State University in the back ground.

Day six...Out and about...

It was a long, long day…of course, it could have been longer!  I did over sleep a little when my alarm went off at 8am and I re-set it for 8:20 and I woke up at 9:30…  All the designers had already headed off into whatever direction they wanted so I just took a shower, ate breakfast, and started to walk down to the school for our first class (scheduled to start at 2:30).

For a little adventure, I decided to walk down Trevskaya St. on the other side of the street to see the buildings that we’ve been walking beside for the last four days.  It was a good experience and I took a massive amount of pictures.  I guess it was nice to be able to go at my own pace (which is a little fast at times) and be able to stop to take whatever pictures I wanted wherever I wanted to take them.  The good news is that I think I pretty much have the whole of Trevskaya St. photographed so I don’t need to take anymore photos…

I ate lunch in the school cafeteria while taking a few more notes on the play that I’ll be working on in our design class, The Three Sisters.  I still had a little time before class so I checked out the Starbucks across the street…if you think Starbucks is expensive, try it over here!  I think most venti lattes are somewhere around $4-5 in the States but over here in Moscow it’s about 240-280 rubles, or $8-9 for the same drink.  I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a straight-up Venti Carmel Latte as much as I did today…but it will be a while before I have another…

Our class this afternoon was our first Stage Composition class.  Mostly just informative and we talked a little about designing for Chekhov and how he give you plenty of clues as to what he wanted for sets and costumes in the script.  Our first assignment is to answer a bunch of questions about our play.  I think I have a pretty good head start on that so I should be able to get somewhat detailed.

After class our class, I tagged along with Pegi and Alli as we continued to make our way around Moscow.  First we finished up the metro tour that we had started a couple nights ago.  It took a little longer than expected because one of the connecting passages between lines was inaccessible so we had to take the long way around.  We then headed over the Arbatskaya district to check out some odd architectural buildings.  It was a lot of walking but the buildings were pretty interesting and the architecture was indeed odd… I’ll try to remember put some pictures up when I can snag some free internet at a café.

We had a late dinner at a restaurant called Kish Mish and it had a pretty good Middle Eastern buffet.  I tried just about everything they had and I liked it all…if only I knew what any of it was called.  We decided we might invite the rest of the group back with us sometime.

All-in-all, even though I’ve only been here for a less than a week, I feel like I’ve started to adapt to life here fairly good.  The Metro doesn’t scare me anymore (as long as I have a map), I’m starting to be able to make some sense out of the language (i.e. reading names of streets and buildings), and I’m getting really use to walking close to, if not over, ten miles a day hefting my backpack along for a ride.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.  Some of us are heading over to the Christ the Savior Cathedral in the morning for the service.  While I’ve never been to a Russian Orthodox Church service, I am at more familiar with its cousin, the Antioch Orthodox Church.  It should be beautiful and I’m looking forward to the music!  Then we have bus tour of the city followed by another play which is One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Lencom theatre (which I had just happened to walk past yesterday while meandering around the city).

Day Five...Walking and walking and walking....

The designers didn’t have class this morning so we decided to do a little sightseeing.  We left shortly after 9am and walked to closest metro station.  We hoped on the loop down to the closest station to the park.  Then we spent the rest of the morning walking around the park and taking lots of pictures.  All-in-all, I took close to 200 photographs today…and some of them are actually look pretty awesome.

I’ll go to some things from the morning later but I thought I’d talk briefly about today’s class.  We had our first History of Chekhovian Costumes class today.  We have three total classes so our design project is just to design a costume for one of the characters in a Chekhov play.  This was also our first lecture type class with a non-English speaking professor so it was a little strange.  I don’t think I took as thorough notes as I would have liked but it was hard to keep up.  I asked about getting a copy of the Power Point she used so I could have some of the research images (plus, I hope to be able to translate the text to English using a translator program).

Ok, back to random things from today…Gorky park was alright but one of the big things was wanted to see was gone.  They apparently had several old abandoned rides from the Stalin era but they must have taken them out since when the tour book that we are using was printed.  We think we found the spot but there was only bare concrete to greet us.   We also found a restaurant in the park that we want to go to some evening.

Well, there is plenty more that I could add and there are few photos story's I want to put up here.  However, I think I’m getting low on my internet megabyte usage account and my new allotment doesn’t kick in until Monday.  So, I think I’ll just wait until them…it will be worth it!

