Get cultured this weekend!

Don't let schoolwork, boredom, or the many fascinations of the Twitterverse and the Facebook Nation prevent you from experiencing the multitude of theatre playing in Baltimore right now.

No money? No problem! Most professional theatre companies have a student rush program, which provides discounts to students an hour before the show on any tickets that didn't sell.

For all you locals, head on over to the Baltimore Theatre Alliance website to see what's playing and when, and go do something different with your Friday and Saturday night. And don't worry, most shows will be over around 10:30, which will leave you plenty of time to get your weekend party on.

--DQ

Chatting with John Freedman

John Freedman, an American-born translator who lives and works in Russia, spoke to my Russian Theatre and Politics class today about his experiences both in Russia and with translating some of the plays we're studying.

With regards to choosing the title for the play Frozen in Time, a modern day Russian Romeo and Juliet, Freedman noted that the original Russian title, Exhibits, didn't exactly do the piece justice.

"It's interesting, the power of choices," he said. "'Exhibits' doesn't really give you a feeling. It doesn't give you anything. A title should point you in a certain direction, make a suggestion. I thought 'Frozen in Time' sounded much more influential. It implies not moving on, losing something that is part of human experience."

After seeing one of the first performances of Frozen in Time in Moscow, Freedman left disappointed and confused.

"For me, it lost a lot of course," he said. "You didn't get the way little things kind of build up and lead to the explosion. It's a difficult play to do. If I were directing it, I'd come back to this: you cannot create characters of these people. The ambiguity is very strong. You're encouraged to take sides and make judgments. If you have done that, you've started losing touch with the play. Everybody's life has its right to be expressed fully. The difficulties and conflicts we experience are legitimate. I love that ambiguity; it makes me accept everyone and everything."

Freedman also clued the class in about certain aspects of Russian culture. Infidelity, he said, while frowned upon, is not such a moral problem as it is in the United States. Gender roles that used to exist in the United States are still prevalent there, where in the most general terms, the females typically are the nurturers and the males are the protectors.

"There's a certain understanding of life that Russians have," Freedman said. "There's a sense that life itself is sacred, not the morals attached to it."

Freedman's endeavors in the emerging Russian theatre world will be transformed from page to stage this fall in the premier of the TU Theatre Department's "Russian Season," featuring several of the plays he's translated over the span of his impressive career.

For more on Freedman's experiences and life in Russia, journalism and theatre, head here.

I remain your Drama Queen.

Take off that gloomy mask of tragedy, it's not your style

My Russian Theatre and Politics class went downtown last night to the Hyatt hotel near the World Trade Center, where the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, spoke briefly about Russian-American relations. It didn't remotely have to do with theatre, but it gave us some perspective into foreign policy, and how current economic and political conditions in Russia can affect the types of artwork produced there and consequently those we may see here in the near future.

I won't bore you with gritty details, but essentially he indicated that Russia is a young nation that is still learning how to embrace its independence and govern itself. He himself does not agree with certain ways the United States has handled certain instances in the past, or with the ways in which the American media has portrayed Russian political action, namely recent conflicts with Georgia, which struck a particular chord in me as a Mass Communication major. But he does acknowledge that Russia has also had considerable failures. He also says relations are improving and he is optimistic that we will come to terms on several issues such as gas prices and our relations within NATO.

(Update: Today (March 5th), NATO resumes ties with Russia! Thanks, Twitter!)

Overall I'd say he's quite optimistic about the future of Russian-American relations, and when it comes down to it, even the fact that we were permitted to have this class to examine new Russian drama (which is still not universally accepted in Russia) and function as intellectuals in this fascinating new element of their culture is still mind-blowing to me. Hopefully these improving relations will allow for improved support of the evolving arts in Russia so that we may enjoy them here.

Here's the class with the Ambassador, courtesy of Dr. Robyn Quick.


And here's Dr. McCartney approaching him, also courtesy of Robyn.


As always, I am your Drama Queen.

There may be something there that wasn't there before

The Fall 2009 Season for the TU Theatre Department has just been announced. Every semester, we typically put on two large Mainstage shows, and then undergraduate students in the department direct their own shows and graduate students stage their works, usually self-written. So ideally there are four or five shows running per semester.

The fall season is introducing a foreign influence. I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but my last entry mentioned England's excellence in the art and the Russian project I'm involved in. Well, fancy that. William Shakespeare's classic love story, Romeo and Juliet, will be staged here in the fall. Usually the department does put on historical plays of some sort, like last fall's The Crucible (set in Puritan Salem) and The Piano Lesson (set in 1930s Pittsburgh). Performing Shakespeare is something Towson hasn't embraced in several years and it will take this department one step further into our historical endeavors as we bring Elizabethan Italy to the stage.

The second Mainstage show will be the Russian play Tanya, Tanya, translated by American translator John Freedman (seen on the left) and directed by Russian guest director Yury Urnov, both of whom have been actively involved in TU theatre for some time now. The show is still being adapted for performance, but the department is excited to debut this work on Towson's stage.

Another new Russian play called The Polar Truth will be staged in the structure of a performance workshop by one of the department's graduate students.

These relations with Russian theatre artists has had remarkable impact in the past few weeks and it's already spread like wildfire into the department, and hopefully it will continue to delve further into crossing cultural boundaries in the future.

--DQ

But I know the answers lie far from this world

When American theatre goes international, things can get quite exciting. It's no secret that other countries like England, home of the Bard himself, are truly cultured in the art. Thus, I am quite excited to share this news with you.

The theatre department here at Towson University has been involved with Russian directors and translators for a few years now, and these relations have been steadily improving. With that came the idea for a new interdisciplinary project in the structure of a class. It's called Russian Theatre and Politics, and I am currently enrolled.

