Advertisement
Tuesday morning was pretty chill. I didn't have class until 2:30 since it was just the girls singing, so I was going to go explore, but realized it was a prime opportunity to get some laundry done. I left for the school about an hour and half before classes and headed across Tverskya and over a few blocks before running down parallel to Tverskaya. I found some really cool parks, took some great pictures of a corner that was just sweet, and found this really long park full of interesting people that ran me right up to Pushkin square. In acting we did a roller coaster Etude and it turned out really awesome. The event was that the roller coaster would get stuck right at the top of the first big hill, and the ride operator would have to come up there and get them down. We set up chairs to represent the roller coaster and a couple of benches to represent the stairway up to the top of the coaster. I was the ride operator and while I was evacuating the riders, a leg on one of the benches broke, and that's when it got interesting, I had to start
carrying people off the ride and down past the broken bench as if the ladder system had really broken, the etude went on much longer than planned but it was really cool, everyone just went with it. Sergey was very complimentary about how well it went and how engaged we were. It seems like we have a day of a real success, followed by like 3 days of failures. Some of the new concentration exercises that we added were lots of fun and very challenging. We had to tell a story in pairs, both of us talking at the same time, trying to top the other person with the importance of our story. Then after 1-3 minutes of storytelling, Sergey stopped us asked each person to tell us what their partner’s story was about. I knew it would be challenging to hear the other person's story while telling mine, but I had no idea how challenging it would be to catch both stories in detail when I was listening to them both. Tough!
After acting we had some time to kill before seeing a show, Ivanov at the MXAT, so I went and explored some more of Red Square.
I wandered the various booths that were set up for this Saturday's Russia Day, and then went into the underground mall that is under part of Red Square. It goes down three levels and is as big as any mall in the U.S. It really is quite amazing. There are these glass domes in the ceiling that are on the surface of the Red Square and have fountains on top of them spraying water. Pretty spectacular. I wondered over near where the Kremlin is and found the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and took some cool pictures of the park around there.
Ivanov was very interesting. The set was pretty spectacular, and it became pretty apparent pretty soon that they were starting the play in Act 4 which is the final act, so immediately my attention was pretty focused. The essentially did the whole play in reverse. The other interesting element was that they had the whole surface of the stage strewn with logs, branches, twigs and stumps. So all the actors were very much alive and active because each and ever step was potentially treacherous. For the most part I liked it though I wasn't sure because of
the language barrier whether or not the story got told. The next day I asked Sergey our acting teacher if there was a through line that tied the play together since it was done in reverse, and he said that in his opinion the play was a total failure, and that it was more about the concept then the actual story and he found himself not caring about the characters. Good to know!
Today I left early for school so I could go a new and different route. I had a map with me to make sure that I didn't get lost and be late for class. It has become such an absolute joy exploring the city. I found the building where the circus is held which apparently has been there long enough to put a bunch of bronze clown statues on the street in front and in the park in front of it as well. I wanted to take pictures but didn't want to be late, so I vowed to return after my classes. I arrived about 20 minutes before class so I guess I did have time, oh well. Ballet was great, until Larissa came over and
pushed on me while I had my leg up on the ballet bar, and was trying to bend over and touch my toes (I was probably barely touching my thigh) and I thought she was going to break me. She just yelled, "STRETCH!!" She is too cute. After that we had lunch then an hour history class with Anatoly where he talked about how he first got interested in Stanislavski, it was very interesting. He told a story of a playwright that Stalin wanted to stay in Russia and this playwright wanted to work at the Moscow Art Theatre but had been told there were no positions, so Stalin called up the Moscow Art Theatre and asked to speak with the Executive Director, and was promptly disconnected. So he asked the operator to connect him again and he asked the person who answered where the executive director was, and he was informed that he had just died. Apparently the thought that Stalin was calling him was more than he could take. Yikes!!
After all the classes we had no show so I really went and explored. I went back to the clown theatre and then kept walking north to
where there was this huge park on the map. I found a lot of fun stuff, including this enormous building which is apparently the Theatre of the Sovietsky Army and beyond that was the Russian Army Museum. I found all these really great parks, which is one thing I am really loving about Moscow is that among all these super old buildings, how many parks and how much green there is. I think I was out walking and exploring the city for about 2 and half hours. I found a really incredible church, which is starting to sound redundant because the number of churches that are massive and amazing is kind of ridiculous. I had such a great time. I was standing at the end of the park at one point looking at my map and this couple came up to me and started asking me questions. Good thing one of the only things I can say in Russian is "I don't understand Russian, I'm American, do you understand English?" Well, they said they did understand a little English, which apparently consisted of the words, English, and Thank you, because those were the only English words I heard. They were
asking for directions so I let them look at my map and showed them where we were on the map, but that apparently didn't help them, so they said thank you and went on their way. I did get a bit turned around at one point but had a general idea of where I was but couldn't find any of the streets I was on anywhere on my map, but I kept plugging along until I came to a place I recognized, and I was back on track. All in all it was a great time exploring. I have to decide if tomorrow I will explore some more or try to see a show that isn't scheduled. I really want to go spend some time in Gorky park, which apparently is more of a straight up forest.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.071s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0417s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mu
non-member comment
I don't really recommend you to go to the Gorky Park, cause it's gonna be quite a disappointment. Gorky Park in my opinion is just a failed attempt to create a mid-level amusement park within the downtown limits. Instead I REALLY recommend you to visit VDNKh (ВДНХ) and spend there few hours simply exploring it (you can rent a bicycle there and put up a great trip). VDNKh gives a great image of the Soviet past and the Russian present, not to mention that it's an exhibition center of a size of Monaco. :D If you've got any other questions about Moscow just ask :P