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The Moscow Times Moscow Guide – Winter 2008

Since the middle of autumn one of the most important topics of discussion, could only be … no, not the financial crisis… New Year! The winter issue of The Moscow Times Moscow Guide is entirely devoted to New Years celebrations. Seven great ideas for celebrating the “Night of Nights” will help readers finalise their plans and choose how and where to party, give fresh ideas and lots of practical advice.

And don’t forget – problems will come by themselves, but happiness and luck need an invitation. That why the more cheerful and light-hearted your celebration of the coming holiday is, the happier and more successful 2009 will be for you.

The Crisis: Signs of a Kremlin Fearful Of Unrest
Sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher has painted a disturbing picture of what might emerge from the financial crisis, forecasting continued unemployment, huge protests and spreading violence.

Market Matters: Huge Grain Harvest No Boon for Farmers
This year Russia is enjoying the biggest grain harvest it has ever seen -- and farmers couldn't be more worried.



Thursday, January 08, 2009 Updated at 31 December 2008 22:36 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » Issue 4035 » City Wise

Bikas Das / AP

The busy streets and year-round heat of Calcutta, India, are evoked in the German-directed, one-performer show.

Call-Center Drama For One Person Only

20 November 2008By Maria Levina / Special to The Moscow TimesThe locals in Calcutta like to mash potatoes with rice, add mustard oil and simmer the mix to a tasty meal. They also like to pray to the god of wealth and success, Ganesha, an elephant deity with a big curved trunk, flapping ears and an oversized belly riding a mouse.

All this I learned in about 40 minutes sitting alone in a drab hotel room in northern Moscow as the wind howled outside. I became part of the performance in the English language show "Call Cutta in a Box," part of the New European Theatre Festival (NET), where there is only one spectator and one actor.

The actor in this case is a real worker at a call center in Calcutta, a 23-year-old woman who told me that Calcutta (or "Kolkata") is the capital of the state of West Bengal in eastern India and is India's third-largest city with a population of more than 15 million people. The weather is 24 degrees Celsius right now in late November, skies are clear and every day, more than 1 million commuters pass over the city's Howrah Bridge, the busiest bridge in the world.

The point of "Call Cutta in a Box" is not to provide one with a glimpse of life in India but to connect — in an unexpected and unobtrusive way — a human being on a cold November evening in Moscow with someone just as human sitting in Calcutta on a hot November night.

"Can I ask you a philosophical question?" asks the voice on the other end of the line. "If you believed in reincarnation, and you died, what kind of animal would you turn into?"

Net Festival The "actors" work in a call center.

"Call Cutta in a Box" is showing this week as part of the New European Theatre Festival, which is targeted toward a multilingual audience with shows in English, Italian, Polish and German. Highlights include "Shukshin's Short Stories," directed by Latvian director Alvis Hermanis — an interpretation of the works of Russian writer and film director Vasily Shukshin, starring Chulpan Khamatova and Yevgeny Mironov — and the Danton's Case" by young Polish director Jan Klata.

The unusual "Call Cutta" was created by three German directors — Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel — who all have experience with theater projects where roles are played by "experts" of a particular profession not actors.

Without giving too much away, the show is not just a conversation but a clever mystery tour that each participant can take in whatever direction he or she wants, getting to know the person in Calcutta as closely as one's imagination or social aptitude allows.

The actor and spectator communicate through phone, then Skype and even via web cam. The real art, though, is in the chance the show gives people to make friends with each other despite being time zones apart and coming from different cultures.

The thrill starts when one is brought into a hotel room and left sitting there wondering what will happen next. Then the telephone rings. The teapot starts boiling by itself. And it turns out the person on the other end of the line knows more about you than you know about yourself. But where it ends is different for everyone.

"Call Cutta in a Box" runs from Nov. 20 to 22, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Hotel "Irbis," 1 Gostinichnaya Ul. M. Vladikino or Petrovsko-Razumovskaya. Tickets are 500 rubles. 650-1688. www.netfest.ru The New European Theatre Festival runs through Dec. 5 at various locations throughout Moscow.