Grigory Kofman - a very nice and interesting man from Russia

http://www.lik-masterklass.com/ - Russian speakers/readers, enjoy!

Ages ago I contacted a company called GOFF who run a week-long site-specific festival in a forest in Russia, about 300km from Moscow and not very far from Latvia. I think I told them about Communism and the artistic director Grigory (after a lot of morfix and whatnot) arranged to meet me at Kiryat Motzkin train station so's I could give him the dvd (in Hebrew with Romanian subtitles) and we could, er, chat. How we both happened to be in Kiryat Motzkin at the same time on the same day is another story which I would write if I did not mind being the sort of blog person that I don't like.

Anyhow, we had a lovely meeting on a bench with some vending machine beverages as there was nowhere to sit on the train platform and there is, er, nothing in KM. Grigory was really interesting and talked to me lots about Russian culture and antisemitism and practicalities of forest theatre festivals as well as the implications of having to cut a 19-strong cast down to 8. Nico also suggested I bring up the Karov production of Spirit Of The Forest by Chekhov which I way prefer the idea of now I know they could do it around trees and that.