Пытаюсь на этот раз чуть-чуть писать на русском. Прошу прошение за ошибки. [I'm trying this time to write a bit in Russian. I apologize for the errors]
Я только что вернулась домой после премеры "Шума за сценой". Вы, может быть, помните, что была репетиция той пьесы, которую я смотрела несколько раз. Ну, сегодня была вторая премера (не совсем понимаю почему, но обычно в России есть на менее 3 премеры одной пьесы--в Америке, по-моему только одной) и я бесплатно ее сморела как практикантка театра.
[I just got home after the premier of "Noises Off." You will, perhaps, remember, that it was rehearsals for this show that I watched a few times. Well, today was the second premier (I'm not sure why, but in Russia there are at least three premiers of one play--in America, I think it's just one) and I got to see it for free as an intern of the theater]
В зале я не знала куда сесть, потому что никто не дал мне биллет, мой руководитель только мне сказала "Войдите, войдите, там свободно". Решила куда сесть и через пару минут ко мне подошла милая тетка. С начало я думала, что я заняла ее место и она будет сердиться на меня, но она только хотела сесть рядом со мной. Она, наверно не ожидала встретиться с иностранцем в театре и поэтому говорила очень быстро. Я только поняла может быть одно слово из пяти, но улыбалась и наделась, чтобы она скоро закнилась. Вдруг, она задавала меня какой-то вопрос и когда я медлено ответила, сразу поняла, что я--иностранка.
[In the house, I didn't know where to sit because nobody had given be a ticket. My boss just said "Go in, go in, there are lots of seats." I decided on a seat and a couple of minutes later a woman approached me. At first I thought that I was in her seat and she was going to yell at me, but it turned out that she just wanted to sit next to me. She probably didn't expect to meet a foreigner at the theater and so spoke really quickly. I only understood maybe one word in five, but I smiled and hoped that she'd shut up soon. Suddenly, she asked me a question and when I slowly answered she understood right away that I was a foreigner.]
Ugh, it's too hard to continue this in Russian. For those of you who don't speak it, I'm sorry for starting a post like that, I just wanted to try after not writing Russian for a while. I'll translate it later if you care. For now, I'll just finish my story:
As soon as she realized I was foreign, the woman apologized for speaking so quickly and asked why I hadn't said anything. Like many of the questions she asked, this ended up being rhetorical, because just as I was about to respond, she continued with her monologue. Her name was Natasha (though I didn't find that out until seconds before the first act started), she grew up in St. Petersburg, her father fought in the war and is still alive at 87. Her daughter works as a French translator and just returned from Algeria where she had been working. She was home for a few days then left for the dacha with her sister (cousin?), where she's now been for a few weeks.
Natasha is a philologue and teaches Russian as a Foreign Language. She taught Moroccans at some point and said they always insisted on calling her "Таваришь мадам" (Comrade Madame--which sounds as odd or stranger in Russian as English). She learned English in school but dropped it like 50 years ago because she was "lazy". She also learned Spanish, Polish, German, French and Latin. She traveled to Cuba in the 1960s, I think, and told me that the reason all the Cubans liked Fidel is he made it so that everything was free for kids under 10--education, bread, milk--she gestured with her hands a bottle 1-1.5 litres big and said "with that much milk you could survive without eating anything else."
She told me a lot of other stuff that I don't fully remember (and would make this post way too long) but I'll wrap up this section of the post by saying we talked for a total of about 30-45 minutes and I think I said maybe 10 sentences at the most. It was really educational and interesting to hear her life story, but it was a very one-sided conversation as seems to often happen with Russians. Is it that they're impatient with how long it takes me to be coherent or is it just a Russian trait to monopolize a conversation and tell someone your life story? Seriously, this happens pretty often despite the stereotype of Russians being скритие.
Anyway, the play was really good, which I knew it would be from the few rehearsals and the performance in English I saw in high school. Not being fluent in Russian, though, the second act was my favorite because it was almost entirely mime (and slapstick mime, at that--three stooges-esque). The costumes and acting were amazing, and the lights and set were basic, but good. If you're in St. Petersburg, I highly recommend seeing it even if you don't speak Russian well. There's enough physical comedy in it that if you read a synopsis beforehand you'll still be able to follow the story, I think.
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Which brings me to the other show that I saw recently (the other half of the post title): A Midsummer Night's Dream, the opera by Benjamin Britten, which I saw at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre with my friend Nesli.
The libretto for the opera is an abridged version of the Shakespeare play, which I thought was really cool. As several films have shown us, iambic pentameter means that Shakespeare is easy to rap, and even sing sometimes, but to see it put into an opera is a whole other story. Nesli and I barely made it to the show, we sprint-hobbled (my knee was bothering me) from the bus stop about 6 or 7 blocks away and made it to the theater 5 minutes after the show was supposed to start, but luckily made it to our seats with a few minutes to spare, as they actually started about 10 minutes late.
As anyone who's seen an opera knows, you're rarely able to understand what the singers are saying because the syllables are so maipulated to make the music pretty. Thus, supertitles are often used so that the audience knows what's going on. Since this show was in English with Russian supertitles, I rarely knew what the characters were saying unless I happened to remember the scene from the play (it's one of my favorites by Shakespeare, so that happened more than you'd think). However, because of this I spent a lot more time marvelling at the set, lights, costumes and aerial acrobatics than I did paying attention to the content of the opera. As it's pretty impossible to describe, here are some photos I took to give you a flavor of what the show was like (click to enlarge):
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| Oberon and Titania fight |
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| Mortal Lovers enter the forest |
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| Oberon |
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| the Players (Bottom and co.) |
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| I'm not sure why Athenians wear lederhosen, but w/e |
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| Puck bespells Lysander |
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| Titania falls in love with Bottom (who is now an ass-head) |
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| The fairies come to attend Bottom |
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| Oberon observes Demetrius and Helena |
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| Puck gets Hermia to sleep |
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| Puck fixes his mistakes |
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| "Pyramus and Thisbe" at the Court |
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| The Children's Choir (as fairies) |
Tomorrow I'm going to Mazeppa, an opera by Tchaikovsky based on a poem by Pushkin loosely based on a true story from the reign of Peter the Great, which is in Russian with English supertitles so maybe I'll understand what's going on? I'm going to read up on wikipedia, just in case.
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