May tours become a tradition in the shower theater
From April 29 to May 8, 2019, Dushegrei traveled to three countries and played eight performances. We want to thank everyone involved in our wonderful journey.
When the road leads west, it is impossible to bypass the beloved St. Elisabeth Monastery in Minsk. For five years of friendship, it has become our home. They are waiting for us there, and we always want to return there. On April 30, we showed the first performance in Tsnyanka and spent half the day in the recording studio of the monastery, for the first time making a sound recording of one of our performances. Thanks to M. Agapia (Knotko), Olga Milashevskaya, Ekaterina, Svetlana Semenyuk, sound engineer Alexei and manager of the kindergarten "Children's cloud" Irina Yermak. Tulips, daffodils, apple trees, cherries, bird cherry trees bloom, lilacs swell. Everything blooms.
The next stop is Vilnius. While we were waiting for our turn at the border of Belarus and Lithuania for five hours, a festive dinner was prepared for us in the hospitable house of Grigory and Yuliana Boyarov. Do you know what zeppelins are? That's right, airships. But your answer is wrong. This is a delicious dish of traditional Lithuanian cuisine. The hosts fed us zeppelins, gave us tea and put us to bed. The next day we showed three performances.
Victoria and Alpha Rameykos, warm hugs to you! You gave us the most precious thing - your viewers. We have never had such a large kindergarten audience (more than 100 children from 3 to 6!) It seems to have coped, although at first it was scary.
The next performance was also not an easy one: a gym with echo-terrible acoustics and about 70 fifth-graders who were fed up with entertainment. But the good fairy Snezhana Prokopovich managed to unite everyone.
In the evening, strict but very grateful spectators from the Old Believer community of Vilnius were waiting for us. After two "loud" performances, silence rang in the hall, but it was friendly and comforting.
Ana Schmidt helped us show the performance in another kindergarten in Vilnius, where the children pleased us with their quick wit and composure.
By the evening of May 3, the road led us to the border of Lithuania and Latvia. The small town of Zeimelis and the Lithuanian cultural center with Daiva Skrupskelyte, it is impossible to forget you! For the first time we played with simultaneous translation, learned Lithuanian words and used them to decorate Russian jokes in the performance. It turned out well. Thanks to the photographer
Larisa Kazakeviciene!
We got to Zeimelis with the light hand of Dmitry Shchegolev. On a dark, cold Riga December, he invited us to his apple orchard in Bauska (Latvia). "Come when it blooms!" This phrase was the beginning of our May tour.
Dmitry and his daughter Marfa met us in Zeimelis and introduced us to the wonderful Laima Skopiene and Algis Skopas. Their farm on the Lithuanian-Latvian border looks like Noah's Ark: who doesn't live in it! And shaggy cows, and curly lambs, and geese, and chickens ... When we carefully opened the cage with two parrots the next morning, we found a clutch of five eggs. The owners of the farm are creating the Garden of Eden with their own hands. The main thing in its cultivation is love and freedom.
Well, then there was an apple orchard with 400 apple trees! And the hospitality of Dmitry and Yustina Shchegolev, and a photo session with songs under a pear tree, and a tour of the city of Bauska. Dmitry and Martha the wise man showed us the city and the ancient fortress, and in the evening we learned that almost everything can be made from apples. Dima took us around the garden and told us that he wanted to hold an “Apple Festival” in August: play beautiful music among ripe apples, sing folk songs and dance. Having got to know the owner better, we are sure that he will definitely do it. He will succeed.
From Bauska our path lay to Riga. In the Old Believer community of Riga, we performed in the winter with a nativity scene, and now we have arrived at Easter. Thanks to the organizer Svetlana (Tatyana) Volgina and all our Riga viewers! Thanks to the studies of the ethnographer Sergei Olenkin, Russian folk song traditions are loved and known in the community.
There were also unexpected acquaintances. One of the spectators undertook to fix our harmonica, which had a stuck button. I took it to my house and returned it updated two hours later. Arkady Zimov, low bow to you and gratitude for the meeting, conversation and wonderful melodies on the accordion!
Well, the last point of our May route was the sunny Yur-ma-la. Thank you, Katya Kalinina and Anton Lysenkov! For the warmth and joy of communication, for playing on the green grass, for the fact that we will definitely meet on the sandy seashore and drink a cup of coffee in Anton's "working room".
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The most interesting and wonderful thing in life is people. Tours give us new acquaintances. Acquaintances often develop into friendship and love. There are many wonderful people, and more and more of them we know by name!
From the warm-hearted theater Svetlana Rapenkova