Accessories Book & Gift Store Classes Corsets & Underwear Computers Costumes 4 Sale Costume e-Lists Dance Costumes Designs & Designers Dolls "Ethnic" Dress Fashion Theory Free eGroup Free Stuff Halloween (Costume) History How-To Kinky Clothing Major Sites Military Uniforms Movie Costumes Museums New Pages Occupational & Occasion- Specific Patterns Questions? Religious Dress Theatre History Travel for Costumers Unite! Vintage Clothing Weddings Weird Clothing

Letter from Russia, July 1994 me Dear Lorraine, 7/26/94 I am almost done with the first part of my work here in Russia with the Interstudio Theatre in Pushkin. All week I have been working on making costumes for The Seagull and Night (a Chinese show). This is what my life is like here: First, I get up really late because I have a slightly skewed schedule. I have been living in St. Petersburg with Milla, a Russian artist/designer who is renting me a room, I sleep in Mila's bedroom/storage room and Mila sleeps in her living room/art studio. This way she can work late into the night after I've turned in, and I can get up at an obscenely early hour like 10 o'clock and not wake her after a night's drawing and Yoga. Mila is a really cool artist, hippie chick, new age granola type, whose flow of ideas and artwork make me look dull and slow by comparison. Mila is also engaged to Karl Kalen, the actor-student-punk I've told you about, back at the University of Alaska, and all parties concerned (including my self) are trying to get Mila's visa blessed by the state dept so she can come to Fairbanks asap. On the walls of Mila's studio are endless drawings of flames and faces and trees and leaves, many "painted" with the black smoke of a candle flame.

Also are pictures of my crazy student/friend Gwen in The Yellow Wallpaper, Karl in his raven costume for last summer's Raven Dance here in St. Petersburg, as well as other photos of last summer's "Russian American Theatre" events. On one wall is a costume made of old potato sacks and broken mirrors with a tree of life painted on it and burlap fringe hanging from the arms and hem. Above all is a strange homemade "chandelier" of bits of bamboo and brass picked up in the street and arranged into a sort of ritual noisemaker/lamp. Everywhere else in the room, in the hall, in any spare space are frames, empty ones for future use, and full ones, and dozens of oil paintings, many with mirrors attached to the canvas. In "my" room are the less artistic stored items, plus my junk, and my art supplies. My friend Anatoly managed to save one of my two suitcases I left here in Russia last summer, and it was the one with all my art supplies. Between what I had left from last summer, and what I brought this summer, and what Mila has, we are both in total artistic bliss.  Mila really liked the art supplies her friend Gwen gave me to bring her too. Also I am finding some Russian stuff that Mila hasn't used before and we are experimenting with that too. Russian white glue is essentially Phlex glue, so I can make acrylic fabric paint out of it mixed with pigment! On my walls I have poster size enlargements of my best photos (most obviously of UAF stuff), and new cartoons of babushkas. I am having fun teaching myself to cartoon. Elsewhere in the flat I