Russia has had considerable political turmoil until only recently, and so they are entering a new era of freedom in the theatre. With that in mind, the premise of the class is that students from both the theatre department and the political science department (as well as a few international studies majors) have the chance to take this class together, each to learn about the discipline they know least about. It's taught by two instructors, Dr. Robyn Quick from the theatre department and Dr. Alison McCartney from the political science department. The coursework involves reading Russian plays and examining them in their contexts as part of Russian political culture. It's both a history lesson and a look into an art that is emerging as an important cultural aspect in the largest country in the world.

This also means that, as students in this experiment, we are going to be the first Americans to read new and still-in-the-works translations of some of these plays. How exciting it is that we are part of Russian theatrical history!

Because of the groundbreaking work we're doing in the class, we have been invited to attend a Russian Ambassador's speech next week at the World Trade Center in downtown Baltimore. I'll be sure to report back here after it's over. I hope to make this experiment part of a series of posts here.

Fine arts have such power to open doors and to cross cultures, and that's true now more than ever before.

I remain your Drama Queen.

Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it, and the reaction will be passionate.

The concept of theatre as a cultural icon is not lost on most people. It's obviously a large part of the American art industry, as it is in other countries across the globe. But why has it become ingrained in these cultures as such a significant aspect of how we live? I suppose the bigger question is, why do we care about it so much?

Andy Field, a British blogger and theatre nerd like myself, argues that theatre is not only meaningful because of what it does, but also because of the ways it influences us.

"In less than a fortnight, I have seen...shows that, taken together, were a brilliant exploration of how we watch theatre and why we watch it," he writes. "I've seen a stage littered with unsettling, almost unwatchable little scenes of contorted figures twitching while a beautiful, haunting voice sings out from among them. I've watched six people stand agonizingly still for over an hour and, with words alone, skip through a parade of places and scenarios and thoughts."

As a performing art, theatre is meant to be experienced by the individual, and therefore we will all, with our own life experiences and ideas about the world, indubitably take something different from it. Despite this, there are shows that create their own messages. Some shows like the 15th-century English play Everyman depict stock characters meant to represent specific stereotypes in society (such as Knowledge and Beauty), which usually causes audiences to reflect on those elements of human nature. The pro-Soviet Russia play An Optimistic Tragedy was written during the Russian Civil War in a time of heavy governement theatre censorship, but was allowed to be performed because of its positive representation of Soviet ideals. As the heroine dies in the last scene, her last words mirror the play's message: the Communists will prevail.

Theatre is much like the mainstream media: it presents predetermined information with some element of bias, and what we take from it is what we get. We can't see into the playwright's mind, just like we can't see into the minds of media moguls who determine which information is divulged to the public. It may offend, it may make us want to change the world, it may break our hearts and evoke unhappy memories of fear and struggle. The sheer diversity of it and the potential it has to evoke emotion renders it a cultural aspect that cannot be ignored.

--DQ

It's a struggle, it's a war, and there's nothing that anyone's giving.

Going to the theatre has often been viewed as a high-society aspect of the American culture, much like going to an opera or orchestra concert. As more and more young people have become involved in the industry and with the influx of new companies being formed across the nation, the notion that theatre is only for uppity folks has diminished.

Unfortunately, the upper-class values of attending a show have gone with it. While theatre now is flourishing with new works and greater diversity than it's ever had, theatre-goers are not so keen on what is and isn't appropriate when one is a member of an audience.

I ushered Towson University's productions of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson last fall, and part of the requirements of an usher are to help seat audience members and to sit in during the performance to make sure nothing in the audience will distract the actors.

What I saw was appalling.

Despite the announcements before the performance began urging everyone to please silence all cell phones and refrain from sending text messages during the show, I saw numerous faces lit up by tiny screens and had to repeatedly ask the perpetrators to put their phones away. By the end of the shows' runs (having seen each four or five times, and consequently witnessed much audience misbehavior) I was frustrated and insulted as someone who takes this art very seriously.

So, for anyone who doesn't often attend the theatre, here is a simple guide to theatre etiquette.

1. Turn off your cell phone, and don't check it or text message during the show when the lights are off. Even though you may be covering the screen with your hand and you think no one can see it, the house (where the audience sits) is very dark during a performance and the actors are under bright lights, so they can see the light reflecting off your face. Texting also becomes loud when the theatre is silent. The actors rely on what other actors are saying during the performance, and the sound of the keys is very distracting and can cause them not to hear a line correctly.

2. Do not bring an infant to the theatre. If you absolutely must bring your child, make sure you sit near the door. One night we had an incident where a woman's baby would not stop crying, and she didn't seem very concerned about the audience (or the actors) around her. Shows often run around two hours long, and that's quite a lot of time for a child to sit still. If you can't find a babysitter, sit near an exit so that if your child becomes fussy, you can leave quietly without distracting the actors or the audience, all of whom are trying to pay attention to the show.

3. Do not consume alcoholic beverages or illegal substances before the show. In another instance, three guys walked past me as I tore their tickets and they absolutely REEKED of alcohol. The show will be over by 10, and that's definitely not too late to start having your fun. Show respect for everyone involved in the production by attending sober.

4. Do not open candy with loud wrappers during the performance. This one speaks for itself.

5. Be attentive. You may be at the show because your Acting 101 teacher required you to see it for your class and write a reaction paper. Hooray. Watching a boring play from the 1930s is the LAST thing you feel like doing tonight. Here's a hint: you can sacrifice two hours of your life to sit through a performance, and you owe it to the people on stage who do this as their job or simply for the love of the art.

I could go on and on about what NOT to do in the theatre, but please keep these in mind the next time you attend a show, whether it's at Towson or downtown or anywhere else.

A little theatre etiquette goes a long way.

--DQ