It's been a summer of Stanislavski, Chekhov (both of them), Bulgakov, Gogol, Gorky, Ostrovsky, Meyerhold, Turgenev, Smeliansky, and Brecht. It's been a summer of FedEx, NY Performing Arts Library, Drama Book Shop, Uniqlo, Capezio, Staples, and Amazon.com. It's been a summer of student Visa applications, body conditioning (do yoga and Pilates count?), attempts at learning Cyrillic, and listening to everyone tell me to be careful because, in case I hadn't heard already, things aren't going so well in Russia.
Today marks seven days before the "O'Neill Group"(as our American program is called) flies across the big pond, over to the big country. We will be spending three months training at the Moscow Arts Theatre (MXAT), the place where modern acting essentially originated. I'd say I'm about as ready as I'll ever be.
Questions about Moscow zip around my mind like an electrical storm: Will I actually love it there, or will I be the one person I know who has a bad experience? Will I like and learn from the other students in the O'Neill Group? What are the people like there? What's the food like? Of all the books on the summer reading list, will the one that I didn't have time to read be the one that I'll be screwed for not knowing? Can I get on the Russian professors' good sides? Are the current Syrian crisis and Putin's "war on gays" actually going to put me in danger, or is it all being overblown by the media? Will we be doing more Stanislavski, or Michael Chekhov? Seriously, though, what's the food like? Did I pack enough warm clothes? Am I going to be the worst one in ballet class? Am I going to wake up on the Moscow Metro in the middle of the night, miles outside the city? Am I going to have a nervous breakdown?
Is this really going to be the life-changing experience that I'm hoping it will be?
Yaron
No comments:
Post a Comment