Artem Tulchinsky
“A what harvest?”
“Turnip.”
“What of it?“
“Nothing.”
“But what do you have to say about yourself?”
“What do I have to do with anything?”
“Come on. Quit playing games. What do you have to say about yourself, and your class?”
“Well… I was accepted into GITIS.”
“Just like that? They admitted you?”
“Well, to tell the truth, no. At first they didn't want to take me.”
“Why not? What was the problem?”
“It's just that I was a polite young man with a musical education. I sang in a church choir. Basically, I was a paragon of virtue. And the master teacher was putting together a class of screw-ups.”
“What caused such a good-looking young man to go into acting?”
“Where else could I go?”
“I dunno. You could have been a manager or a lawyer. You could have been a fine, upstanding citizen. You could have earned some money.”
“No! I wanted the romanticism of art, the flights of creativity, the magic of theatre, the miracle of improvisation, the ecstasy of applause, spectators' tears and the recognition of the Moscow theatre community.”
“Hm, yeah? Quite a speech there. But get to the point: How did you pass the entrance exams?”
“Two screw-ups decided to go to another institute and so I was accepted as an alternate.”
“Aha! So life's truth rears its head! What next?”
“Before I could make heads or tails of what was going on around me, the first year was over.”
“And then?”
“Before I could figure out what all those smart people wanted out of me, the second year was over.”
“You could have tried more than sucking your thumb. Then what?”
“Then it was the third year and we started playing our thesis productions —, the flights of creativity, the magic of theatre, spectators' tears and the recognition of Moscow theatre.”br> “Wait a minute! At ease! You think you're a comedian? Go load the set on the truck.”
There you have one of the graduates of the directing department at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) for 2006. He is the tall, brown-eyed, blond, I would even say the ecstatic, Artyom Vladimirovich Tulchinsky.
