Several days ago I went to the theatre with my friends from the faculty of Languages and Literature of St.-Petersburg University. They invited me to a quite unusual staging. The play itself was called "Marlene and her friends. The Lost Stars". It was about the life of several very famous stars, who emigrated from France and Germany to the US during the World War II. Among those people were Marlene Dietrich, Erich Maria Remarque, Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Gabin, Kurt Julian Weill. Their art got mixed with several different US ones. Magic sounds of Louis Armstrong, fantastic vocal of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, George Gershwin. All these poeple are the real history of incomparable cabaret genre.

All the roles were played by the students and ex-students of the University. I was really shocked, because they danced and sang as proffesionals. Actors who sang for Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were just great! Their "SummerTime" was extraordinary.

The play took place in 3 different languages: English, French and German. I clearly understood only the English part. As for the German part - there were only few words that I rememnered from my high school german classes. I was lucky, a friend of mine who was sitting next to me studied simultaneous translation, so she was able to give me an idea (in real-time) of what people on the stage were talking about. The rest of the audience were people who talk on 3-4 or even more languages so it wasn't a big deal for them to understand.

It was quite interesting for me, a software developer who work at Sun Microsystems, to visit this theatre. Not just becuase it was a great show, there were very talented actors and etc. Sun Microsystems plays a key role in the industry providing the ability for numerous developers throughout the world to understand each other using one single language on many different platforms and devies. It was even more funnily, because I'm working on a project, which makes this come true.

I recommend to all of you - try to find similar theatre, the obtained experience is worth it.