Recent Events: An epic trilogy (By Amalia Markovna)

Part One: The Kapusnik.

Kapusnik, which roughly translates to "cabbage party" and was nicknamed "cabbage patch" by the Americans, is an annual MXAT tradition started by Stanislavski and Nemerovich-Danchenka (Nemerovich-Danchenka, the counterpart to Stanislavski, is completely overlooked by the west for reasons which I believe involve party affiliations) as a parody show. It's been singled out as one of the beginnings of American cabaret, because the host, who was a wholly untalented dramatic actor but charming and unparalleled improvisor/impersonator, eventually fled to America and became a well-known night club personality. 

The roast was originally held during lent. It poked fun at the establishment's running productions, as well as famous directors, actors and even politicians until that became really dangerous. Since it was illegal to sell tickets during the lenten fast, Kapusnik started out as an invite-only troupe party. In just a few years, it was the hottest ticket in town. Don't ask me how it somehow became okay to sell tickets. Maybe it was always just an invitation thing. I don't know. Point is, we got to take part in it, which was an awesome experience for us but probably annoying for the Russian students who had to share their cool history with a bunch of ungrateful foreigners. Our bit was cheesy, and ended with a cover of R-E-S-P-E-C-T that included the phrase, "'Ya hachoo' to be like you!!" which translates to, "I want to be like you" and was embarrassing for even the most unpatriotic of us. 

My friend Cara, who is a really clever parody songwriter, started making up a song called, "Dasvidanya, Anya," which translates to, "Goodbye, Anna." In English, the song would have consisted of the lyrics, "Goodbye, Anna. Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, thank you, you're welcome, thank you, you're welcome," and then a freestyle section which included, "Where's Anna? Where's the toilet? I'm allergic to fish. May I? Scarf. Traditional Russian slipper. Good morning." I played guitar and sang with her, and it was a lot of fun for us, but our bit was the only self-generated bit in the American section. One of the resident American students very strictly wrote out the whole thing because apparently we Staters tend to tank offensively when left to our own devices for cabbage patch. The point of Kapusnik is to poke fun at yourself, and we did that until the last section, which was about the shows we've seen here. No one laughed or made any sound, and they started the music for R-E-S-P-E-C-T really early, as if to cut us off. Yikes. Maybe we're just destined to tank. 

The Russian cabbage patch performances were great. The show was hosted by the third years, who are known throughout the school as being pretentiously artsy and intellectual. Each class has a different personality because each class (or, actually, they're called courses here), each COURSE has a different headmaster who casts them, trains them, and usually invites them to work in his (unfortunately, no "slash her" here... only seems to be men) company. So they hosted the show in the style of a high-fashion board meeting. They all wore thick glasses and looked incredibly glamorous. They opened each section (the order went: second course, art students, us, production students, fourth course, and finally first years, because the roast doubles as an initiation for them) with either an incredibly dry list of statistics about Russian theater or a dramatic reading of fact sheets/schedules. Even though the show was almost 100% in Russian, we understood much of what was happening through context. My favorite opening was a list of the upcoming Moscow mainstage shows, which four of the third years put to song. It was hiiiillaaaarious. It started out with a schedule pulled up on screen, where you could see the lists of upcoming shows. Incredibly repetitive. Imagine the same thing for Broadway shows... 

The Lion King

The Lion King

The Lion King 

The Lion King

---

...for several pages, every so often interspersed with...

Cirque Du Soliel (One Night ONLY!)

The Lion King

The Lion King

So the repeated show was "Monte Cristo." One of the guys, who we're all incredibly attracted to because of this event alone (he's just completely unattractive physically) started reading, "Monte Cristo. Monte Cristo. Monte Cristo," in a really dry voice. Then he started kind of shimmying and sped it up, suddenly forming an aaaawesome beat. "MOON-tihCREE-sto. MOON-tihCREE-sto," to which the others added other things, using either the name of the theater, the ticket price, the date, or the additional shows (which were scatted intermittently over the top). Then, changing theaters, they suddenly had a sad Russian ballad using pretty similar lyrical material. Then an uptempo Euro-pop song. It was GREAT.

The first years had a good section, too. First, they had several people get up and talk about what they loved in MXAT, which was clearly touching. One of the kids from a really small Russian province (we learned later) talked about how he never thought he'd leave that town and come to Moscow, especially to the best acting school in the world. It really is amazing to get cast here... for every one available slot, five hundred students audition. There are twenty slots. Twenty times five hundred. 

But his was cute and some of the guys talked about how girls liked them more now, and during one of the more nervous student's speeches, we heard the word, "Americanskii" and then several seconds later, "Hyelloh. My name is Brrrian." We all realized immediately what had happened. One of our classmates went on an introduction RAMPAGE the first few days here and apparently made an impression on this boy. I guess the guy wanted food in the cafeteria and someone was holding up the line, and then suddenly the someone turned to him and said, in English, "Hello, my name is Brian," which is really only funny if you know Brian. Mom and Dad, please try to picture this.

The first years ended their set with one of the best parts of the show. The skit involved a third year coming out in a priest costume with Stanislavski's autobiography and doing a whole revival meeting. They read passages and "saved people" from bad acting and sang gospel songs and then, from the back of the room, three gorgeous third year girls came out in full-out vogue clothes with a bag of glitter, a pot of red paint, and a basket of rose petals. The lights got colorful and weird ambient electro music came on, and the BAPTISM BEGAN. The red paint girl painted a seagull on all the freshman's foreheads (the seagull is the emblem for MXAT), and the glitter girl blew a cloud of glitter at them and the petal girl sprinkled them (until the end, where she started dumping clumps of petals on people very forcefully). Loved it.

SO THERE'S THAT. Stay tuned for part two and three, otherwise known as Opus 7 and St. Petersburg.

P.s.: Dad. My acting teachers keep calling me Amalia Markovna because I told them your name. Patronymic middle names are a Russian tradition... Konstantin Alexsandrovich Stanislavski, Vladimir Illyich Lenin... et cetera. Yours works a lot better than some of my classmates. Markovna/Markovich are relatively common patronymics for people of my generation because the name trend when people of your generation were being born was distinctly western. Now, it's back to old school eastern European names like Ruslan and Fedyenka. So there will be little kids with the name, like, Boris Fedyenkovich Samvarskilovichsky in a generation or two.

Love you.