M.F.A. Program Students in Moscow: Asher Grodman

-
A.C.T. Conservatory Director Melissa Smith, right, with A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program students Asher Grodman and Elyse Price. Photo by Philip Estrera.
The A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program class of 2014 recently returned from Moscow, where they were honored as the only U.S. acting school invited to attend the prestigious Stanislavsky Festival. They performed Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, were featured on the evening news, and interacted with students from England, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Poland, France, and Russia.

We asked the students to share their photos and reflections from this unforgettable trip. To read more about their experiences, search for hashtag #ACTinMoscow on Facebook and Twitter.

Asher Grodman

We’re back home in San Francisco after a long flight, and I started thinking about how this incredible trip began.
When we first landed in Moscow, we met obstacles in every direction. There was a lack of information, energy, food, water, internet service, and functional showers. Most of us settled into the hotel and got some much-needed rest, but [A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program Head of Movement] Stephen Buescher and [A.C.T. Conservatory Director] Melissa Smith wanted to go get lost in the city, and I decided to tag along.

Learning how to use the subway without language was tricky, but once we got downtown the bleak landscape of the hotel was a distant memory. We wandered through the streets, going any direction that seemed to call us. Eventually, we landed in a back alley and entered a small, tucked-away bar covered in Soviet paraphernalia. Clearly, there weren’t going to be any tourists here. The menu was entirely in Russian and the bartender had no interest in helping us decipher it, but we took a shot and got about half of what we thought we ordered—including three vodka shots served by Melissa herself.

After the bar, we found our way to Red Square at night. It was breathtaking. The stone, the buildings, the air—you could feel the weight of hundreds of years of history. St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, Lenin and Stalin’s tomb on one side and, somewhat ironically, a giant shopping mall on the other. The communists would be thrilled. When we reached the top of the mall, we found a private dance party guarded by two uniformed men separated by a row of chairs forming a wall. Everyone was swing dancing to American music from the ’90s, as they put on a show for those of us not allowed in. I turned to Stephen to ask, “What’s the worst that would happen if I hopped the fence?” He replied, “We get thrown out and we leave.” So just as the guard looked the other way, I made my move over the chairs onto the dance floor and asked one of the Russian ladies to dance. Of course she was immediately disappointed to discover that I didn’t know the same routine as the Russian guys, but she put up with me.

Before we left for Moscow, [A.C.T. Conservatory Producer] Dick Daley told all of us that anything could happen and we would have to go with it—we did and it made all the difference. Thank you to everyone who helped make this trip possible. From start to finish, it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
Location: Moscow, Russia

Popular posts from this blog

“To Be or Not to Be”: The Iconic Speech’s Origins, Interpretations, and Impact

-
Image
By A.C.T. Publications Staff The opening line of Hamlet ’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is theater’s most iconic, most referenced quote. What’s less known is the famous speech’s history, with Hamlet ’s earliest publications offering varying versions of its language. Also questioned is its meaning—is Hamlet contemplating suicide or is he weighing the consequences of murder? Though definitive answers are unlikely to arise, the questions “To be or not to be” asks have kept audiences, scholars, and actors engaged for centuries. Hamlet ’ s "To be or not to be" speech as it appears in the three original editions of the play. Photo by Georgelazenby. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The first edition, or First Quarto (Q1), of Hamlet was published in 1603. Because the text is much shorter than later editions and its language is less poetic, it is nicknamed the “Bad Quarto” by scholars. “To be or not to be” in Q1 reads as: To be, or not to be—ay, there’s the point. To die, ...
Read more

The American Sound: The Evolution of Jazz

-
Image
By Cecilia Padilla There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music. In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between blacks and whites, me...
Read more

A Hell of a Businessman: A Biography of Joe Glaser

-
By Simon Hodgson Born in 1897, Joe Glaser was the son of a successful Russian Jewish physician in Chicago. He originally intended to follow a similar career and entered medical school, but after passing out in the operating room, he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. He started off in business selling used cars, but found better luck managing prizefighters. In his biography of Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen notes, “Glaser’s power to fix fights earned him a reputation as a sage of boxing, especially among reporters.” With advanced word as to which fights were fixed, Glaser could predict the results—and even the number of rounds—of many bouts in Chicago. His connections with organized crime continued in his next career change, when he began running nightclubs and whorehouses in the South Side for the Chicago Outfit, the powerful underworld gang led by Capone. Glaser’s tendency toward illegal action nearly ended his career. In 1928, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for ...
Read more