A Star is Bernstein

Last week my students invited me to the theatre with them. The play was "Krotkaya," an adaptation of a Dostoevsky short story. The theatre group was a trio from Skopin, a small town south of Ryazan. The play was pretty weird, modern theatre from the provinces, and between the strange performance and my unfamiliarity with the story, I didn't catch a whole lot.

After the play, my students and I were standing outside the hall, talking about the play (ie, my students explaining the play to me), basically alone because all the other spectators had gone to get their coats. Then I saw a camera crew from Ren-TV, a Russian network, coming toward us. I explained to my students that I didn't want to be on TV but, of course, the first thing they said was, "We came to the theatre with our foreigner teacher," and the camera turned on me. They showed it at 7:00pm the next day. I didn't say a whole lot, I think it was something like this: "Yeah, I teach English at the University. I didn't really get the play but it was good, a little strange. I don't know." I fully expect to get a weekly cultural analysis segment with that kinda insight and charm.