100 days

it's 100 days, or rather, it is 99 days and 22 hours until the start of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony.  the biggest job of my life, the biggest event of my life, the biggest challenge of my life (so far...).  i'm really proud of myself for getting this far.  i've learned so much living and working here.  about everything.  and i've grown so much.  and i have ABSOLUTELY no idea what is in store for the next 99 days and 22 hours.  god help us all.  somehow we will make it.  the show must go on.  and it will be brilliant.  brilliantly unexpected, surprising, delightful, frustrating, disappointing, inspiring, and all of those things that live theatre is.  all the reasons we do it.  and all the reasons we swear we never will again.  :)  but yet here i am, back in the saddle, after having left theatre for film.  my friend and colleague brenton says i love it too much to permanently leave.  and it does frustrate the living bejeezus out of me.  and i do love it.  and i always say, let's see how i feel afterward. on a beach.  with a cocktail.  listening to the waves.  then i'll tell you if i'll do it again.

it's coming...

the most stunning cemetery i've ever seen

last weekend i checked off one of my "must see's"...a visit to the novodevichy monastery cemetery.  i'd been to the monastery before, on the tour with dad this past summer.  swan lake is there...or the pond that inspired swan lake.  it is also the pond that inspired the scene in Anna Karenina where Levin meets Kitty for the first time on the skating rink and falls in love.  anyway, what they don't really tell you, is that the MOST INCREDIBLE cemetery known to man is right next door.  and it took me, oh, about 7 months to figure it out!  and i'm so glad i did.  definitely among the top 5 or 10 things i've done in moscow.  this place is russia in a nutshell.  amazingly over-the-top, stunning beauty, outrageous ego and hubris, and immense stoicism, strength, and grace all rolled into one.  2 hours here is a lesson in all you need to know about russians.  they pride themselves on honor, glory, art, culture, military prowess and fame.  and they are NOT afraid to show it.  they are also loyal, stubborn, gritty, graceful, strong and among the most intelligent people i've ever met.  so here are some photos of the cemetery.  see what you think.  this is the cemetery where some of the most famous russians are buried...prokofiev, shostakovich, chekov, kruschev, yeltsin among others.  here you go...i hope you enjoy them...and i'll say, when i die, it would be an absolute honor to have such a tombstone.  there would be no mistaking i was here, that's for sure.

this is the grave of raise gorbachev.  the former soviet pres's 2nd wife

yeltsin

this is yuri nikulin.  famous actor.  with his dog (but i'm not sure the dog is actually buried with him...)

this is the grave of someone famous, or well-connected that was just buried last month.  the russians are incredible in their honoring of their past relatives.  the flowers are astounding.

chekov 

you can see the monastery in the background.  it was founded (er, well, if only cuz she was banished there) by peter the great's sister sophia.  it is a very beautiful monastery.

shostakovich.  amazingly strange and complex composer.  really crazy stuff.

i love the fall colors in this photo...despite the cold and clouds (it's kind of winter now) it was a beautiful day.

orlov!  an author, who is the favorite of my friend louise.  she sent me one of his books when she found out i was moving here.

a cosmonaut.  the russians do love their spacemen!

a sportsman...he won gold for pole vaulting, as you can see on his tombstone.

a scientist of some sort.  i LOVE that he has equations carved all over the tombstone!  i love the personalization of these graves.  they really tell you about the person and make their memory live on...which is kind of like giving them eternal life.  a pretty beautiful statement.

so this guy was an army general...he's got a war theme relief on one part of the sculpture, then it shows him sitting writing his war plans.  for some reason i found this a bit, well, ironic for a cemetery...showing a man drawing up war plans...plans that were meant to kill people...so even in death he planning death...

this is kruschev. the black and white were meant to show the good and bad sides of him.  

i call this the hall of generals.

again, another view of yeltsin.

so it was quite an eye-opening experience for me.  and definitely told me more about the russian way than even a visit to red square.  may have to go back if there is a sunny day, and wander around some more.  this first visit i was focused on finding all of the famous graves.  there is a map of about 250 marked graves, out of the thousands that are here.  so i circled those i wanted to find and set off on a little scavenger hunt of sorts.  it is pretty fun actually, cuz you run into people who ask "have you found chekov?"  and you say "no, but shostakovich is right over there!"  and they smile and dash off.  a communal game of sorts.  with a lot of russian history thrown in.

