The Puppet Theater

Tonight we went to the Puppet Theater again. We hadn't really wanted to do that, but the nice ladies at the Kasa (box office) had been so insistent that we thought we should give it a try. We were assured by the woman who took the tickets yesterday that today's show would be "spectacular." So, even though England was playing Portugal in the World Cup quarter finals, we went over to the Puppet Theater for the second night in a row, passing by the Kharkiv version of the NY Public Library Building (which came first, I wonder?)

Ed had spent all day working on his report for the month of June on the status of the Kharkiv Public Defender Pilot Project, and I had spent the morning marketing and trying to find a travel agent who could write up our tickets for our trip to Moscow and Riga. I think I may have found a place - there are two travel agencies right off Lenin Square - one was closed and the other might be able to write the tickets on Monday - and, if not, they think the agency that's closed might be able to do it. So I already have my Monday morning planned - first a stop at the Russian Consulate (which I found during my marketing today), and then on to the travel agencies to try and finally get all our tickets. When I got back I typed up Ed's report (he still has a couple of sections left to finish), and by 5:30 we were both ready for an outing.

Of course the ticket taker recognized us - most people do if we go somewhere more than once - we must be the only Westerners in town, and two of the few Americans to ever come here! We went into the theater and were surprised to see that there were no children! It was pretty full, but only adults - and as many men as women (unlike the ballet audience, which is mostly women). The show began with a Cabaret type act with one man and three women (very scantily dressed) with red, gold and silver wigs. All three had great "attitude" and were quite funny. Then a man (sort of a ringmaster) appeared on stage and the puppets began to make their appearances. There were all sorts of animals - 3 pigs, 2 horses, 2 sheep, a goat and a donkey - and very cute they were too! The puppet antics were interspersed with dances and songs performed by the ringmaster and cabaret girls. Even though I couldn't figure out exactly what was being said or sung, I could tell that the pigs were getting fatter and eating a lot, that two of them ganged up on the third, and that they were calling and addressing meetings of all the other animals, beginning all their talks with "Tavarish," which I knew meant "Comrades." I told Ed what Tavarish meant, and he said that he could tell because this was George Orwell's "1984." We had gotten a program, and I could see that this show premiered in 1993, but the title didn't seem to be 1984, because that would be the same in Russian or Ukrainian as it is English! When we got back to the apartment I looked up the words of the title in my Ukrainian-English dictionary, and learned that one word meant "estate, manor, courtyard" and the other meant "cattle, beast or brute." Hmmm - and then I got it - "Animal Farm" I said! And Ed said "Right - and that's what I meant when I said 1984." And I know that this is, in fact, what he meant - he just got the two titles mixed up - and I don't think I ever would have worked out Animal Farm from those definitions if I hadn't been thinking of George Orwell. (The Ukrainian or Russian spelling of George Orwell is hard to believe - phonetically it would be something like "Dgeordge Oroozll" - and Animal Farm is "Skohtniy Dvor"). Here's how it looked on the program:
СКОТН6ІЙ ДВОР
Джордж Орузлл.

It was a lot of fun and we got back in time to see the end of regulation play in the England-Portugal game (0-0), and the added time and final kick-off where, unbelievably, the Portuguese actually missed two kicks (they weren't blocked by the goalie, they just missed), but still won the game because the Portuguese goalie stopped every kick but one, while the English goalie didn't stop any. I guess I'm beginning to get interested in soccer myself - it's a lot like basketball, but not as much fun to watch because, in soccer, the ball can travel very far and very fast, so the camera can't focus on the ball in close-ups (it has to be showing the action in a distant shot so that you can follow the ball), while in basketball, the camera can really zoom in on the player who has the ball and you can see the action close-up. I guess when there's nothing else on TV in English, even soccer becomes fascinating!!!