Well faithful readers, it’s Halloween and I am happy and full of candy. I showed my students The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror and even stopped myself from explaining all the references and jokes they were missing. In the evening, I went with young Danilo to see Gogol’s “Overcoat” at the Puppet Theater. What an experience. First of all, there were no kids in the audience; it wasn’t a show for kids. The theater was beautiful, modern, quite large, and sold-out. Danilo somehow got us tickets in the third row, even though they were two of the last ten tickets to be sold. When we first sat down, I was amazed by the set: a huge bed, a coat spread out over the ceiling and a door in the middle of the coat. It began with the hero, the only human in the cast, lying in bed and a cast of white, ghost-like, Jim Henson-looking puppets rising up all around him. One of the coolest aspects of the show was the great variety of the puppets. From plush to avant-garde to almost Japanese, there was no attempt at uniformity, and that in and of itself was exciting to watch.
The production started where Gogol’s story ends: the hero, his coat stolen, is dead and roaming the earth as a ghost. In this play, by turns funny and frightening, the coat falls to different characters, but is so intent on finding her true owner that she brings bad luck to anyone who tries to possess her. Or at least, I think that’s what was going on. The truth is, I understood very little of what was said. I was just so stunned by the music, scenery and artistry of the spectacle that I found it very moving. I even cried when the puppeteers came out at the curtain call, like my mom used to at our school plays when the principal said, “The kids worked so hard on this.”
Well that’s all I got. Tomorrow morning I’m off to Tiumen, so there probably won’t be a new blog post until there’s a new incumbent president. Let us pray.
1 comment:
simpsons in school....best teacher ever
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