First post! You're welcome Marc. (He's been pressuring us for ages to get going on here so apologies for everyone who has been waiting). It's pretty shocking that I'm the first one to post, considering how bad I usually take to blogs and journals, so I apologize if this gets a little cursory.
First, for anyone interested, here's the list of shows we are seeing on this trip:
Rothschild's Violin directed by Kama Ginkas at the Moscow Young People's Theater
The Blue, Blue Bird at the Theater of Nations (only half of us saw this one)
The Three Sisters directed by Vasiliy Fedorov at the Moscow Art Theater
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at Teatr na Maloj bronnoj
The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Center for Playwrights and Directors
A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Kiril Serebrenikov at the Gogol Center
Tour of The Puppet Theater Shadow (Театр Тень)
Hamlet: Collage directed by Robert Lepage at the Theater of Nations
O-i, Late Love directed by Dmitry Krymov at The School for Dramatic Arts
Hedda Gabler at the The Pushkin Theater
The Misanthrope at the The Gogol Center
Mother Courage directed by Kirill Vytoptov at the The Fomenko Studio (Half will see this one)
Richard III directed by Avtandil Varsimashvili at the Vakhtangov: 19:00 (the other half will see this)
Mitya's Love directed by Vladislav Nastavshev at the Gogol Center
Moscow: Open City: Transitions at the Center for Playwrights and Directors
Then we go to St Petersburg
The Three Sisters directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
The Marriage at The Alexandrinsky Theater
Lady Macbeth of Mkhentsk at The Mariinsky (This is an opera)
Slava's Snowshow at BDT
Romeo and Juliet - the ballet at the The Mikhailovsky Theatre
Metamorphosis at The Theater Na Liteiny
Stars in the Morning Sky at The Maly Drama Theater
Brothers and Sisters at The Maly Drama Theater
Hamlet directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
Autumn Dream directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
Okay, sorry if you didn't want to read that and had to scroll through it all, I thought it would just be a good resource for those who wanted to ask what shows we are seeing. We just saw The Misanthrope tonight, so that's where in the trip we are.
Second off, I'm required to write a review of a play we've seen on the trip, and I want to get that out of the way. I was going to put up a pretty formal review of Hamlet: Collage, but I don't want that to be the first thing you all read about our trip so I'm putting up my journal entry for O-I: Late Love instead. Marc, if it's to informal to count as a review, I'll throw up my other one. Here goes:
JANUARY 11, 2019
O-I: Late Love was not a show I was eagerly looking forward to. I had read the synopsis – it sounded like a pretty generic play about pretty generic turn of the century play issues. The synopsis online also discussed the production a little bit, but didn’t really say much interesting about it, meaning that I expected little interesting about it.
But when I walked into the space and saw the set, I knew that I was going to have a great time. The stage was incredibly deep, on the floor, with a raised audience. The light grid was lowered as low as it could be without obstructing our view, left completely bare to help us see the artificiality of the scene. In fact, there were extra tubes and wiring added to make it seem even more of a mess. And the whole stage was covered in butcher paper as well, implying there would be some enormous mess by the end of the play. And all this set up an expectation of something crazy and bizarre that was more than fulfilled by the show that followed. It was a comedic, bizzare, wonderful rollercoaster that made me appreciate again the willingness of Russians to tear up a classic script and reconstitute it in ways that make it feel impossibly fresh and vital.
I laughed harder at that show than anything else I’ve seen on this trip – I’ve got to remember that slow turn as Shoblova moved with slow, angry deliberateness toward Nikolai, who moved with equally slow fear to escape, both knowing sudden movements would provoke an explosion of anger. Or the “Chekhov’s bundle of wires” that Shoblova missed four times before finally tripping over and flying offstage, turning on the lights. Or the unbelievably unexpected Hip-Hop dance number when the moving lights started finally spinning, turning on halfway through to cover the stage with club-esque dance lighting, all while the grid sparked dangerously. The fact that the play continued as before after the out-of-place dance was even more hilarious – I couldn’t take the show seriously for a solid minute afterwards. I’m tempted to go on and on and on about the bits, wanting to retell and experience their wild brilliant joy, but then I’d have to go on for four pages and I don’t want to make anyone read all that like I did to Marc when I wrote about Midsummer’s.
