Flapjacks. Not just pancakes anymore.

So the past few days have been spent grinding out details. One of our biggest concerns has been rehearsal venue - we'd booked a place that was too pricey in the hopes of finding something better when we arrived.

First on the list was the local Quaker chapter, where we met with the manager, a man named Eddie that I think Ricky Gervais wrote. He took us through the lovely building, which he kept insulting and describing stiffly as "the new one" until finally dropping the detail that it had been rebuilt in 1645 after "the old one" burnt down in the Warwick fire of 1644. Brand spankin'.

Then he showed us the gardens, which were everything Pride and Prejudice promised.

An Excerpt from The Garden Scene:

(loud cawing is heard in the distance)

Vicky: Was that a peacock???

Eddie: Ah yes, they fly in from the castle. Nasty birds, they are. Et all the flowers. But me dog scares them off.

(Vicky and Molly, ignoring this, both praise the garden's beauty)

Eddie: Yeh, it's nice an all. 'Course, underneath it is the Quaker cemetery (dumbfounded silence from V&M). Oh, they don't let us bury anyone here any more. Just the odd ash sprinkle on the lawns. (M quickly steps back onto sidewalk) See that bump there? 

And we DID see the bump. In the end, Eddie gave us a list of other venues, even suggesting renting pub space, which he seemed to find distasteful. We shook our heads at the thought of rehearsing in such company, declined his offer of coffee, and left vowing to visit every pub in town. 

This next bit... I'm a little nervous to write it in case I jinx us. Long story short, we went to The Rose and Crown, a nearby pub, and unless we both completely misunderstood, have secured a lovely rehearsal space for the price of a drink every hour we use it. We spent a good fifteen minutes coordinating our schedule with the very assuring and confident R&C employee, so we both feel pretty solid about its legitimacy. I'll let you know what the best Warwickshire cider is. I'll hopefully be trying them all, one at a time, every morning at nine.

Shiiiire.... Bagginnnnnnns!

I left you, dear family and friends, in the safety of a Heathrow cafe.

Moments later found me body-slamming a rapidly closing gate, a gate that stood between me and the London Underground. My midwestern charm was failing to dissuade the old bloke padlocking me out. I hate taking buses. 

Wendy had given me twenty pounds before I left, which was the only cash I had. Not really being familiar with buses, because I hate them, I boarded and thrust my twenty-pound note towards the driver, saying in a thin, falsely cheery voice speckled with hard r's, "One to Piccadilly Circus, please." 

His eyes met mine, and I swear, I felt a little squeeze on my throat as though he were trying to telepathically strangle me. Without looking away, he pulled out his own wallet and started counting change. 

I wasn't sure what to do, so I lingered in the cabin. A line was forming behind me. 

"Moo ow ta green, la," he said. 

I smiled pleasantly, hoping he would give me my change so I could put my big bag down. Another girl boarded, clearly as confused as I was. It turned out that we were trying to find the same hostel. 

The bus stared at both of us, her pointing at her brightly-colored map and speaking in broken English and me lurking next to the stairs as unobtrusively as an elephant in five shirts and a ukulele. We realized at about the same time that cutting our losses was the only way to deal with this. As he handed my change back and said, "Ma'am, please would you move out of the green zone, you're blocking the way," we scampered off the bus to a choir of exasperated sighs behind us. 

A middle-aged man with a greying mullet, probably named Ned or Reg, saw us trying to count our change. He descended and enthusiastically informed us that bus fare was two pounds seventy, but that we'd better not pay in paper because our stop was the first of the late run and the driver wouldn't have change yet; we'd put him in a foul mood for the rest of the night. Oops...

Ned/Reg ended up taking the same bus as us and chatted our sleep-deprived ears off about everything London and everything bus. He seemed to have the routes memorized and labored under the delusion that we wanted to know the intimate details of the N19 line, which... we didn't.

At the hostel, I tried to get some sleep, but since by body kept politely informing me that it was just about time to head home from the theater building and start making dinner, my best attempts were wasted. Instead, I left all my stuff tucked under the sheets like a very fat tourist and poked around the city until dawn. I watched the rising sun backlight Big Ben and drank a cup of coffee next to the Thames. Parliament is gorgeous. 

I made it back to the hostel via Trafalger square, slowly seeing the flaw in my romantic "spend the sunrise exploring London" scheme - namely... jet lag (dun dun duuuuun).

Getting to Warwick was a caffeine-laced hallucination. The surreal paranoia that I was still asleep in The Nook wasn't helped by a series of gag announcements broadcasting over Chiltern Station's intercom in the dryest of British voices, the most memorable of which was:

"Attention, we have a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Message reads : Ooh hoo hoo, I wanna be like yoou hoo hoo. That's a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Thank you." 

