Week 2: Misha

I just completed week two here at the Stanislavski Summer School and I'm still really enjoying myself. That's usually a good sign. While the first week was an introduction of sorts into the type of work we are going to be doing here, for the second week we just dove right into it. The 34 students have been divided into three groups to work on scenes from the works of Anton Chekhov, and each group is headed by a professor from the Moscow Art Theatre School. As I mentioned in my last post I have been assigned to Mikhail Lobanov's group, and we will be performing scenes from three of Chekhov's short one-act comedies (the "Vaudevilles"as they are called): "The Proposal", "The Boor", and "The Anniversary".

First let's talk about Misha. Misha is one of the top acting teachers and directors in Russia and is an all around great guy. He's incredibly friendly and easy going. I love him. I have him for my Acting Exercises class as well where we work a lot on becoming like a child. We play various games and do different exercises that are supposed to loosen us up and help us work on communication and concentration. It's funny whenever he explains a new game we have so much trouble with it and he says (with a thick Russian accent), "I teach this game to little kids and they have no trouble with it, but you big actors can't do it. Why is this?" He's always teasing us for being big, fancy American actors with big heads. It's very true though. If we could all be more like children not only our acting, but our entire lives would be better.

So, for Scene Study Misha as assigned me the role of Ivan Vassilich Lomov in "The Proposal" by Anton Chekhov. It's a great little one-act comedy about a guy who is very nervous coming to propose to the girl he loves, then just as he's about to pop the question a little argument starts between him and the girl and it erupts into a terrific fight and then her father gets involved and other such things happen. It's quite funny. This upcoming week we should really get to work a lot on it and I'm excited.


Photo from our showcase performance at the end of the program.