I didn’t know a technical design could be funny, but Late Love’s was amazing. Despite the hundreds of high tech lightning instruments hanging just above the ground, the lighting was almost entirely done with harsh white cyc lights alongside the lighting grid, handheld and corded lamps, or floodlights. The butcher paper implied there was some huge mess that was going to be made that never happened. Avery says she even say a little bit of a paper drop hanging behind the lights that never lowered. The best part: a lone lightbulb hanging in the middle of the stage that we waited all play to turn on, and when a character finally did turn it on it glowed so faintly it only faintly illuminated the bulb. Then that bulb was used as a weapon in the greatest fight scene I’ve ever seen on stage, sparking and threatening to electrocute Nikolai. The set had all sorts of extraneous elements that set up expectations but never fulfilled them, poking fun of the play and good-naturedly pulling one over on the audience and what we thought we could expect from the performance.
What makes the play feel especially brilliant to me is that it wasn’t just pure comedy: like most Russian things, it ends darkly. That final image of Nikolai’s blood-red smile and manic laugh as he is forced to marry Lyudmila and the slow realization that he is about to pull out a gun (he mimes shooting Lyudmila first with a finger gun, brilliantly setting us up to expect what will happen before it actually does) was haunting. Not as much as when the beautiful choral music that had represented moments of happiness and joy immediately dropped out as he shot himself and Lyudmila’s strained singing turned to hoarse croaking, a horribly unsettling sound of pain and futile attempts at joy that continued after the blackout – a bit like Dormedont’s cries of childlike anguish when he realized he could not be with Lyudmila that carried on for far too long after the black out and made me squirm in my seat.
Now that I’ve brought him up, I should address Dormedont, played as a mentally disabled person, which was easily the most uncomfortable part of the show. I think portraying a such a character onstage will always make me uncomfortable, especially in Russia where I would guess they are not having the conversations about the social implications behind such a character I would want them have, nor are they doing a lot of research to make sure they are adequately portraying such a character. Nevertheless, the character isn’t made fun of or exploited, and he got to have a lot of moments of joy and equality with other characters while he played crazy pantomime games with a dead bug or vicious shoe soccer with his mother. I’m not sure the representation of the character is really pushing forward the social beliefs about mentally handicapped people in the way my American sensibilities want it to, but at least there is some sort of representation of such a character, even if the thought behind it wasn’t ideal. In American theater, we would very rarely put such a character onstage, too afraid of the kind of criticism I am doing here to even attempt giving such people a place onstage.
Despite my discomfort with Dormedont’s characterization, I feel confident in saying this is one of my favorite shows I’ve seen on the trip so far (maybe second favorite behind Midsummer’s?) and its wild darkly comic brilliance has instilled in me a desire to make more theater like it as I go forward in my career.
Alright, done! I'm sure someone else will post soon -- we all have to do a video and a written review.
(Also if you are wondering, we are all, I think, having a marvelous time and are doing well.)
First, for anyone interested, here's the list of shows we are seeing on this trip:
Rothschild's Violin directed by Kama Ginkas at the Moscow Young People's Theater
The Blue, Blue Bird at the Theater of Nations (only half of us saw this one)
The Three Sisters directed by Vasiliy Fedorov at the Moscow Art Theater
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at Teatr na Maloj bronnoj
The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Center for Playwrights and Directors
A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Kiril Serebrenikov at the Gogol Center
Tour of The Puppet Theater Shadow (Театр Тень)
Hamlet: Collage directed by Robert Lepage at the Theater of Nations
O-i, Late Love directed by Dmitry Krymov at The School for Dramatic Arts
Hedda Gabler at the The Pushkin Theater
The Misanthrope at the The Gogol Center
Mother Courage directed by Kirill Vytoptov at the The Fomenko Studio (Half will see this one)
Richard III directed by Avtandil Varsimashvili at the Vakhtangov: 19:00 (the other half will see this)
Mitya's Love directed by Vladislav Nastavshev at the Gogol Center
Moscow: Open City: Transitions at the Center for Playwrights and Directors
Then we go to St Petersburg
The Three Sisters directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
The Marriage at The Alexandrinsky Theater
Lady Macbeth of Mkhentsk at The Mariinsky (This is an opera)
Slava's Snowshow at BDT
Romeo and Juliet - the ballet at the The Mikhailovsky Theatre
Metamorphosis at The Theater Na Liteiny
Stars in the Morning Sky at The Maly Drama Theater
Brothers and Sisters at The Maly Drama Theater
Hamlet directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
Autumn Dream directed by Yury Butusov at the Lensovet
Okay, sorry if you didn't want to read that and had to scroll through it all, I thought it would just be a good resource for those who wanted to ask what shows we are seeing. We just saw The Misanthrope tonight, so that's where in the trip we are.
Second off, I'm required to write a review of a play we've seen on the trip, and I want to get that out of the way. I was going to put up a pretty formal review of Hamlet: Collage, but I don't want that to be the first thing you all read about our trip so I'm putting up my journal entry for O-I: Late Love instead. Marc, if it's to informal to count as a review, I'll throw up my other one. Here goes:
JANUARY 11, 2019
O-I: Late Love was not a show I was eagerly looking forward to. I had read the synopsis – it sounded like a pretty generic play about pretty generic turn of the century play issues. The synopsis online also discussed the production a little bit, but didn’t really say much interesting about it, meaning that I expected little interesting about it.
