Every day this city is feeling more like home. I’ve been using Russian more often in the streets and with my professors. The goal for this weekend is to try to carry out as many transactions as possible in Russian. It’s a little tricky because a surprising number of clerks and waiters know a little bit of English so they try to speak it when they hear an accent or a mispronounced word. I’m going to try to carry on a conversation with the friendly lady who sells us cheese pies down the street. I’ve also made friends with a girl from the academy named Sonia that I’ve been hanging out with and she is helping me practice outside of the classroom. Tomorrow she’s teaching me how to make vegetarian borscht. It really is great meeting all these new people here!
My acting class is getting a bit more interesting, as if it wasn’t interesting enough! It’s quite a workout now that we’re doing the whole Biomechanics of Meyerhold, and I always come back from my classes covered in sweat. This class is providing me with some really intense character breakthroughs and moments of connection. Our teacher Elena said something interesting that I kind of took to heart about needing to find the balance between relaxation and tension. It certainly seems to be the case with these exercises, because we’re doing a lot to shape get in touch with the physical apparatus of our bodies, and then we’re also trying to free our minds to get in touch with our characters from “The Seagull.” This all sounds like I’m waxing philosophical, I know, but it is really working and I’ll definitely be using these techniques back in the States.
We’ve also been working on some Michael Chekhov’s techniques and using them to create archetypal gestures for emotions and actions. This is a bit tricky to get the hang of, but Elena is a good teacher and it’s really giving us a lot to work on our characters with. We find a whole body gesture and use it to work on our scenes and lines. I’m definitely a fan of this and can’t wait to see how this works out. We got a chance to work in a park on these, and we must have seemed silly to all the Russian passersby, but it was a beautiful setting, and it was a nice way to take in the city.
Dance class has been going great too. We got a chance to do some Russian folk dances, and some Spanish dance as well. I think this is great because I’m getting the hang of dances that I previously thought would be impossible to master, and I’m having a great time doing it. Sonia is a dance teacher as well, and she promised some dance lessons in exchange for English practice, so I’ll even be able to work on these after we’re through with Yuri’s dance lessons. We’ve also made friends with some Spanish students from the Academy, and we do a lot of singing and dancing in parks around the city with those guys. We learned a Russian pirate song, and sang birthday songs to one of the students. This has been an exciting week, and definitely one of the best of my life.