have put up cartoons that teach me Russian. For example there is Snow white's stepmother next to the hall mirror saying "Mirror, mirror on the wall..." and cartoon balloons over the sink saying "Hi, I'm the sink!" "And I'm the soap!" and so forth. This amuses Mila no end. My Russian study continues very slowly at best, but I am much better than last year. I sometimes can manage whole sentences now. In the morning I wake and shower and wash my socks and stuff from the night before. Then, until yesterday I spent 1/2 hour laboriously pumping water for the day with a fancy American $150.00 water pump from hell. Today I didn't have to however, because yesterday I bought a Russian made American designed water filter for $3.50 that is designed for the local water and faucets, and it simply fits onto the tap and does all the work with water pressure. After 1000 liters it stops flowing and you replace it. It even comes with a St. Petersburg Dept of Health approval! Best of all it just screws onto the tap in two seconds whenever you need it. "Kaif" as they say here, which is about like "cool". So I eat my vitamins, drink some sterilized milk, and maybe eat a banana. Then take the express bus to Moskovsky Metro for 40 minutes to meet my car pool. Moskovsky is under this big square with a giant statue of Lenin in the center. Like the Bronze Horseman (statue of Peter the Great) it is too damn big to move when the political wind changes, besides, in a country littered with bronze Lenins, it is one of the best looking ones. His 3 story high bronze frock coat flaps in the air like he is leaning into the winds of change, with proletarian cap in hand, and vest buttons straining across his chest with the exertion. At the moment he is leaning into the wind coming from the Coca-Cola billboard opposite him. All round the edge of the square are dozens of kiosks selling everything from Walkmans and condoms to potatoes and piva. Kiosks are much neater cleaner and better organized than they were here two years ago. They are also much more prevalent. Two years ago each square had five or six, now maybe 150 are around Moskovsky. Moskovsky also is home to one of the biggest dept stores in the city, as well as several large food stores (one of which sold me my water filter). Each day I go to Moskovsky about an hour early to do shopping for either home or work, drop off photos at the Kodak booth, change money, and just window shop. This is how I find $3.50 water filters and 50c bottles of Phlex glue. I usually buy a cold 17c Coca-Cola in a cup, and then go to the curb to meet with my car pool of directors. It is true that I have said that all theatre directors are scum (they can't help it), but I really like these guys. There is our leader and driver Roman Vinderman who looks like a 50 something dress extra in The Three Musketeers complete with curly salt and pepper hair, goatee, big floppy shirts and a nose to match the name. He reminds me of a cheerful version of my friend Anatoly (if that isn't an oxymoron), and he speaks good English. He is the one who is doing scenes from Chekhov's Seagull with puppet doubles shadowing some actors. He is also amazingly easy to work with, and does work in Siberia in the winters. Then there is my Chinese guy from Shanghai Drama Institute (with an unpronounceable name kind of like Hui or Shoui or Xui), he is nice too, but he keeps adding and changing things daily so that Seagull is getting the short end of the stick. He is the one who saw our ex-UAF student Megan (who went to Hawaii and then China to learn Chinese theatre when last heard from) in Bejing, doing Chinese opera and said she was very good. It is so amazing that I, from Fairbanks, should meet a man in Russia, who comes from Shanghai, who saw in Bejing, Megan from Fairbanks doing Chinese opera. The theatre world is so incredibly small, it's just astonishing. He is real good with the actors, and his rehearsals look really fun. He's pretty tall and big for a Chinese guy, and seems about my age. He speaks moderately good English and better Russian. Every day I hear him extract a Russian lesson in the back seat from Sergei, my third director, and I've been getting a little bit each day just listening in. Sergei speaks no English at all, and so with that safety buffer between us he flirts shamelessly with me and vice versa. He is a hand kisser, and a classic nerd. He wears wool coats on 90 degree days, suspenders, and a tie. What is more, he is actually cold if someone opens a window! On bolshee lizard. (He is a big lizard.) He too is 50 something, and teaches in Ekaterinberg in the winter. He is helping Roman with Seagull, does hand movement workshops, and I gather from his Russian "lessons" with my Chinese guy, is also a voice and diction coach. The Chinese guy has a very strong Chinese accent in Russian that even I can detect. It is funny listening to Serge roll his rrrs like gravel each day for his benefit. There is something rather jolly about our car pool each day. I think all of us regard our jobs in the light of a summer vacation, and so chill out accordingly. Also the car ride allows us to work out our problems with each other in a neutral space before work, and bond and all that crap. All of us are also from out of town, so we trade secrets like the water filter, and public transit tips. Bizarrely enough, despite my poor Russian, I seem to be the leader in this regard! At work I've been put in the puppet making workshop, which is a truly cool space to work, however it has it's problems. Mainly, no cutting table, no ironing board, no clean anyplace to put anything down, and no hangers or racks to hang things up. The place has a bunch of work benches with tool racks against the walls, and a round coffee table and chairs in the center. There is also a TV, usually on in the corner. Once or twice in the afternoon everything stops for a tea (and snack) break. I have trained my volunteer assistant Masha to not make me tea or coffee, and so she always makes sure that one cup of boiled water is saved for me to drink plain. I was irritated by the interruption of these breaks at first, but now I really like them. They give me a chance to try kitchen Russian on the puppetry students who don't speak English. The room is perfect for craft work, but hell for sewing. The sewing machine is a Russian made version of a 1900 hand crank Singer, and vastly inferior to that which it is trying to copy. There is one spool each of white and black thread, eight pins, two hand needles, and two pair of small snippers. I supplemented this with a cheap pair of shears I bought in California, some pins I'd hoarded from last year, safety pins and