MISHA: So it seems… I arrived in America, where I didn’t understand anything or anyone… It was an unbelievable, astonishing country… And I with my Russian mentality dreamed of accomplishing something new, to astonish all country. Later I understood that it could not be any different…
(Pause)
Remember! When we come to America, whole world went crazy. In Germany fascism, in Russia communism… I wanted to warn the American people that the same thing could happen here… Maybe didn’t understand anything…
XENIA: You don’t understand a lot of things…
MISHA: But I always believed in the great mission of theater… And I believe now…
XENIA: Misha, there is no mission…
Misha (surprised): Do you really think that?
XENIA (confidently): Yes…
MISHA (confused): Then why did I become an actor? You think only because for to make the audience relax and laugh, instead of getting any emotional experience?
XENIA: Of course! The people work all day. They are tired. They come to theater to forget about their real life… They want to laugh…
MISHA (very intensely, sadly, showing his emotions by, standing, sitting, etc): Xenia, often I have the same dream… I’m sitting in my theater dressing room in Moscow, make up all over my face. I’m playing “Hamlet”… wait nervously… and then the warning bell rings. I walk out on stage. In front of me this dark silent auditorium and I speak into this empty darkness the first words of Hamlet’s monolog, “To be, or not to be”… Then I wake up… and recognize where I am and I am filled with such melancholy… I know I will never get to play Hamlet… not ever… not ever in America. It’s not like Russia…
(Misha slumps from exhaustion. His eyes fill with tears. He takes a cigarette… He lights it… takes a hungry drag. Xenia doesn’t stop him)
MISHA (seriously intensely): Now I have come to the conclusion that it was a complete mistake to leave our native land…
XENIA (upset): Oh Misha! Stop! Stalin was crazy. He was arresting actors right and left…
MISHA(still intense, distressed, another brief but relaxed drag on the cigarette): I toed the line. Stalin respected… my uncle…
XENIA (tensely): Don’t be silly… Misha dear, don’t break down. We are alive here, in America!
(Pause)
You have accomplished so much here…
MISHA (intensely, enjoying each cigarette drag): What have I accomplished in your opinion? Except I’m alive?
XENIA (hasty): Your books are selling well… You have taught many famous actors, and friends…
