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Moments before the curtain goes up, a shirtless actor hammers spotlight brackets onto a fly rod hanging over the stage. An actress frets over finding a parking spot, worried about how much time it will take her to get into costume and apply her makeup. Another actress stands outside the theatre quietly reciting her lines to herself as her partner in a dance number listens. A crowd of some sixty-odd people mills around the theatre entrance waiting for the signal to be seated; then there is a crush for seats and no end of murmuring as the audience settles itself before the lights dim, music blares and the show goes on.

Such is the performance style of Misteria, a theatre company comprised of emigre‚ Russians who spend long hours laboring to create something that adds to their lives and helps them cope with living half way around the world in country very unlike the one they once called home.

Misteria began when Olga Reznova, a forty-something native of Odessa who has worked here as a registered nurse for a decade, decided that the lack of Russian theatre in San Diego was just too much to bear. She sought out some friends to talk about creating a theatre in San Diego for the emigr‚ community. Irina Alpatieva and Elena Krasnova lent their organizational effort and support and soon, Reznova wrote produced a fifteen minute one act entitled A Few Surgeries in Coronado, a play about an elderly woman's health troubles and the bizarre pitfalls she faces trying to navigate the health care system. The lead character was played by Olga's mother, Larissa, and her performance was enough to bring audiences back for more. The show ran for several weeks, taking place in the living room of Olga's house in Mira Mesa, amid the children's toys and furniture. As word got out about the play, more Russians called to reserve seats-and a theatre came awkwardly into being.

Everything about Misteria is improvised; there are no funds for shows in tight times and among Russians raised with a Soviet ethic, volunteerism is relied on for most needs. People donate costumes, furniture for sets, cords for lighting and sundry boomboxes, making Olga's garage look like the small stock shed behind the Old Globe. Actors volunteer for shows, even if they haven't been on stage since childhood. The repertory company includes a retired engineering inspector, two scientists, a Latvian registered nurse who works at UCSD Medical, Krasnova's 16-year old son Slava, and an actor and mime from Lvov in the Ukraine. There's an actress who is a massage therapist whose American-born daughter is on her way to Moscow to study theatre and an another actor who is a general contractor. Elena Krasnova is a graduate from the Odessa Conservatory with a long history of singing in theatre in Odessa and Moscow before coming to America and finding work as a programmer.

As each new member of the company signs on, Reznova finds greater challenges to create plays that can accomodate them and their varying levels of talent. This has added bold dimension-as well as many challenges- to the productions. One of the first of the "larger" ones was Cinderella in San Diego, a spoof that drew on local themes and issues common to all in the Russian community. Since then, there have been seven more shows in the last three years, all written by Reznova.

As Misteria grew, it became impossible to fit actors and audience in Reznova's house, and the company had to cast its nets for new space. At press time, Misteria is in negotiation with an east-county synagogue for its basement for the coming season. They will have to find more seats since Russians from San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles are pledging to come for the next season which begins in September. Among the coming season's shows will be a hit from this year. Cagliostro in San Diego, or the Formula for Happiness is about an evil magician who attempts to use black magic in order to steal a painting made by ancient Mayans that somehow holds a formula that when deciphered, confers eternal happiness on the discoverer. The painting hangs on the wall of a Russian's house in-you guessed it-Mira Mesa. Cagliostro, being an evil magician, doesn't know what happiness is and must find a former fellow student from his magician-school days hundreds of years before for clues on the finer things in life. Once he tracks her down, she agrees to use her art to help him find the painting and translate the elusive code. Following the usual number of hair-breadth escapes, stealthy felonious thefts and handfuls of contretemps, Cagliostro gets his goods-and discovers what happiness is with his willing former classmate-who very carefully lured him into the caper.

Theatre everywhere is an organic statement that stands in contrast to the life flowing past it and the times surrounding it and Misteria is a wonderful anomaly of Russian consciousness set in what might be at first glance the inhospitable clime of southern California. But the continuing effort of a handful of people bring much joy to their fellow countrymen who travel great distances for their work. Plans are being discussed for developing a non-profit status and making Misteria a going concern like the rest of theatre life in San Diego. If that happens, southern California just might be more fertile than anyone could have dreamed, and the tens of thousands of Russians who live in the region and northern Mexico may find that even here, a bit of Russian culture can find fertile ground.