snaps from Gostiny Dvor, and two seam rippers bought at Super Babylon. Masha found elastic and some hooks, so we are fully, if barely, operational. I also brought my trusty glue gun and some fabric paint, but I only bring and use these when all other options fail me. At Moskovsky I've found a fully stocked Finnish fabric store better than Pacific Fabrics, but too expensive for my budget. Better is a little hole in the wall about a block away that sells cotton chintz for 35c a meter, and wool for $2, with a very limited selection. This is where I've got fabric that couldn't be salvaged from old curtains and drops. In all I've kicked out maybe $20 for the two shows where curtains would not do. The shows are simply student projects that are at the end of a three week summer session. Interstudio won't start work on their new mainstage show (The Tower of Babel) until Spring. This is apparently what the mixup is all about. When I had Mila ask Almira when I could work with her on the new show, she thought I meant this summer, not this year and said they weren't doing shows only classes. Interestingly, I found out about the true situation by listening in, as best I could, to a coffee table meeting with some Germans, in German, where one of the Interstudio administrators was describing their work and upcoming schedule. Since my German is still quite a bit better than my Russian, this was truly enlightening. Working at Interstudio you quickly see why Babel is the subject of their next play. Among their faculty there is Amy Greenberg of LA, as well as my Chinese guy. They have French, Swiss, and German students also, and there are always French, German and American folks dropping in. On the T.V. in the shop this last week I watched German news with Russian subtitles showing Estonian fashion shows, a French dubbed American special on Martha Graham, Russian dubbed Mexican soap operas, German game shows, Russian versions of Rostand's Cyrano d'Bergerac, and Johann Strauss' The Gypsy Baron, and TNT's Goodwill games in Russian with English video graphics. Everyone here is communicating in bits of at least three or four languages on a daily basis. Listening to the radio is a real trip here too. Mila tunes into a station that plays an eclectic assortment of Russian, American, English, and French rock and roll from the 50's on, as well as a smattering of 1940's stuff like Edith Piaf, late Kurt Weill, and early country western. Mostly the DJ's talk in Russian, but around dinner the French DJ's come on, and on Saturday you can hear the American top 40 countdown! Strannia. (Strange.) I have, for instance, heard my first ever French language country western swing song here. Ochen Strannia. (Very strange.) Shopping at the street kiosks, where nearly everything is imported, its even stranger. While discussing my eating habits over here with my Mom by phone on Sunday, she asked what kind of oil I was cooking in. I pulled the bottle out of the refrigerator, only to tell her: "Well Mom, it's all in Spanish, but there are sunflowers on the label, so it might be that..." Our pasta has a "Made in Iran" seal of approval on it, our orange juice has its label in Finnish, and Mila's teas come from Turkey and India. We also eat an assortment of Russian goods, many of which now print their labels in English, or Russian and English in order to appear imported! 7/30/94 Well we have a break here while I completed the student shows. Two days ago I talked Mila into coming with me to Pushkin for a break. The last few days have been amazingly polluted by even St. Petersburg standards, due to a fire, so getting out of town is good for breathing. Mila spent the day in the Catherine Park doing drawings of the Chinese pavilions, and I had fun with the Russian ironing board I'd bought the day before. You see I was getting very tired of trying to iron full length Edwardian skirts on a dirty square of cantttttttttttttttttttttttttt tttttttttttttf--------\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\====== ========555555555555 5555555555555555555555555555555555 555555lllllllllllllll999999999999999999 9999999999999999999999999999777777777 777777777777777777777777777777777yy Sorry, the Cat decided to try typing. "What Cat?" you ask. I'm coming to that... So I'm ironing on a 2x2 square of dirty canvas on a dirty bench, the dresses get filthy and are wrinkled from the cramping as soon as I've finished ironing them. Masha my volunteer assistant is mysteriously gone as usual on a 45 minute cigarette break. (I later find out that she has been making numerous alterations and improvements on the Ghost's costume because the Ghost can't explain to me what he wants, and besides she has a crush on the tall studly blonde Ghost) It's hot and Yuri the scene designer has decided to come in the shop and smoke, which I can't stand. Finally Masha returns just as Yuri decides to go for a second cigarette. I tell Masha "I'll be back soon" turning tables on her for a change, and walk downtown. I find a lovely if short (height not length) Wooden Russian ironing board for $3.75 weighing about 15 lbs, and proceed to haul it the 1/2 mile to Interstudio. Masha is thrilled, Yuri wants to know how much it cost (as if it finally occurred to him maybe they could use one of their own) and Victor the nice puppet guy, helps me set it up. So that's what I did for the day, I ironed. Masha finished the puppet costume and then disappeared upstairs, the iron developed a spur on it that started snagging the fabric, I turn the 1930's vintage steam iron over to investigate and boiling water covers my hand. Rather a bad burn. No burn cream at work, only at home, 2 hours away. I try wet bandages made from costume fabric to no avail. Victor's wife breaks an egg and smears the white on my hand which, to my surprise, helps me lots. And Mila and I head home. As we get to our building, at the door is the tiniest skinniest most forlorn most flea ridden kitten we've seen, yowling horribly. Naturally, we aren't able to leave it, so we bring it in. It falls in love with my shoes and spends the night in the shoe box by the door wedged between my black oxfords. The next morning we name her Shoe-lace, and I buy her a German flea collar and a stuffed mouse at Moskovsky. Mila stays home and cat sits, but Shoe-lace is a very good cat and gives no trouble, (except for wanting to use the computer.) She has black and tan tiger stripes, huge blue eyes, big pointy ears, a tiny body with skinny legs (one bad) and a long skinny tail like a rat. Back with me, I meet the guys as usual for our car pool to Interstudio, and we go driving off with a crazy friend of Roman's following us in a Volvo.

