An Experiment

In order to work on my writing (and as Joe said, because Tolya told me to), I’ve decided to start a blog and *try* very hard to write short entries every few days or so. In the past I’ve been terrible at this kind of thing, so if I don’t keep up with it, you were warned ahead of time. Mostly I want to talk about my time here in Moscow, and share with anyone who cares to read it. I'll also be talking about productions, etc, so feel free to skip the posts when I start to geek out.

So! I’m living in Moscow with my Harvard graduate class, in a dorm with other Russian MXAT students. (Vocab: “MXAT” stands for Московском Художественном театре, or Moscow Art Theater, and is pronounced “Mhat”. I’m taking classes at the Moscow Art Theater School, the most prestigious theater school in the country and possibly anywhere.) There are 23 of us: 4 dramaturgs, 18 actors, and one voice & speech student. While the actors are living together on the 3rd floor in doubles, Sara, Rachel, Joe and I (the dramaturgs) and Jane, the voice student, are living in the lap of luxury and cloud of rising cigarette smoke on the 5th floor. They tell us that the fifth floor is the nicest, but five huge flights of stairs makes me doubt the reality of that statement. The rooms aren’t bad, though, and we each have singles.

Our dorm is in an awesome location in downtown Moscow, right off one of the major avenues, Tverskaya. They told us our dorm would be a “short walk” from school, but it turns out that’s also a questionable statement. Though it’s a nice walk on a main street, it’s a bit of hike, and takes a solid half an hour walking at a quick pace. Luckily, if you’re feeling lazy, there’s a metro about a block away. Three stops and you’re at the theater.

For the first week, I made it my personal mission to try to pass as a Russian. This mostly requires wearing high-heeled boots, fur, and black, and not smiling. At first I thought I was pretty successful – I was asked for directions twice in the first two days – but lately I’ve been getting more of the “Ug, you annoying foreigner” stare. Probably because I’ve decided the walk is too long to wear my heels. Overall, though, I think I’m blending pretty well, especially when I’m not in a gaggle of loud Americans.

And yes, while we’re here we are taking classes (which couldn’t really be said when I was in Rome, if you remember). Russian everything: Literature, history, art & architecture, film, theater history, and history of set design. Almost all of these things overlap and involve venturing out in the city to see Moscow’s huge number of museums and historical sites. There are six major art galleries and numerous smaller ones, several memorial parks, an incalculable amount of theater, dance, and opera, and every literary genius (of which there are many in Russia) seems to have a “memorial apartment”: the houses/apartments of Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol, etc etc have all been preserved and turned into museums, some fascinating and some spectacularly boring. (“This is where Pushkin wrote. But this is not his desk, and we’ve lost his manuscripts, and that window was put in last year.”)

The amount of theater we’re seeing could be a course in itself - 4 to 6 shows a week. The professor in charge of this (and us) is Anatoly Smeliansky, the dean of MXAT School and the assistant artistic director of MXAT itself. We are lucky enough to know him quite well because he comes to Cambridge to teach us in the summer and in January-February. But here in Moscow, to (a bit ashamedly) quote Anchorman, he’s kind of a big deal. In fact, really a big deal, especially in theater. When Hillary Clinton visited Moscow a few months ago, he was her host for an evening of opera. They hit it off, and there is a fantastic picture of the two of them in his dark wood, leather, and antique-filled office, hanging next to countless national awards for contributions to theater and culture. He’s working with the US State department on opening educational and artistic communications between students in the US and Russia, and when he invited the US ambassador and his staff to the premiere of our small student show, they came. The best example I have of his importance is from a few nights ago, when we attended a play with him. But that’s for another time.