The Power of Low to No: Classes

In the hustle and bustle of preparing to spend three months in a foreign country, somehow I forgot a little bit about the fact that I’m a student. Well, I didn’t really forget, but in the slew of advice from prior years I barely heard anything about the classes the dramaturgs take in Moscow. Which is why I had no expectations going into my coursework here, leading to many pleasant surprises…mainly that they’re great!

In general, both my schedule and the amount of work for the classes here are like pebbles compared to the boulders of my Cambridge courses. Each class meets once a week, and only two of them have work. Now, this is partly because seeing theatre 5-7 nights a week is considered part of our curriculum, and we should finish six articles by the time we finish our time here on theatre, productions, or cultural life in Moscow. These are published in MXAT’s online e-journal, which I think Tolya is hoping to compile into a printed book version someday.

So for those of you who were wondering, here’s my schedule:

Monday

Russian Art and Architecture History, 12-1:30 p.m.: We breezed through the centuries and are about to begin the 19th and 20th, but I love this class so far. It’s so cool to have seen so many of the paintings we see in slides at the Old Tretyakov Gallery, and learning more about which churches in Moscow I want to visit. I always regretted not taking an art history class in college, so this is making me feel a little better.

Theatre History, 2-3:20 p.m.: This is the only class that our entire group (4 dramaturgs, 18 actors, 1 voice student) has together with Tolya. Half of the classes the actors present on various theatre practitioners, and the other half Tolya talks. The stories he tells are so fascinating, and they hold a special power since so much took place at the very theatre where we’re studying.

Tuesday

Opera and Ballet History at the Stanislavsky Music Theatre, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: The four of us got to have a private backstage tour of this theatre a short ways from MXAT, which is an opera and ballet theatre. We’ve seen two productions there so far too, since our professor works there as a sort of foreign correspondent. Not my favorite class since I knew most of the ballet history stuff, but it was interesting to learn more about how opera developed.

Wednesday

Key Concepts of Russian Culture Through Literature and Other Arts, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: This class and our Friday class with Igor, the same professor, kind of meld together in my mind. It’s been so great to have a literature course again, and I especially enjoyed our discussion on Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. We’ve also read a bunch of Pushkin, Gogol, parts of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and poets Marina Tsvetaeva, Blok, and Khlebnikov.

Thursday

Russian Film History, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.: A long but great class. We just moved out of silent film, which was actually really great, and watched a wonderful film I recommend for everyone, The Cranes Are Flying. It was made in the 1950s post-Stalin, and is about WWII. Beautifully filmed. One of the things I’m enjoying about this class is not just the history I get, but also the knowledge of how to analyze films and how they’re made. This is the only other class besides Igor’s reading that has significant work, and it’s just a one-page response each week to the film we saw.

Voice, 3:30-5 p.m.: The four of us have this class with Jane, the second year voice student. Since we also live together on the 5th floor and are friends with her it’s really great. We’ve learned the basics of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), and done some head and body resonance exercises. In the coming weeks we’ll each take turns giving a mini-presentation and Jane will help us figure out what we need to work on to improve our presentational skills.

Friday

Tales of Two Cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg in Modern Russian Literature, 12:30-2 p.m.: Other class with Igor, see Wednesday’s description. Igor is also the director of the Prokofiev House Museum and wrote a biography on him.

Dramaturgy Seminar, 2:15-3:15 p.m.: The four of us get to meet with Tolya in his beautiful office. We talk about what we’ve seen, what we’re going to see, what we are writing about, are interested in, and Russian theatre trends. It’s fantastic.

Saturday

Set Design History, 3:30-5 p.m.: This is really more like Meyerhold class with some design thrown in. It’s pretty cool because we meet in Meyerhold’s memorial apartment. This is pretty great, to be learning about this legend where he used to live. But it’s also a little chilling when you stop to think about how after he was arrested (and later tortured and killed), his wife was killed by KGB police who snuck into the apartment through the balcony and stabbed her repeatedly. Our professor is like a walking biography on Meyerhold, and on classes when we don’t talk about him and his productions, we’ve visited some interesting exhibits (for free because we’re with her!). The first was the theatre museum, which had loads of paintings, photos, and other material related to theatrical productions, but was in desperate need of a curator. I’ve never seen so much fascinating material organized so poorly. Yesterday we went to a costume exhibit that just opened up in the building next to Ostrovsky’s memorial house (he’s like the Russian Shakespeare). They were almost all renderings from the past two decades, and were really gorgeous.

So there you have it: my academic life in Moscow. After studying just theatre so intensively since July, it’s been refreshing to get a dose of the liberal arts in another culture.