Merry Christmas Darling...

I can't believe that I haven't managed to post anything since the Fourth of July weekend...What's wrong with me?  Well, I have been busy but I should try to be better than six month hiatus.  There have been numerous times that I've thought about writing something but for some reason I just didn't do it. Well, times are a changin'.

Here's my attempt at a quick update of the last six months or so:

• Designed and built two shows for the Bay View Music Festival; Mozart's The Magic Flute and The Wizard of Oz. (well, technically I just built them, I had already pretty much designed them while I was in Russia)
• Moved to Dayton, TN (well, technically my stuff was already there in storage, I just had to get my apartment and actually put my stuff in it)
• Started my new job as an Assistant Professor and Theatre Fellow at Bryan College
• Directed my first show in several year (I combined Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus into one show and made some major cuts in each to get the whole show down to about 2:30 with the intermission)
• Made it to Greenville College for my 10 Year reunion and had a blast catching up with so many people...plus we represented well at the reunion dinner...Go GC!
• Designed and built my first set at Bryan, Scrooge:The Musical.  It was a huge undertaking, I mean with the Christmas Carol story you almost have to go big or don't do it at all, right?  But, by the Grace of God and a lot of hours put in by Bernie and the gang (the gang refers to all the students), we managed to pull it off. Maybe not exactly what I wanted but it worked out really well and the audiences loved it, which I guess counts for something...

Oedipus Rex

Oedipus at Colonus

Scrooge: The Musical (you need a big set for a cast this large)

Now that you're caught up...

I really just wanted to say that it's Christmas Eve (more likely Christmas Day by time I finish this) and I wanted to say that it's been an eventful year, and I think that's putting it lightly...  I save all my good reflections for New Years' Eve.  So for now I'll leave you with simple Holiday greeting...

Merry Christmas! 

God bless us, everyone!

The 4th and Fireworks...

4th of July weekend is one of my favorite times of the year!  Not so much because of the fireworks or grilling hot dogs and hamburgers (although they are all good things) but rather a family tradition that has been going since the early 70's (that is since before I was even born)...

Our family goes camping together every 4th of July weekend.  And I'm not just talking about my parents and all my brothers...I'm talking about my Grandma and Grandpa Ware and their kids (my aunts and uncles).  For the past 25+ years, we've been doing this at Somerset Beach Campground, which is owned by the Southern Michigan Conference of the Free Methodist Church.  Granted, there was one year where we went to Cedar Point because the Lacy family (one of my my mom's sisters) was on furlough from the mission field and a couple years where we camped on a different weekends for scheduling reasons, but Somerset had pretty much been our holiday vacation destination.

We have so much fun out here every year.  We divide the cooking workload so each family only has to cook and clean up one meal and just enjoy the rest.  My meal this weekend is the campfire food so plenty of marshmallows and camper pies. If you've never had a camper pie (they go by different names in other places...or so I'm told) then you've never really been camping.  The a two-side iron skillet that you put two pieces of bread in with some sort of filling between them.  You close it up and set it on the coals in the campfire for about 30-60 seconds per side (see picture).  When you take it out and open it up...you have a hot, tasty campfire treat!  Fruit pie mix and pizza topping are common staples in our family but I made one with BBQ pulled pork last night and it was delicious.  Other fun combos that I've had include ham and cheese; peanut butter, honey, and banana; and chocolate with marshmallow topping (like a s'more).

For the rest of the day, it's usually just sitting around playing games or talking about whatever strikes our fancy.  Rook, euchre, and Scrabble are common place games but we've also been known to put together numerous puzzles.  We sleep in as late as the bird, babies, and dogs allow and stay awake until you feel like going to bed.  It just a great vacation and way to spend time with your family.

Somerset holds a special place in my heart for many reasons.  Our little family 4th of July weekend is just one of many reasons I love this place.  As I mentioned, the campground is owned by the SMC of the FMC and I grew up in the Spring Arbor FMC which is a member of that conference.  So, Somerset is where I went for youth camps and where the annual conference wide Family Camp takes place.  These grounds are kind of like hallowed grounds for me because of all the memories.  Whether it was sleeping in the old school military style tents as a camper when I was kid (and a teenager), enjoying the new lodges (in 1998) as a camp counselor trying to teach young kids about God's love, playing volleyball on the sand court next to the lake with the other teens during family camp, or swimming across the lake with the other staff just for the fun of it...they are all good memories. 

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!!!