Day four…The show must go on…

I’ve learned that Muscovites (people who live in Moscow) are pushy people. I think it’s just part of the culture here, part influenced by things like the old Soviet food lines and part by just being a massive city with over 15,000,000 people living in it. Anywhere that there is a congestion line, mostly in the metro but sometimes in the aisles and entrances to theatres, people are all jostling to get through the whatever. On the metro, it can be at the escalators, getting on the train, and getting off the train. Imagine a group of penguins trying to get through a crack in a wall of ice and that’s pretty much what it’s like. You kind of just waddle your way closer to the where you’re heading.

Lots of happenings today which started by leaving the dorm around 8ish and walking down to the MXAT (that’s the shorthand symbol for the Moscow Art Theatre) with Peter and Jeffery where we sat down and did some sketches of a Chekhov statue. Then we had our first History or Russian Film class that was for both the designers and actors. What a great class! Today we covered a lot of film terminology and the pre-revolution era of films. The high light for me was a stop-motion animation film by Vladislav Starewicz called The Cameraman’s Revenge. Vlady had a thing for insects but they tended to scurry away from the camera so he decided to use dead insects. The story involves a couple of insect couple with Mr. Beetle cheating on the Mrs. but the Mrs. is also cheating on the Mr. There is a grasshopper that Mr. Beetle throws out of a bar who just happens to be a cameraman (imagine a movie about a movie when movies had only been around for less than a decade) and he takes his revenge but film Mr. Beetles affair. The Mr. finds out about the Mrs. But ends up forgiving he and takes to a movie which just happens to be the grasshoppers film. There’s fights, fires, and various insects getting thrown through windows and movie screens…great film! Tim Burton even cited Valdy’s work as inspiration for films like The Nightmare Before Christmas.
We had a painting class in the afternoon that was pretty interesting. It reminded me very much about a studio drawing class I had in grad school by Anatoly Shapiro, a Russian born painter. The biggest difference being that Anatoly at spoke decent English and out teacher here was through an interpreter. I learned a little so hopefully the next class will be even better.

The highlight of the day was seeing Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Satiricon Theatre. WOW!!! What an awesome show. I admit I’m somewhat of a theatre snob when it comes to theater and this show just blew my socks off. It was an Avant-garde setting but it just fit the production. Richard was pretty deformed (for you folks that might not know a lot about Richard III, he is usually portrayed with some sort of a defect like a hunch back and odd limp to his walk) but the actor staged a very convincing performance (I found out later that he is also one of the teacher at the MXAT). The set was made up of lots little things (painted on cardboard mounted on wood) that were carried on and off the stage. They also did a lot with the lighting to create a variety of cast shadow images on the cyclorama upstage of the actors. They also did some interesting murder scenes. For instance, when Clearance is killed, they did it by throwing goblet after goblet of red wine on him and his white costume (I don’t think they used real wine). Then when the young princes are killed, it starts with them having a pillow fight that transforms into an execution when the murders show up and start beating the princes with the pillows and then they snuff them out holding the pillow over their faces. This was paralleled later at the end of the play when the ghosts of the princes come out and beat Richard to death with the pillows (and don’t worry, that’s not how the play really ends in the script, so support your local theater and go see it sometime). I didn’t even mind that it was all in Russian. I know the story because I saw it about 20 times when I ran lights for it during my first summer with the Michigan Shakespeare Festival and I think that helped me know a little better what was going on but the show was great none the less.

I’m posting a picture today of the entrance to Red Square. We haven’t been in yet but I took this while passing by on the way to someplace else. You should be able to see the famous ‘onion’ domes of St. Basil’s Church.

Until tomorrow…

Day Three...the first full day!

Today was our first full day in Moscow and it was an eventful one to say least!

Woke up much earlier than I needed to but I blame the little nap I had a couple of hours before heading off to bed.  Ended up going to have a little breakfast at a café with my friend Jeffery because he was looking for an ATM to get some rubles (his card just wasn’t working in ATMs but he could make credit card purchases).  Russian pancakes…DELICIOUS!  They’re kind of like crepes but a little thinker with more of a texture to it.  I ended up have a little dinner at a place near the theatre and they used the same pancakes to make one super wonderful ham and cheese “wrap” (I put “wrap” in quotations because they aren’t rolled like a wrap or crepe but rather folded so you end up with something that resembles the shape of a slice of pizza).

