Her first role in real Theater is as a cleaning woman who has two silent entrances in the first and second acts. She walks around the set, swiping a rag at typewriters and blowing dust off the office desks. It is a Soviet comedy, and her speechless performance makes the audience laugh. Since Soviet comedies make up a big chunk of their repertory, Sasha has to think that this is the genre the audiences prefer, the genre that doesn’t seem to demand much acting. She suddenly feels nostalgic for the classics her drama school required. She feels that her friends Lara and Slava, who make up her kompaniya, are more interesting and complex than the characters they play onstage.

Their small kompaniya—three like-minded friends with shared interests—is the microcosm of Theater, a tiny extension of the dictum they were taught in drama school that Theater was the microcosm of the world. The three of them don’t usually go home after rehearsals like everyone else. They sit in the backstage café and talk about the plays in their repertory and the roles they would like to play.

“Masha in The Seagull,” Lara says, not hesitating even for a second. “I’ve always wanted to be in mourning for my life.” What she has told Sasha about the secret pain of damage and debasement, about her older brother back home and then their assistant dean, may indeed require mourning. When she looks at Lara, her own anxieties and guilt tend to shrink, and that’s when she feels lighthearted and unencumbered, upbeat enough to want to play Irina from Three Sisters, at least Irina in acts 1 and 2, when there is still a featherlight measure of hope.