I sat next to a very sweet and cute guy on the train who's name was Ahmal ("What's your name?" "Amalia." "I'm Ahmal." "Amalia." "Ahmal." "You can just call me Molly...") and he, saint that he was, let me sleep and woke me up at my stop.

Vicky met me with her grandma and grandpa. We screamed like little girls when we saw each other and one of the conductors commented on the loveliness of our reunion. YES. IT WAS LOVELY. WE'RE LOVELY PEOPLE.

More to come! Sorry for the overload. Seeing King John at the Royal Shakespeare Company on Saturday for Vicky's birthday!!

No, guys, Marmite. WTF. The yuckiest.

-Molly

TARDIS. TARDIS. Come on, TARDIS... (Crosses fingers)

I'm in Heathrow. My flight was awesome - Midnight In Paris was the in-flight movie, my seat-mate was an adorable old man who slept with a blanket over his head like a tent, I got my food before everyone else because I checked the "vegetarian" box online...
Adele has been every other song playing since I sat down in this cafe. A cute tattooed guitarist called me "love" a few minutes ago. I'm grinning like a fool and about to hit London.
I'll see YOU fools in August.

A flea-bitten circus

Ladies, Gentlemen, Margie:

Welcome to charming Ashfield, Massachusetts (yes, you guys, I DID learn how to spell it eventually. Through trial-and-error).

Population: Small enough that people know we're Double Edge interns because they haven't seen us before and we're under the age of sixty.

Population: Small enough that we, all innocent eight of us, are being persecuted by the local library because of crimes committed by previous interns WHOM WE HAVE NEVER MET. Good ol' Puritans and their grudges...

Population: Largely farmers, largely dairy farmers. Next door to 551, our house, is a farm that raises sheep and chickens, who apparently get murdered every morning between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. One of the sheep sounds like a very bored collegiate male. You'll hear, "(high pitched) baaahaaahaaaa, (medium high) baaahahahaaa, (high pitched) baaahaUUUUUUUUUUUUUH." (That was Regular Sheep getting interrupted by Math Test Frat Sheep).

We live with two cats, Abdullah and (best guess at spelling) Julenar.

Julenar is morbidly obese. Her favorite pastimes are lying in the middle of the stairs when you're carrying something really heavy, getting yelled at for jumping on the table, and miscalculating her own tremendous mass, thus causing her to crash heavily into stationary objects when running frantically around the living room.

For a while, three of us thought Julenar was pregnant. She exhibits all the symptoms, down to the weird patchy balls of fat hanging off her belly. We treated her really nicely for a day before finally double-checking with one of the permanent residents who informed us that, no, she was spayed and just incredibly overweight. He suggested that we start complimenting her on her figure, so she'd be inspired to keep herself up better. He suggested, "Oh, Julenar, you're so slim. What a lovely tummy." We have instead taken to shouts of, "Stop eating my cereal, fatass!"

Abdullah is this, like, 1920's mobster cat who sneaks out all the time and won't take no guff from nobody.

It is because of Abdullah that we now have fleas.
Though, I have to admit, there's something satisfying in being able to claim that I am now literally a flea-bitten actor.

Last night, two of the other interns and I went to see a local puppet show called, "Once Upon A Compost Pile." Ashfield is scary into the green movement. This show was... and I mean, I'm a fan of composting myself, as my previous downstairs neighbour will gladly tell you over a beer, but... awkward. Charming, but very decidedly coo-coo bananas.

Mother-son team, presenting a show in three acts. Act One: Their life up to this point. No joke. Recap of their life. Act Two: VERY INTENSE puppet show about how the girl puppet (played by the mother) should stop approaching non-composters with ten page flip-charts and should instead "let her hair down" and do something FUN with composting, like... oh, did you guess it? Write a puppet show. Act THREE. The puppet show she and her puppet son wrote. Encore: Puppet comes into audience and very aggressively asks audience members if they compost. He first asked this really cute old lady, who, unfortunately for her, didn't compost. This was especially uncomfortable as she was the next door neighbour of the mother. A tea date was promptly set up. The second victim was yours truly. APPARENTLY, composting isn't enough. What was my favorite PART of the decomposition process. What was my favorite MICROBE. These are the sorts of questions, folks.

So that's all for now, I think. I need to ration out my stories because it's really rare that we leave the ten-mile radius of Ashfield and I need fodder enough for two more months.

Oh-ho-HO. Very important closing note:

Ashfield Hardware: Home of

FIFTY. CENT. HOMEMADE. ICE CREAM, Y'ALL.

God blurss Ahmurica?

Love ya's.

Westmass. (Read: Westmss)

Oh, boy. I don't think any of us were expecting this. 

