First Impressions of Russian Theatre

In my last post, I realized I completely neglected to talk about the first play we saw at MHAT. It was based off a short story by Gogol about a husband and wife who live together and are both farmers, and their whole lives are devoted to each other. The wife loses her cat, and for whatever reason that brings her to the realization that she is going to die, and she tells her husband. Eventually she does die, and the husband tries to go on with another wife, but he is never happy. The play ends with the husband eventually dying, and that's the most basic outline I can give. There are servants there too, who in this production were representative of servants and anything else they needed to be (like animals), since there was basically no set just a few boxes and chests.

The play differed from American theatre in two main ways. The first were the movements. Keeping in mind that I speak ZERO Russian (I understood "dog" and "cat" through the whole show) the play was still one of the most compelling shows I've ever seen. The movements were so specific that you knew everything that I feel Americans would try to express with words. Also, there were so many more moments in the show that went without words. If I really could go back and time it, I would bet that more time on stage was spent without words than with. The flip-side of that coin could be that because I didn't understand the words, I was paying more attention to the movements, but I really doubt it. Through the acting classes I've taken so far, I've learned that the students here practically spend the entire first semester doing almost nothing but etudes, and it is really the core of the training that's done here. It is very interesting to see how much can really be expressed without words.

Another difference I noticed was the tempo-rhythm of the show. As someone who came from a musical background, I found this very interesting. There were the two leads and than a chorus of servants, who would represent both humans and animals if necessary. At one point, they were ducks, and even the duck calls that they made were done with a very specific rhythm. If it had been done in the States, a director would probably just say "make duck sounds" or "be ducks". These actors had a specific noise that they made at a specific time. Another example, there was a point where the servants were washing the floor, and they had wet soapy rags that they would throw against the floor (SMACK) and then they'd wash the floor. There was a specific rhythm though, they would throw the rags against the floor in the same intervals EVERY time. I don't know whether this is just for this specific performance or not, (which, if you haven't guessed by now was very avant-garde) but we have done many exercises in class that deal very much with tempo-rhythm.

Finally, the use of the stage. As I said, they had rags with soapy water, just throwing water around the stage. At one point, the servants were just breaking plates on the back wall of the stage. They were just throwing them over and over, they must have broken at least 10 plates, if not more. What props manager in the States would wanna replace that many plates? I did find out that the plays they do are in repertory though, so it's likely that the theatre won't see that same play again for another year, and they've been doing it for at least 5 years already. (Which is also a huge difference between theatre here and the States)

However, as wonderfully moving and beautiful this play was in all these intricate aspects, I had to once again ask myself: would the average non-actor/artist have liked it in America? Or even in Russia? It was interesting to hear that Russia is having the same problem attracting people to the theatre that America is, especially since it was my impression that everyone went to the theatre in Russia. I don't want to make any sweeping statements until I've seen a little more, but I do want to take some time in this blog to discuss what theatre is nowadays to people who are not artists, since I feel theatre has done nothing in years to address this audience.

Did anyone know how modern a city Moscow is? The giant state is of Peter the Great, and it was built in 1997. The golden-domed building ( The Cathedral of Jesus Christ the Savior) was built in 1991, and before it was built it used to be a swimming pool. In fact most of the dates I've seen in this city haven't had anything before the 1800s, although I learned today that the 1800s were when Russia had it's Renaissance, and that when we go to St. Petersburg I will see a lot of older buildings. I've posted a ton of pictures on Facebook, and I'm going to try to put them on Flickr, but it takes more time than I want to donate at this time. More will follow.

-Eric








PS: Here's St. Basil's Cathedral