Tallinn Fringe Festival proudly presents

www.fringe.ee

Performer: Aleksandr Popov
Genre: Stand-up comedy
Language: Russian
Duration: 60 min
Tickets: 5€/10€

Tacky Teacher

I was a nightclub doorman with two college degrees.

One morning the phone rang. A school wanted to interview me. A friend had suggested I might survive in front of a classroom. After all, I had been surviving nightlife so far.

I never thought they would actually hire me. Be real. I’m a goon with enough skeletons to fill a factory of closets.

But the headmistress was desperate — the school year was about to begin.

And so it happened.

A day after learning my father had passed away, I found myself standing in front of the most demanding audience I had ever encountered: a classroom full of students.

Let me tell you a story about a man who probably should never have set foot in a classroom as an educator.

I am not the man you want teaching your children.
Unless, of course, you want them to witness an overgrown garden gnome slowly falling apart under questions powerful enough to conquer the multiverse of mayhem.

I am the saddest example of an unoiled cog in the machinery of schooling.
The most miserable knight of sorrow at the round table of knowledge.

From “Post-Soviet Upbringing” and “50 Shades of Bouncer” comes the tale of the “Tacky Teacher” — a man destined, perhaps, to become a “Lamenting Lawyer.”

No skills. No mindset. No preparation.

Out of the rawest grief grows a desperate hunger: the need to leave a mark, to prove something resembling manhood. He was never meant to teach anyone. He was only expected to survive.

Tacky Teacher is the origin story that was never meant to originate.

Bouncer by night. Teacher by day.

He walks the twilight zone between human darkness and the fragile glow of the common good. Always a problem, never just a solution.

But still holding the torch.

Lighting the way in the endless quest for knowledge.
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