There comes a time in a girl's life when she realizes that she needs to tone down her imagination. She needs to stop fantasizing about things before they happen because they inevitably will not be what she's dreamed about. I think a lot of women have this revelation because they're tired of figuring out how crappy their significant other actually is, but for me, it's happened most with trips and adventures. It's not so much that they're WORSE than what I'd wanted or BAD or something, just very, very different. Sometimes, much better than I could have hoped. Sometimes, a bit of a letdown.

Before this trip, I calmed myself. I said, "Molly, do NOT get attached to an image of a, like, a tribe of free-thinking thespians who could absolutely dominate the world of theater if they weren't so grounded and generous. Also, do NOT imagine a gorgeous, sacred working environment with every instrument and costume and carpentry tool known to humanity. And, most specifically, DO NOT UNDER ANY CONDITIONS believe that you will make friends with any of the other interns. That's not what this is ABOUT, Molly. In fact," I said to me, sagely, "in fact, just try not to think about it too much at all."

But, of course, I DID think about it, and, of course, I imagined all those things.

And guess what? THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS. It's creative boot camp. The ensemble members are INCREDIBLE, the setting is already breathtaking and it's only going to get better because have I mentioned FALL IN NEW ENGLAND, and there are at least two other interns that I'm hands-down sure I'll be lasting friends with.

We trained twice today, two hours apiece. It's constant movement. Right now, things are a little difficult because we're really following our leading ensemble member's movements, but I think it will become more free-for-all later. 

I'm too worn out to write much right now. I have wi-fi, so I'll be able to keep in touch much better than expected. 

Trips to New York and Boston will be organized!

And guess what? Guests are welcome. Just. So you know that.

Love you.

Post-birthday pre-semester jitters.

Leaving tomorrow for my semester in Ashfield. I'll study with Double Edge Theater, whose mission, if you're interested, you should google. I've been doing a very poor job explaining.

I was originally to study with them last spring and then drop out of school to pursue my dreams of being a homeless artist, reeking of integrity and week-old Kraft cheese, hounding the streets of Baltimore or Scranton or something in the name of artistic freedom (and Kraft cheese, who in this version of the fantasy I would be a spokesperson for), but things changed, as they do, and I'm now going THIS semester, coming BACK to NIU, and then taking a few more classes the semester after I initially would have graduated. So... best of both worlds, right? RIGHT!?

Remember Krymov, who I gushed about in my Russia posts? Or threatened to gush about? Don't think I ever got around to saying what I found so fantastic... anyway, he IS fantastic and his WORK is fantastic, and Double Edge is the closest thing there is to an American equivalent.

What I like about Krymov's actors and imagine I'll like about Double Edge's (I've never actually seen a production of theirs. Leap of faith...) is their commitment to movement, courage and the body. I like performances best when I can hear the actor gasping for breath, or see them sweating. My favorite kind of onstage acting is visceral, messy stuff, full of snot and fear and real, true excitement and maaaaybe a little blood, if the moment is right (a guy in Russia was delivering a really active monologue during one of the weirder war shows I saw there, and he fell off the table he was jumping on and smashed his mouth on a chair. One of the other actors, in a line a few minutes later which I can only assume was about being calmer and more rational soldiers, stuck his fingers into Actor 1's mouth and wiped real, human blood on the table. This was not planned. It was unmatchably powerful). I'm very interested in watching this style evolve and taking part in as much of it's early stages as I possibly can. I think it's a pretty new approach to stage performance.

Double Edge and Krymov also champion the combination of multiple art forms, which I think has been a long time coming. They both use Environmental Theater, a type of staging that involves landscape and audience movement/involvement (the stage's response to Hollywood's 3D obsession).

So aside from the incredible training we'll participate in alongside the Double Edge company, I and the other interns will have ample time to pursue our own artistic projects. While I'm there, for example, I want to work on an idea I have for a one-woman show that is in VERY early stages (PAINFULLY early, please ask me no questions about it or I may burst into tears of frustration). I'll let you know what the other interns are doing.

I'm terrified, excited, and juuuuust a little ready.

See you guys in December! Wish me luck and bravery!

Love y'all.

Хорошо! Хорошо! (sob)

My dear family and friends;

This will be my last post from Russia. I don't want to have to sum up my thoughts and feelings the day before we go because that will be too painful, so I'm going to tell a few more stories, poorly assemble a few more puns, and pretend that I have months left.

I have a friend here named Irina. She has wonderful taste in music. She has gone with me and some of my friends to three concerts here (one was accidental, because it's where we met, but it still counts) and I've loved all of them.

