January 24, 2009
A Great Week; A Sobering
Ending
What
a week! My best one in Kyrgyzstan. Where do I begin? (Thank you,
Love Story) One of the most beautiful women I've seen in Bishkek greeted
me at the bus station, where there's not a bus to be found, just taxis and
marshrutkas. Her name is Kseniya and she works for American University of
Central Asia (AUCA). (Pictured with Kostya, an AUCA student and my guide and
translator for the week). She whisked me away to campus where I ate the
first of several great tasting, familiar looking free meals from the U's
cafe. Then I met my hostess for the week. Her name is Elvira and
she's the top stage director for the Russian National Theatre in Bishkek. She
directs for other local theatres and teaches at a couple local universities,
including AUCA. I stayed at her apartment with her and her dachshund, a
chubby 12-year old diva of a dog. Elvira's primary language is
Russian. We each know about 20 words of each other's language, yet we were
able to communicate effectively all week with the help of my newly purchased
Russian-English dictionary. Kostya said, “Elvira's a little bit famous in
Bishkek.” Elvira, in her best English said, “Elvira, in Kyrgyzstan,
popular, Jennifer Lopez." Okay, so I spent the week with two divas. She
also likes to play mother. One night I wanted a cheeseburger for dinner
and she wouldn't let me, saying it wasn't healthy. So, Kostya and I went
to a pub the next day where I had one. She served me salted raw bacon this
week and it tasted great. I guess pork fat qualifies as health food to
her.
The
Playwriting Workshop reminded me why I like teaching college students. The
motivated writers that came all three days, which amounted to about 8 of the 36
who showed up on day one, were extremely interesting, and wrote a nice mixture of
funny and poignant scripts. They also agreed to write a 30-minute
play. I'll come back in April and we'll have another reading
series. There may have been more interested students, but maybe they
didn't think they could fit writing a 10-minute play into their
schedules. Totally understandable. And it also whittled the class
down to the 10 student level I asked for from day one. From my days as a
resident playwright in Charlotte I remembered how the high school students had to
be there whether they wanted to or not, so you're forced to deal all levels of
enthusiasm.
I
also agreed to hold a one-hour master class with some of Elvira's acting
students. I needed a translator for this one and it went pretty well
considering one guy in the audience hogged all the Q&A time because my
translator was too timid to tell him to shut up. I spoke about how theatre
is produced in America and a little about my style of directing. I think
they were expecting an acting coach as they kept asking to do exercises. In
the audience were two actresses I'd seen perform the night before in a play at
the Russian National Theatre, directed by, of course, Elvira. The play was
a comedy and very entertaining even though it was in Russian and I understood
very little. Kostya, who attended with me, gave me a brief explanation of
the plot and the character relationships to help me along.
That
would have been activity enough, but there was more. The school paper
interviewed me. The national television station interviewed me after the
master class. I took part in a press conference sponsored by NTS, with you
know who on the panel with me, which, if you care to view it, can be found
at www.kabar.kg. The
home page gives you a choice of languages and on the next page, far right, is a
link to their recent press conferences. I also met the director of the station,
a very nice man named Naryn. He said next time I'm in town to let
him know and we'll do this again. Anyway, Kostya told me I didn't
smile enough. There was a reason. The Peace Corps had to approve all
these media events (I don’t think we got approval for all of them) and there's
a laundry list of topics I can't mention or discuss, government and religion
topping the list. I was thinking so hard, making sure I didn't misspeak, I
forgot to smile. If there's a next time I will try to smile more. All
this and taxi rides everywhere I went all week, I kinda felt like a
celebrity. Got to admit, I liked it. For four days. Certain I
couldn't take a steady diet of it.
On
the ride back to reality, I mean Talas, my fantasy week came to an abrupt
end.
Early
in the trip, my driver engaged in a playful back and forth, who can pass who
and get to the top of the mountain first contest with another driver, one I
believe he knew. I say that because all of these drivers seem to know each
other. Anyway, the other driver won. Later on we had to slow down
because of an accident; a gray car on the right side of the road and a red one
on the left. It was a head on collision at very high speeds based on the
conditions of the cars. When I saw that red car, well, half a red car, I
knew it was the same one I'd seen in the passing contest. As we passed I
saw the driver. He was dead, still pinned behind the wheel, his head lying
on his shoulder. How many times have we seen someone speed past us and
wonder, 'if that guy doesn't slow down, someone might get killed.' Not
sure if he was alone in the car and/or if anyone else died (these taxis usually
have at least 5 people in them). I can't believe anybody in either car
survived but I couldn't tell either way. My driver, a very capable one,
drove slower for a while but then went back to his usual high speed. You
know I've written about the drivers in Kyrgyzstan before, but this was the
first horrendous accident I've seen. The kid that died couldn't have been
more than 25. My condolences go out to his family and to any other
victim's families, if there were any.
In the book: what I used to inspire the students to write their plays; some information on Nikolay Shulgin, the man who allowed me to conduct the workshop and why I didn't return for another one; most eligible bachelor in Kyrgyzstan.