We had a little meeting at ten, the designers had a small break after that to grab a little lunch, and then another meeting with just the designers.  After that we all headed out on the three mile walk to the theatre school.  You might ask, “Why walk all that way?”   Well, I mentioned in my last post about how horrible the traffic was (Moscow was not laid out for automobile transportation) so taking a bus is out of the question.  They do have a subway system called the “Metro” but I’ll get to that later…

We got to the America Studio Theatre where the movement, acting, and theatre history classes take place…it also happens to be on the 5^th floor of a building with a slow, little elevator that can only hold four people.  Looks like most of us will be taking the stairs (I’ll just keep telling myself that it’s a good extra bit of exercise after a three mile walk).  We didn’t go in the Moscow Art Theatre School, which is where most of the designer classes are held, but learn in our earlier meeting that about half of our classes are on the 2^nd or 3^rd floors…but the other half are on the 6^th floor!  So my room on the 5^th floor and about ¾ of my classes are on the 5^th floor or higher…my legs are either going to be in super great shape or they’ll just fall off one random day…

After our Theatre History class got out around 3pm, the designers had a little meeting with our new professor.  That was followed by a trip to a tiny little art store where we could by Tempra paint and brushes (for those that needed them) for our paint class tomorrow.  Lets’ just say that that was an interesting little excursion through the streets of Moscow and we’ll leave it at that.

And now for the Metro…I’ll start by say that if you are ever on Moscow and want to take the Metro, make sure you have someone who can read and speak Russian or I can wager pretty easily that you will make at least one mistake (if not more) and end up someplace where you don’t want to be.  Essentially, one of the designers has a tourist guide that has a little Metro tour that takes you to about a half dozen unique architectural points within the system so you only have to pay once to get in to see them all.  We had two hour before we had to be back at the theatre to see a show for the evening.  We spent about an hour just walking (to the first station, around the stations, and from the last stop back to the theatre), about 20 minutes taking pictures (I got some great one’s I’m put up at a later date), 10 minutes on the actual trains, and about 30 minutes looking at maps and signs trying to figure out where we were and where we wanted to be.  Oh, and we only got to two of the six locations! What made the whole thing even worse was that one of our guys got hit by a pick-pocket as we were leaving the train.

The good news was that we got to watch Amadeus at the Moscow Art Theatre.  Thankfully, I had TD’ed this show back in grad school so I was able to follow it pretty well since they were speaking in Russian.  It was a nice looking set design but I as little disappointed the acting, of course, that could just be what’s lost on the langue barrier…

Well, I need to get some sleep for another event filled day…

Day Two...kind of...

Day Two (or the continuation of day one…)

We arrived safely in Moscow about 3pm local time (7am EST for those back home). The Moscow airport is a little old school interesting, kind of felt like I had gone back in time a little. We had a long wait in the Passport check point because two or three full planes had landed at the same time and they only had five lanes open for non-Russians, two lanes for Russian citizens, and one electronic passport lane (did you know they had those?) for a total of eight lanes for the entire airport. After a while the citizens’ lanes had long been cleared so by some miracle they waved us over and we got though about 15-20 minutes faster than it would have been.

Then we loaded up a very old looking bus and headed to our dorms in metro Moscow (the airport is about ten miles outside the city kind of like Detroit Metro). This took forever because of rush hour traffic. I had thought Detroit rush hour traffic was bad at times but it has nothing on Moscow traffic! However, it wasn’t as bad as regular daily traffic in Port Au Prince, Haiti (worse traffic in the world!) but still pretty bad for an average Joe from the Midwest…

When we got to the dorm build I had the fortunate pleasure of learning that our teachers’ rooms were on the fifth floor, that’s the top floor, by the way… If the morning movement class doesn’t whip me in shape, those stairs certainly will! Then…my room is tiny! It’s like 6’ wide and 15’ long but the bed and closet (which take up one whole half the room lengthwise) make is even smaller. I think I might actually have the smallest room of the bunch, and I’m the biggest guy in the group…

I also fried my good power strip when I plugged it into the converter…apparently it didn’t like something! So, I’m stuck with just one “American” outlet for now. Perhaps tomorrow I could buy a cheap Russian alarm clock that would work in these plugs. I did manage to find an alarm clock that will work on my computer so I hope I wake up to it in the morning.

