2.3 "Thank you my American friends."

The Big Neil Newsletter, Series 2, Volume 3

Today's headlines:

1. Graduate School is Like, Hard and Stuff

2. Big Neil's Newest Prized Possession is Little Plastic ID Card that Says He Goes to Harvard

3. Big Neil Misses You

1. Graduate School is Like, Hard and Stuff

Last I wrote, I was quaking in anticipation of my first day of school. I was scared for good reason. Graduate school is like, hard and stuff.

Six days a week we kick off the day with a rockin' three and a half hour acting class. Our teacher Romon is exceptional, but it's truly thanks to our interpreter Tatiana that we learn anything at all. Romon teaches in Russian, and the only English phrases he mutters are "OK" (maybe that one's international?) and at the end of every class, "Thank you my American friends." It's a nice goodbye, but there's something oddly chilling about it. Romon's teachers' teachers' were students of Stanislavksi himself, so naturally I am swallowing up every pearl of wisdom just as quickly as it can get from Romon's brain to Tatiana's mouth to my ear.

We're hard at work at learning Russian, which is apparently going to be no small feat. Truly, it wouldn't be that challenging if it weren't for that whole pesky 'grammar' thing. The alphabet was what initially scared me, but it's turned out to be fun and relatively easy to learn with time- although to read I still have to 'decode' each letter and sound the word out bit by bit. It really is weird how the Russian alphabet shares letters with our alphabet, but most of them have different sounds. 'H,' for example, sounds like 'N,' and the backwards 'N' in their alphabet sounds like 'EE.' There is also a letter in Russian that looks like a lowercase 'B,' but sounds something along the lines of "ewwulh." Our attempts to master that baffling pronunciation sounds like a classroom of people about to vomit, and sends our teacher (also, coincidentally named Tatiana) into peals of red-faced laughter.

Voice class is the most foreign to me, since I've never been trained in voice before. We begin with breathing, something I apparently mistakenly thought I already knew how to do. The subject matter defies vocabulary, so in order to grasp the concept, we spend hours lying on the floor with our eyes closed, trying to imagine our feet swelling with every breath and concave membranous kites undulating in our pelvic region. I'm as confused as you are.

Theatre History so far has been Russian history, which is just fine with me- I find it all interesting.

But the true butt-kicker has been Movement. We knew our teacher, Andrei Dreznin, was somewhat of a legend in Russia, and the creator of a whole system of movement, so we expected a ripplingly-muscled handlebar-mustached man to come bounding into the room on the first day of class. Instead we were greeted by a soft-spoken RAIL-thin older gentleman in a three-piece wool suit (in July, I might point out). I think I would have preferred the strongman. With his thick accent and calm demeanor he talks us into a series of contortions, stretches, and acrobatics that turn me into an immobile puddle of sweat sprawled out on the floor at the end of every class. Truly, it's harrowing how much pain you can put yourself through in the name of fitness and grace.

A monster of a schedule, in my opinion, but the teachers are all quick to point out that this is the summer term, which is by far the 'lightest and easiest' of our tenure here. Oh boy.

2. Big Neil's Newest Prized Possession is Little Plastic ID Card that Says He Goes to Harvard

Truly, it's fantastic. My face on a Harvard ID just feels like pure comedy. It's getting framed when I'm done with it.

Harvard itself has been a great place to get to know, and so far the people have all been friendly and fantastic. We'll see if that changes in the fall when all the snotty freshmen show up.

3. Big Neil Misses You

Truly I do. I'm making friends fast, but at the end of the day, I still feel pretty alone up here. Your friendly notes have done a lot for my spirits!

Thanks so much for your love and interest!

Yours,

Neil