The Russian Ballet

As many will remember, I work part-time at the Eisenhower Theatre on my university campus. It's an odd job, and I'm never entirely sure what to expect. Every show is different, every day is busy, and everyone is strange.

I had the opportunity to work for the State Ballet Theatre of Russia's production of Cinderella. Never having read the original Cinderella story, I can't tell how accurate this depiction was. As it stands, I didn't comprehend most of the scenes.

First of all, this show was put on by a Russian company. All the production staff spoke Russian, every dancer spoke Russian, and all they had was a single interpreter named Olga who probably knew the instructions by heart. The production staff knew about five words of English each. The guy in charge of hanging and adjusting backdrops knew "Up, down, please, okay," for example. Other departments were equally as helpful. Because of the language barrier, the Russians found it easier to do the work themselves rather than go through the process of explaining it to us through Olga. We spent most of the day (after hanging curtains) sitting in the crew lounge.

At one point, a fellow came up to Margo and I, speaking in rapid and altogether incomprehensible Russian. He indicated to the dryers we have on the loading dock and wrung his shirt in his hands. Margo tried explaining to him that she had no idea what he was saying or needing. He kept on with his wild gestures until Margo led him to the washing machines around the corner, which are in the crew lounge. He did at least four loads of laundry throughout the day. Each time he needed to change a load, he would wander into the lounge, chatting to us in Russian and smiling all the while. Neither of us understood the other, but he was a pleasant fellow. When he finished, he would bow his head and force a very gruff "Tank Joo."

I was in charge of running spotlight for this show, which is a very easy job. Normally, we are given a script or a cue sheet as a courtesy but hardly use it because we are told by the stage manager what we have to do as we go along. Olga gave me a cue sheet with prompt like "When Cinderella dances alone, light her," or "When Cinderella and Prince duet, light together and apart." I shrugged it off, thinking there would be a stage manager telling me what to do.

I forgot the only person who knew what was going on spoke only Russian. Margo and I were up in the spotlight booth the entire time trying to figure what the cues meant. "Is it when Cinderella stops dancing, or is it when everyone else leaves the stage?" "Which one is the prince? They are all in white!" "Where is the shoe supposed to land?" The most complicated, and by far the worst, was trying to spot Cinderella when the gnomes (I have no idea why there were gnomes in the Cinderella story) were supposed to throw her into the air 12 times. We weren't told she would switch costumes halfway through and we would have to find her. Oh, that was terrible.

Loading all their equipment was just as fun as setting it up. There was one burly man who looked like he could run a mafia, and his vocabulary consisted of "Daat. Truck," supplemented by pointing to what he wanted moved onto the truck. At one point, he asked Trudeau "Forklift?" Confused, Trudeau grabbed a flatcart for him, and said "No forklift, just a cart." After five minutes of insane waving and mixed Engish, Trudeau finally figured out the man wanted the elevator to retrieve boxes from the basement.

A crew call that probably could have been done in two hours took from 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. It took a minimum of five minutes for any of us to figure what the Russians wanted, and another ten to show them where, when, or how. It was a long day, but was full of good humor.