Rehearse your parts!
Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts.
– Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Well, you can tell I’ve had a crazy week, because I took very few pictures!
The big source of stress this week has been our Movement final, which is a four to five minute solo (or small group) piece we have to choreograph ourselves. Four minutes of choreography is a lot, but I’m really enjoying the challenge. I’m up to three and a half minutes as of this morning, so I’m feeling pretty good about it! Other class adventures include “Hot Seat” in-character improvised interviews in Acting, putting together our scenes in Stage Combat, and a very heated discussion about Medea in Dramatic Criticism. We also turned in our second paper on Friday, so this weekend has felt like a big sigh of relief.
Honestly, I’m going to kind of skim over the week, because we had a massive weekend. Most of my evenings were full of homework anyway, except for Thursday, when we saw Measure for Measure at the Young Vic. I had never seen the play before (and read it for the first time last week, in preparation for going to see it), but I absolutely loved the production. It was done in a contemporary setting, which I thought worked really well with the themes of sexual corruption and, on the other extreme, sexual puritanism; they also used video projections of the actors throughout, which was a cool way to illustrate how, when we are surrounded by media, our private lives tend to become everyone’s business. (The only downside – apart from some questionable acting choices from Isabella – was that that night was Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes Day, so we missed out on the opportunity to experience a very English holiday)
After turning in our papers and enjoying a relaxing, class-free afternoon on Friday, we were up early Saturday morning to get on the bus for Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s about a two-hour drive from London, and it’s the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s birthplace, and his grave. I hoped to have time to visit the grave, but a group of us made the decision to use our free time to go to the Museum of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which cost five pounds and was worth about that (but super silly and fun, so still a good time). Then we all met at the Swan Theatre for the RSC’s performance of Love for Love.
I didn’t really like the performance, to be honest, but it might have just been due to personal taste. The costume design was probably my favorite part, so I mostly paid attention to that when the play was . . . less than completely engaging. After a dinner break, we went to see another show, Relatively Speaking at the Bear Pit Theatre. We didn’t realize until we got there that it was a community theatre production, which basically sums it up. It was interesting to see some community theatre here, because we’ve been seeing such high-budget shows, but I think I’ll keep spending my money on those rather than returning to the Bear Pit.
Our bus got us back to our flats close to midnight, so we went to bed pretty much right away. Sunday morning I got up early to head in to school and work on my Movement piece. Then, once all my homework was done, I hung out with friends. We spent the afternoon in Picadilly Circus, exploring the big fancy department stores and looking at the Christmas decorations.
This post is late, I know, but it’s currently Monday morning and I have class in about twenty minutes. Ready for another crazy week!