During the first year, no one is allowed to speak in acting class. For two semesters, they drink from imaginary glasses and eat with nonexistent forks and knives, diligently screw in light bulbs, feel the wind standing on the bow of a ship, thread needles and sew up holes. For her first final exam in acting, Sasha picks up imaginary clamps and scalpels and hands them to the surgeon played by Lara. She has learned to do this by observing a nurse during surgeries at Central Clinical Hospital, four operations a week, for two months. The rest in their class silently slice apples, bang make-believe keys of typewriters, sway in crowded buses, knit scarves, chew on lemon wedges, embrace illusory lovers, wait in lines, walk pretend dogs, uncork wine bottles, wash underwear in the sink, stand on the observation deck of the highest building in Moscow and look down at the sprawling city laid out below—all on the small stage of their freshman studio.

By the end of the first semester, three students are dismissed for professional inadequacy, and Sasha feels a rush of overpowering relief that she is not among them. Their dean calls it “the first wave of attrition,” and the word first sends a cold shiver down her spine.

There are twenty-two of them left, ten girls and twelve boys. “My girls and boys” is what their artistic director Vera Konstantinovna calls them, and a smile spreads wrinkles across her face as she surveys her students before their History of Theater class. Vera, as they call her when she is not within earshot, is short and small-boned, and Sasha wonders if she, too, was an ingenue when she was young. When she speaks, she waves her ringed fingers as if conducting an orchestra, and her sharp nose and a green shawl around her shoulders make her look like an exotic bird.

Vera tells them that they are now actors and will always live on this side of the curtain, the stage side. From the time they walked through these doors, she says, the world has split in two: one half is Theater, where everyone is one of them, svoi; the other half is the audience, chuzhoi. Among the audience is a world they are told to observe, full of situations they will use onstage and characters they will inhabit when they are finally allowed to speak. They are different, those people; they lead normal, ordinary lives; they are civilians, as Sasha’s teacher calls them. By the end of the first year, they must learn to become them.

But what about Sasha’s mother and grandma? Are they also on the audience side of the curtain, among the ordinary people, or are they with Sasha, on the stage side? Does Theater allow those close to you into the space where acting happens? And where is Andrei in this new scheme of things? Which side is he on?