ex-leningrad

the latest gazette sent to the A.R.T. community:


THE COCK'S GAZETTE 5-4-06

A huge hello from sunny, sweltering Moscow!

The class of 2007 is well into their third and final month of Russian living and it's hard to believe it's gone by so fast.

Yesterday the night train from St. Petersburg arrived in Moscow during morning rush hour, and we all emerged dazed, sweaty, sore, and smiling. Petersburg, we all agree, is a truly amazing place. We had incredible weather, and spent our days wandering the city, sightseeing, taking tours on water taxis and on foot, eating, drinking, meeting people, and slack-jawedly shuffling through the enormous, labyrinthine Hermitage museum.

There is nothing like the Hermitage, certainly nothing I've ever seen. It's like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, only for art- room after room, filled with Picasso, Rembrandt, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Kandinsky, Monet- and then there's the rooms themselves, most of them stunning works of art in their own right: every step on intricately designed inlaid wooden patterns, every square ceiling and wall panel turned into a painted portrait, landscape, design, or else tiled mosaic, or sculpted, or gilded and sprouting columns and chandeliers on steroids. Each room bigger, longer, taller than the last. And still too much art. There's art in stairwells, in the lobby, by the coat check, in the cafe. If you spent one minute looking at every work of art, you'd be in the Hermitage for over 11 years.

The hostel was crowded but totally serviceable- we were hardly ever there. We also saw the huge St. Isaac's cathedral, the absolutely shocking Church on Spilled Blood (looks like it's made of candy), Figaro at the Mariinsky theatre, and the rocky 'beaches' around the fortress where an incredible assortment of people, who are, let's just say, well into the twilight of their lives, barely dressed, bikinis and thongs just dropping off of them, sunbathing against the wall or the hot rocks, as huge chunks of ice floated by on the river.

We're back, enjoying classes, but reluctantly showing up for them since the weather is so amazing, and it's do or die time for War and Peace. The show is going to be truly unique- not just scenes, but stylized pieces of a novel- complete with author's text and non-realistic staging.

We have more Zoyas, at least four, with a potential for a fifth nutty final blowout performance in an alternate space. The suffering of the day is due to two of our performances being switched at the last minute to different days, in one easy motion preventing Caroline's and Jackie's families, who made the many thousand mile trip, from seeing their daughters perform. It really sucks for them, but there's nothing to be done; we are enjoying popularity here and our shows are sold out. To MXAT Katia and Tolya's credit, we worked for several hours trying to figure out solutions- there just are none.

We move about Moscow now like old hands- taking the metro without blinking an eye, being adventurous, and even Tim can formulate a real sentence in Russian now! Hehe. He gets the extrovert award- he can make friends with someone in the time that it takes him to buy a bottle of water from them.

Life is good: we're learning a lot and in great spirits. We don't deny, however, a yearning for summer. We'll be back before we know it.

All our best from Russia,
Neil