“Your penis is on my hand!” the actress is screaming.
“The book” is The Master and Margarita, a bizarre absurdist epic written in the 1940s by star-crossed Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov. Originally a doctor, Bulgakov is considered one of his country’s premiere 20th-century authors, but his life story is a sad one. His writing career fatefully coincided roughly with Stalin’s political one, and his brand of passionate and sarcastic parody was exactly the wrong sort of thing to be creating in those days; he was harassed by Soviet authorities his entire adult life. (One translator of The Master and Margarita, Mirra Ginsburg, writes that Bulgakov once calculated that of 300 articles written about his work in the Soviet press, 298 were negative.)
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Some of the humor is more than a bit metaphysical, and the casual reader can be forgiven for wondering what in heck the book is really about. “The Master and Margarita is an extraordinary combination of three things,” explains Weil. “First of all, it’s a version of the Faust legend–Margarita was the woman Faust loved. Secondly, it’s a very straightforward retelling of the book of Matthew. Finally, it’s a wacko send-up of Soviet life, using all the instruments the Russians have loved for decades: the devil, good food, parties. The way he puts it together is incredible.”
The workshop leaders included a Russian folk dance instructor, Katya Kapelnikov, who put the group through a demanding regimen in fractured English; magician Eugene Burger, who taught the group sleight of hand and other tricks after swearing them to secrecy; acrobat Sylvia Hernandez and clown Jeffrey Jenkins, both from Ringling Brothers; and an array of physical trainers who helped the group develop the muscle they’d need for the antics. Only after the training was done did the company go into official rehearsals; they’re working this month and next in anticipation of a March 12 opening in association with Steppenwolf at the latter’s studio theater.
“I want my leg to stop hurting,” says a third, to general laughter.
Some actors mount treadmills; others tumble on the mat; a pair climb the two webs. But the most imposing challenge tonight is the seesaw contraption, known as the teeterboard. Almost every Lookingglass member, producer Churchill included, will eventually learn to be catapulted into the air and execute a flip.
