Russian Conversation by staging a play

[Andrew Jameson]

Kataev's "Kvadratura Kruga" was written in the late
1920s, but the content could apply to any pair of impecunious
young couples starting out in life. The lines as spoken are
predominantly short and interactive. It has plenty of totally farcical
scenes which the students will love, lots of irony, elements of
love and romance, and a crazy poet who bursts in, declaims
ridiculous poetry and tries to hang himself.  It's all in very
bad taste and great fun. The Soviet element is not much in
evidence, and only a few cultural references need to be
explained. See what you think.
Performed it myself at Oxford years ago, the audience
seemed to like it.
Andrew Jameson
Lancaster, UK

----- Original Message -----
From: "Otto Boele" <oboele at IDC.NL>
To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] question: teaching Russian Conversation by staging a play


I remember we did Leonid Andreev's play "Liubov' k blizhnemu" at the infamous Pushkin institute in
Moscow back in 1986. It was fun and the language is quite colloquial.

Otto Boele



-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Alexei Khamin [mailto:alexei_khamin at YAHOO.COM]
Verzonden: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 5:51 PM
Aan: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Onderwerp: [SEELANGS] question: teaching Russian Conversation by staging
a play


Greetings,

I am teaching Conversational Russian, and this semester I'd like to try
something new. I'd like to have my students (I have seven in the class) to
learn and stage a Russian play. Teaching through that sort of performative
means is known to be effective as it helps the students to learn not only good
grammar and vocabulary yet also interaction skills, including culture specific
gestures etc. However, I am not sure what text/play would serve my purposes the
best. Obviously, there're short plays by Chekhov and Bulgakov, yet I am not
decided. I'd like to use a play, which is relatively short (enough for the
students to learn in the course of one semester) and which would have my seven
students equally engaged; furthermore, I want them to learn good yet relatively
contemporary (as opposed to archaic) Russian that they can freely use in
conversation. If any of you, colleagues, have any suggestions and/or would like
to share their experience, I would really appreciate that. Thank you very much.
--alexei khamin


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