and here are some photos around town...give a good impression of moscow in the late autumn.

this is out my work window.

an amazing parking structure.  

out my kitchen window one night.

patriarch ponds...which play a central role in a book by bulgakov...master and margarita.  i haven't read it.  too intimidated.  but perhaps i will have to now that i've lived in moscow.

more of patriarch pon.

sculpture at patriarch pond park.

so as we quickly slide into winter, i am also quickly sliding into my last 5 weeks living in moscow! i will move down south at the end of november.  i will spend a month in krasnodar, a city near sochi where we will be doing the majority of our cast rehearsals.  then sometime around christmas i will move to sochi and then fun begins!!!  or so we hope...  wish us luck.  it has been extremely difficult just to get to this point....and i can't imagine what it will be like when we are onsite, and the pressure ratchets up that much more!  but the show must go on.  i only hope i can survive it.   

indian summer in moscow and a little bit about space exploration

they have indian summer here, but if you've been reading previous blog posts, you know it's called "baba leta" in russian: women summer.  this past weekend was it.  incredible sunshine, everyone was out and in good spirits.  such a fun weekend!  i took all of saturday off, and part of sunday.  i just had to get out there and enjoy the sunshine before it leaves us forever.  here is how i spent my time:

 this is the famous bolshoi theatre.  during the week last week, there was a big lights festival and several landmark buildings in moscow became projection surfaces, and incredibly detailed and stunning graphic short films were projected onto them.  the artists video "mapped" the whole building beforehand, so that they could project exactly onto each surface of the building, transforming it into a kaleidoscope of color and story.  it was amazing.  you can see details at www.lightfest.ru.  

i just love the skies here!

i went to the cosmonaut memorial and museum.  the russians are extremely proud of their space exploration history.  yuri gagarin, first man to orbit the earth, i think (EDIT: AND ALSO FIRST MAN IN SPACE!), is a legend.  like, beyond hero status.  they would probably make him saint if they could.  except that the soviets outlawed religion.  but he's as close as you could get to sainthood in the USSR.  the museum is fantastic - so many bits and pieces of space exploration history and culture.  i saw the capsules they flew in, food they ate, uniforms, old films of how astronauts used to train, how to clean and vacuum in space.  most of the museum explanations are in russian, so i'm sure there was some actual scientific and historical facts in there, too, but my russian doesn't go much beyond understanding basic household duties.  plus, who knew they could give haircuts in space without the hair floating all over the place!  way more interesting than the G-force during liftoff.

the posing.  it really is unbelievable how much russians love to pose!  this woman is sitting on venus i believe.

this is earth.

this is the memorial.  it is a gorgeous and elegant sculpture.

this is strelka, i think.  one of the first dogs in space.  she and her doggy cosmonaut, belka, were two of the first dogs in space to return to earth alive and were celebrities for it.  and yes, they are now stuffed and in this museum.  the first dog in space, Laika, wasn't so lucky.  it's  tragic tale, you can google her if you want.

that's belka.

these are two sisters posing by belka and strelka.  then we all got strictly warned that there is to be no photography in the museum.  unless you buy and extra photography ticket, of course.

this and the picture below are examples of the kinds of shops you find everywhere in the tunnels under the streets, or leading to metro stations.  they are very soviet and sell everything from pastries to socks to ladies underwear to toys to pipes to jewelry.  and people actually buy things from them!

this is the inside of the bolshoi.  my colleague anne and i went to see the bolshoi company perform the ballet Onegin.  it was stunning.  and we had 10th row seats!  (a friend's dad is the general director, ahem.  but he is very tight-lipped about the recent scandals there...it's a theatre company...there will always be drama!!  they just take it to the extreme in russia...not sure any Broadway or Lincoln Center performer would throw acid on a director's face out of revenge...it's a rough town here!)

the grand box seat.

orchestra pit

chandelier...

hanging above the floor, and 6 rows of balconies!!  we were 10th row on the floor, but did some exploring during one of the intermissions.

the bolshoi at night.  this is the historic stage.  they have a larger "new stage" but it isn't nearly as romantic.

the view from our kitchen of the leaves turning in front of the russian white house.

collecting leaves!!  this is in the park where my roommate campbell and i escaped for an hour or so on Sunday.  such a beautiful day!

again with the posing!

(i love moscow).

if i can't see the aspens going off in park city, i'll take the yellow oaks in moscow.  it was a glorious weekend!