But when I walked into the space and saw the set, I knew that I was going to have a great time. The stage was incredibly deep, on the floor, with a raised audience. The light grid was lowered as low as it could be without obstructing our view, left completely bare to help us see the artificiality of the scene. In fact, there were extra tubes and wiring added to make it seem even more of a mess. And the whole stage was covered in butcher paper as well, implying there would be some enormous mess by the end of the play. And all this set up an expectation of something crazy and bizarre that was more than fulfilled by the show that followed. It was a comedic, bizzare, wonderful rollercoaster that made me appreciate again the willingness of Russians to tear up a classic script and reconstitute it in ways that make it feel impossibly fresh and vital.
I laughed harder at that show than anything else I’ve seen on this trip – I’ve got to remember that slow turn as Shoblova moved with slow, angry deliberateness toward Nikolai, who moved with equally slow fear to escape, both knowing sudden movements would provoke an explosion of anger. Or the “Chekhov’s bundle of wires” that Shoblova missed four times before finally tripping over and flying offstage, turning on the lights. Or the unbelievably unexpected Hip-Hop dance number when the moving lights started finally spinning, turning on halfway through to cover the stage with club-esque dance lighting, all while the grid sparked dangerously. The fact that the play continued as before after the out-of-place dance was even more hilarious – I couldn’t take the show seriously for a solid minute afterwards. I’m tempted to go on and on and on about the bits, wanting to retell and experience their wild brilliant joy, but then I’d have to go on for four pages and I don’t want to make anyone read all that like I did to Marc when I wrote about Midsummer’s.
I didn’t know a technical design could be funny, but Late Love’s was amazing. Despite the hundreds of high tech lightning instruments hanging just above the ground, the lighting was almost entirely done with harsh white cyc lights alongside the lighting grid, handheld and corded lamps, or floodlights. The butcher paper implied there was some huge mess that was going to be made that never happened. Avery says she even say a little bit of a paper drop hanging behind the lights that never lowered. The best part: a lone lightbulb hanging in the middle of the stage that we waited all play to turn on, and when a character finally did turn it on it glowed so faintly it only faintly illuminated the bulb. Then that bulb was used as a weapon in the greatest fight scene I’ve ever seen on stage, sparking and threatening to electrocute Nikolai. The set had all sorts of extraneous elements that set up expectations but never fulfilled them, poking fun of the play and good-naturedly pulling one over on the audience and what we thought we could expect from the performance.
What makes the play feel especially brilliant to me is that it wasn’t just pure comedy: like most Russian things, it ends darkly. That final image of Nikolai’s blood-red smile and manic laugh as he is forced to marry Lyudmila and the slow realization that he is about to pull out a gun (he mimes shooting Lyudmila first with a finger gun, brilliantly setting us up to expect what will happen before it actually does) was haunting. Not as much as when the beautiful choral music that had represented moments of happiness and joy immediately dropped out as he shot himself and Lyudmila’s strained singing turned to hoarse croaking, a horribly unsettling sound of pain and futile attempts at joy that continued after the blackout – a bit like Dormedont’s cries of childlike anguish when he realized he could not be with Lyudmila that carried on for far too long after the black out and made me squirm in my seat.
Now that I’ve brought him up, I should address Dormedont, played as a mentally disabled person, which was easily the most uncomfortable part of the show. I think portraying a such a character onstage will always make me uncomfortable, especially in Russia where I would guess they are not having the conversations about the social implications behind such a character I would want them have, nor are they doing a lot of research to make sure they are adequately portraying such a character. Nevertheless, the character isn’t made fun of or exploited, and he got to have a lot of moments of joy and equality with other characters while he played crazy pantomime games with a dead bug or vicious shoe soccer with his mother. I’m not sure the representation of the character is really pushing forward the social beliefs about mentally handicapped people in the way my American sensibilities want it to, but at least there is some sort of representation of such a character, even if the thought behind it wasn’t ideal. In American theater, we would very rarely put such a character onstage, too afraid of the kind of criticism I am doing here to even attempt giving such people a place onstage.
Despite my discomfort with Dormedont’s characterization, I feel confident in saying this is one of my favorite shows I’ve seen on the trip so far (maybe second favorite behind Midsummer’s?) and its wild darkly comic brilliance has instilled in me a desire to make more theater like it as I go forward in my career.
(Also if you are wondering, we are all, I think, having a marvelous time and are doing well.)
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