Moscow is a pretty interesting city. The mix of old Soviet Block apartments mixed in with the newer buildings from the last twenty years makes for a bit of a surreal landscape. One block you feel like you’re back in the Cold War and the next you’re in the 21st Century again. All-in-all, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the city over the next couple days…

Look for pictures to arrive soon as well…

Day One (that carried over to day two....)

Monday afternoon, May 31, 2010…

Well, the day has finally arrived! I am going to Moscow…it only took three years of trying to get enough designers together to go on this trip.  So it is with both excitement and a little nervousness that I get ready to depart.

Check in at the airport went relatively smoothly…good for Jeffery That I was next to him in the check in line and that I had a little room left in my second bag so he was able to get his is in under the weight limit.  We designers have it a little harder than the actors when it comes to packing.  All they have to take is clothes and maybe a few books.  We have to take all that plus a bunch of art supplies.  I haven’t seen too many of the actors bags but I have feeling that when we get our luggage in Moscow that they will have smaller bags.

Speaking of bags…I hope that I have better luck than my last flight over the Atlantic when they lost my bag and I didn’t get it for about three days after we arrived.  That was for a brass group trip over to Germany.  Lucky I had packed my tux in my carry on so I was good to go for our first concert.  I would prefer not to repeat that though…

Well, my flight will be filled with reading and watching movies… I’ve never really been able to sleep while traveling.  Through a rather unfortunate series of events, I did get to fly first class over to Europe on that brass trip. And guess what…I still wasn’t able to sleep, not even in a cushy, comfy, first class seat.  Planes, trains (well I’ve never been on a train before but I will be when we travel over to St. Petersburg), and automobiles, doesn’t matter, can’t sleep…

Until the next update….

OK, It’s now just about 10:45 pm EST about six hours after we took off from Detroit and we are just about half way between Iceland and the English isles.  It may not be 11pm back home but it’s about 3:45 local time and dawn is upon is here.  Actually, due to the tilt of the earth, our flight path, and travelling at 30,000 ft. above sea level, we’ve been at dusk for the last three hours and it looks like it will just transition right into dawn.  The Earth’s kind of cool that way.  Of course, we were also warned that because of the tilt of the Earth, it stay light outside until about two or three in the morning and only gets dark for a couple of hours in Moscow during this time of year so that should be kind of interesting.

It’s been a fairly relaxing flight so far.  We’ve only had a couple moments of slight turbulence but nothing major.  I read Three Sisters and then watched a movie.  I chose to watch Invictus, the lasted film directed by Clint Eastwood staring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman at Nelson Mandela.  What a great film!  If I was a history professor, I would use this in a class. It reminded me a little about a film I watched in high school about the Soweto uprising in South Africa.  I can’t remember the title (something involving “One”) but Whoppi Goldberg stated in it.

Speaking of movies…in-flight movie options have improved greatly since I last flew to Europe in college, which was over ten years ago.  I remember sitting in first class and thinking that is was cool that we got our own personal screen for watch the movie.  The bad thing…there was only one movie option…the Mathew Brodrick version of Godzilla.  Needless to say, it was a very long overnight flight (about 14 hours) and I ended up watching it three times because I hadn’t brought a book along with me (I didn’t start reading for fun until I was out of college, stupid me).  But now…WOW! Movies on demand!  This is pretty nifty.  Oh! And not having to pay for head phones to listen to the movie or music…double bonus!  I gotta start flying overseas more often…

Just finished a little breakfast and we’ve just arrived over Scotland.   Unfortunately, it’s rather overcast so I can’t see the ground.  That might not be a big thing for most people but as an avid golfer I wish I could look upon the homeland of golf…but alas, not today…

Only an hour before we land so I should probably put the laptop away…

Update from Amsterdam…

It’s about 3:15am back in Michigan but the sun is up here (or at least I assume it is since it’s a very overcast day) and about 9:15am.  Had a little bit of a layover here so I walked around with Pegi and Alli looking for a place to have some coffee.  There were plenty of options so it took a while to decide which one to give our money too.

Oh, how I’ve missed the coffee over here. I don’t drink European coffee like I drink coffee in America.  Back in the States I usually take it with a little cream and sugar but over here I take it straight up black.  I learned when I was over in Germany that it didn’t seem to change the flavor not matter how much cream and sugar I would add so I pretty much stopped trying.  All in all I think it adds to the overall experience.

Well, time to get on the plane to Moscow!