The first was Leonid Fedorov and Vladimir Volkov. ASTOUNDING. THE BEST (and Little Misha approved, so you know it's good). I'm a big Chris Thile fan, but this concert knocked some Thile shows out of my top five. Leonid Fedorov is a middle-aged, baby-faced guitar player, singer, songwriter, and all-around fascinating guy. He fronts a band called Auktyon, which is a  cool project that's been playing for a pretty long time. They're Petersburg based and have this eerie, magical sound (see previous post), a difficult feat to achieve with the instruments they use. They were initially hired by the, get this, the KGB so that the government could monitor the youth scene. Because of that, their lyrics had to be either really tame or nonsensical. According to the NPR interview I heard, they opted for nonsensical. I can't understand ninety-nine percent of their lyrics anyway, so that's not an issue for me. However, something I CAN understand is the anger, desperation, and confusion that's blaring through their rhythms, melodies, chord progressions. So... even without the lyrics, they were able to express what the youth were REALLY feeling.
But I've digressed. Fedorov and Volkov were GREAT. Youuuutuuuube! Go.

Next band we saw was Kolibri. When Irina described them to me, she called them, "three girls who sing harmony in front of a rock band." I was picturing cute little pixie chicks with pink and purple hair and enormous tattoos, but instead... well, see for yourself.

колибри

They were great, though. Scratchy voices, kind of creepy sound (Guess where they're from? Also, guess where Regina Spektor is from? EVERYTHING MAGICAL), and completely at ease onstage. They cried, they screamed, they pretended they were killing each other... very theatrical and wonderful. A guy from Siberia who was at the Leonid Fedorov concert told me that he thinks if someone is truly talented, they're not just good at one thing. Every Russian group I've seen here consists of people that I'd like to watch onstage in ANY situation... acting in a play, playing music, sitting and talking to friends... just very charismatic people. And all older!

The other band was called Megapolis. Again, the main core of the group was past forty. They started the concert by telling us that because they'd sold their album online instead of producing physical CD's, they'd made much more money than expected and decided to release the album on vinyl AND buy clothes from their favorite store for the fans who pre-ordered it. Irina told me that the lead singer was a really good man who often helped younger artists get started and supported many charities. He was quite charming.
There were four of us at this concert, and we were standing behind a young couple who had brought their little girls to the show (all of these concerts have had very demographically diverse audiences comprised of middle-aged couples, families with children, and young hipster twenty-something's). The girls were OFF THE WALLS. They started their own private mosh pit for a while, and then took to climbing their parents like trees and dancing like... um... well, it was more of a rhythmic flail than anything... the littlest got tired first, but the older one kept going strong until the band played a song about a father dying and his daughter forgetting what he looked like. Irina was translating for me as the song went on, and it was amazing to watch the little girl's progression. She stood up really straight after about the second verse and stared at a spot on the floor, swaying slowly back and forth for a while, and then stopped moving all together, and then reverently walked over to her dad and grabbed his leg. And that's where she stayed for the rest of the concert.

On the third floor, where our acting class is, there's a receptionist that I really like. I try to speak to her in Russian. She teaches me words and grammar and likes to laugh at me when I try to speak on my own. Today, when I was getting my coat from the coat check, she tapped my arm and motioned for me to cup my hands together, then reached under the desk and pulled out a bag of these really good pretzel circles with poppy seeds that everyone eats here. She smiled and poured about three-fourths of the bag into my hand. Then she delicately placed my coat on my arm and said, "Vkoosna," which is the Russian equivalent of "tasty." It was one of the most touching things anyone's done for me. It means a lot because the receptionists only share their food with the professors or famous MXT actors, and usually only a piece or two pieces. Later, I got her a flower and she hugged me and I said, "I really like you," and she corrected my grammar and said, "I really like you, too." It was a great moment. Very emotional.

By the way, forget all those stereotypes about cold, grumpy Russians. Maybe it's partially because I'm here in a group, but I feel so welcome and supported. I have innumerous stories about Russians going out of their way to help me find someone, somewhere, or something I was looking for, or just coming up to talk because they heard English and wanted to practice. Culturally, the people don't smile constantly like in America, but when they do smile, it means so much more. It's not a mask or a defense mechanism. You know when they like you and when they don't. No guessing. I prefer it.

Someday, I'll come back here. I hope I'll speak the language and be able to study the amazing art, history, and mentality of this rich culture much more deeply.

Closing thoughts:

The Russian words for "peace" and "world" are the same. No judgments of any sort to offer, but it's very interesting.

Tvorog. Socially acceptable cream cheese. You can eat it plain. By you, I mean me. Every day.

There are flower stands EVERYWHERE. People buy each other flowers all the time. I like this tradition.

It's a very good place. Visit, if you can.

Love you. See you soon.