September 21 - Day 4

Anatoly Smeliansky is the Artistic Director of the Moscow Art Theatre and the head of the School. He is also our Russia Theatre history professor and as I learned today is brilliant. It is quite a different experience to hear the history of a country and an art form through someone who lived it rather than from someone, who like you, has only studied it in books. He spent today’s lecture discussing the history of MXAT, through Lenin and Stalin and Gorbachev, all who rocked it through their influence of power. This theatre, he said, has been a mirror of the country and ultimately the changes that have place at MXAT seem to subsequently occur in the country. As Anatoly spoke it was not as a teacher but as a kind of parental figure bestowing his wisdom on another group of children too ignorant to understand the vast world outside their own sphere. And we all drank it in. You could hear a pin drop and from time to time I could see Alex looking at me, with that ‘See, I told you he was brilliant’ grin. The schedule here is grueling and we are only on day one. We go from class to class with five minute breaks in between from nine am till after six. The work is intense and far more strict and formal than even my classes at Northern but they are so much fun. I had my first acting class today with our two professors and one translator. Neither of the instructors, who’s names I can’t quite pronounce or spell yet, speak any English but they are hilarious. We did a few activities I have done before and then a strange series of exercises meant to teach us to think and act as one organism. The low point involved us needing to sing a song that we all knew. Sadly the only one we all had in common was “Oops, I Did It Again” by Brittany Spears. The instructors we horrified. We are definitely not the greatest generation.