Just at the point where we need to stop at the 50s style gas station at the entrance to the town of Pushkin he decides to pass us and follow from the front. Roman tries to signal him to stop for the station but he decides instead to try to hook a u turn on this skinny road. Alas, Volvos have one of the widest turning bases on the road. It doesn't make it, so instead it is 1/3 turned across both lanes straight in front of us. Ladas on the other hand have no breaks to speak of, so we smack our left headlight into the Volvo's back bumper (no injuries). An accident that could easily have been avoided if our cars were reversed, since Volvos stop on a dime and Ladas turn on one. So we get to Interstudio, and start the marathon performathon. First an outdoor workshop of stretching and warmups, then Amy Greenberg's class of advanced students cavorts interestingly with masks searching for Jungian archetypes, and doing unusually varied interpretations of the same generic scene script. Much applause. Then Sergei does hand calisthenics to classical ballet music with the beginning students. Then an "installation" by one of the scene design students of candles and interesting garbage and rubble draped with laundry lines of lacy women's lingerie. Then back outside for the scenes from Seagull done in appropriately Russian summer woodland. The costume storage room is locked with Treplev's shirt inside, so the actor has to use one of his own that doesn't quite match, and Masha is one of the bigger ones so her skirt falls off as she exits (the costumes were made to roughly fit 4 different casts using safety pins as backup-unfortunately she didn't use the backup), but otherwise it was a good performance. It was hard to video tape though since the performance surrounded the audience that was awkwardly perched on the bank of the canal. Afterwards, I ran around photographing the actors in costume in stills, while another scene designer did a performance where he inflated a 3 story high clear plastic tube, in which he stood at the bottom, naked, in the water near the deep part of the canal, and swam about amidst the usual Saturday swimmers and divers. This was a great hit with the general public in the canal who swam around it and cheered thunderously when it was finished. I met the rather moist student as he was coming in the puppet shop to dry off, and I was changing film and asked "Etot voui va bolshoy condom?" (Was it you in the big condom?) which amused him. Then outside for more design students doing strange stuff at the water fall. Then to the inner stairwell of the palace where design students had set up plastic bags of grass cuttings up on the 3rd floor, with strings down to the 1st floor. While a tape of rain noises played, the students pulled the strings one by one so that grass rained on their heads in a steady stream enlivened with a few big clumps. Then up the stairs to a pile of grey paper balls of old theatre posters. Pick up the balls to throw at a naked design student facing the wall on a grey paper covered box on the second floor. Another pile of balls to throw as you leave, then the 3rd floor where the used plastic bags hang like laundry on wires. Then to the 1820 era theatre on the 3rd floor where Hussid the leader of Interstudio makes a short speech, and Night is performed. It's a very funny short farce done in Chinese opera style, costumes go ok. I finally figure out what my assistant Masha has been doing whenever she cuts out--making the Ghost look cool. Good work. Hussid mentions me as costumer for Night and Seagull and has me bow. I mention Masha and have her bow. This seems to help Masha's position as a would be actor, because she is allowed to take part in the next workshop as an actor. The stage is cleared of scenery and curtains, and the handsome clowning wizard gives a movement workshop. Then a tea break, where Sergei repeatedly and jokingly kisses me goodbye, so I attack his fingers, and kiss them individually with great vigor, till we can't move from laughing. All of this in front of a rather pretentious seeming American academic type I've just met two minutes before. Then another design installation/performance with a room covered with blue jeans: the floor, the walls, wrapped round the Ionic pillars, etc. And a boy being painted blue by a girl dressed as a nurse. Too crowded to see really. They are about to set up for a repeat of a performance I saw before at Christmas, but Roman wants to leave, and I'm tired too, so we all head off, with the bald man in the Volvo veeringly following us like a maniac in a car chase movie, with a portrait of Lenin shoved onto the dashboard "to see what the traffic police will say"..... So write or call me soon please. Love, Tara. Images from Pilutova St.

The Costumer's Manifesto is proudly hosted by OnlineCostumeStore.com your online source for Halloween Costumes.

Home   Questions   Buy Books and More    About Me

This Page is part of The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis, Ph.D.  Copyright 1996-2008.   You may print out any of these pages for non-profit educational use such as school papers, teacher handouts, or wall displays.  You may link to any page in my site.

This page last edited on 10/18/2006