It’s Gonna Be A Thing

Today was evidence: Murphy’s Law is real.

Class this morning consisted of Theatre History, which was interesting. Something to do with no one but the “stage manager” of sorts having the entire script, because there were no copyright laws, so if someone owned the entire script, they could sell it, so actors only had their own lines and cues. Then our Masterclass with a Theatre Critic. It was a little boring, since I don’t particularly care about theatre criticism, and he didn’t say how to become an actor, or what he looks for.

Today was also Tart Twednesday, so we got tarts. Fine. Yay.

Then acting. We did a super fun exercise where we had previously chosen a picture of someone we empathised with, then create a backstory for them, and we would sit in the hot seat for the class and they would ask us questions and we would answer as that character.

"Adelaide Warren"

This was my character. Her name is Adelaide Warren, she is 27, the year is 1924. Born to Frank and Darling Miller, Darling died in childbirth. Her father is a wealthy banker. She left home at the age of 16 to become an actress in Hollywood, enamoured of Charlie Chaplin, and loving to play pretend. She is married to Calvin Warren, who gets along better with her father than with her. He is 34. She is having an affair with Jack Benjamin, 22. It was so much fun. I discovered so much about her through all those questions and created such a wonderful story. This is why I am an actor: to play pretend, and that’s what we did all day for three and half hours. I was in such a wonderful mood! Little did I know, everything would just collapse.

We had previously (as you know) taken an hour long tube ride with my computer to get tickets, which weren’t available due to ridiculous box office times, then taken the hour long tube ride back, only to go back tonight for the actual show after getting our tickets online. Right, so the show was at seven, our tickets were at the door. Tierney and I rushed home to drop off our stuff, and would meet Sienna there (she got out later than us). I think about checking my e mail before we leave, but that’s just wasted time. Nah…

As we’re rushing out of the flats, I see that I have a voice mail… I try to listen to it, but it’s incredibly quiet and I can’t hear anything. All I can make out is that it’s from the venue where the concert is being held. Probably just calling to confirm that we have tickets. It’s probably fine. Lots of tube delays, because God was trying to warn us to just STAY PUT! On our very roundabout way of getting to the Angel station, an hour away (because trains aren’t working), I finally manage to hear the message: due to an illness, the Hot Melts will not be playing. Well, OK… I don’t care about the Hot Melts, I paid to see the Darling Buds. We’re already half way there, and Sienna’s probably already there because she left before all the delays. When we FINALLY get to the Angel station, Sienna is nowhere to be found, nor can I get a hold of her because her number is “currently out of service”. Tierney is running off to the venue to see what the deal is, and if Sienna is there, I’m walking frantically around the tube station, to see if she’s there, and nothing. Tierney comes back empty handed, saying that this guy she spoke to said the whole show was canceled, but there were people in line. I call Sienna some more, nothing, we go down to the venue… Yup. It’s canceled. All of it. We walk back to the station, because now there’s the dilemma of finding Sienna. But hey, what’s this? A text? From Sienna? She’s at the venue?!

I finally get a hold of her, tell her to come back and that the show is canceled. At last, the three of us are together, but concert-less. We decide to go sit at a pub for a little while, since we’re all the way down here. An hour later, we make the hour trek back to Warwick Station. I morosely look on twitter what Jamie Campbell Bower has to say about the canceled show (because the venue is useless), and this is the kicker. The real cherry on top of the stupid sundae:

“Wearing a silly hat and a big chequered coat. En route to hyde park. X”

What’s this? Jamie is going to Hyde Park? I live so close to that! Scroll down…

“x marks the spot of tonight’s show 7.30 and freeeeeeeeeeeee!”

WHAT? FREE SHOW?

“Situation remedied. We will play an acoustic set somewhere in London today for free. Looking at Hyde park. Any takers? x”

.

…

Any other situation, save death, would be me at that concert. If I had checked my e mail before hand, if I had called the venue first, if we hadn’t stayed at that pub, even if we hadn’t originally gotten tickets! And of course, his last twitter was something about how good a show it was, and thanks to everyone who came and blah, blah freaking blah!

I had a nice half hour of yelling along with another girl in the program who had a similar disappointment tonight, and then watched Ricky Gervais… and I only feel slightly better. I still have a monologue to memorize.

E mails from D’Mommy brighten my day.

In other news, I still wasn’t sore this morning, and feeling very proud of myself. Physical Theatre this morning proved to be once again, fascinating. I think that may end up being the most valuable class I’ll take this semester. I’m learning more in that class about how to control emotions or behaviour through movements, and it’s so easy to explore different characters, and just jump into a role. All this crap that you’ll hear about needing inspiration to play a role, or “I wasn’t feeling it tonight” is an excuse for lazy acting, because it doesn’t matter if you’re uninspired or you can’t feel it. It’s the audience that matters, and you need to be able to produce things no matter what, and that’s what this class is, really. Today we explored the eight states of tension (but because Hugh takes so long to massage people, we only got through six, even though the other class did all eight).

1. The “Jellyfish” state. What happens when you remove all tension from your body? You collapse. We were supposed to answer the phone, someone was calling, asking what we wanted for dinner that night, and they keep calling because they keep forgetting. So how do you respond to them in each of the states? This one was mostly grunts. Basically, it’s a total relaxed, almost asleep state.
2. The “Just Woke Up” state. This one allows you to have just enough tension to stand up, but you’re still unsteady and flopping over. It’s hard to hold things in this state, and your breathing is slow and steady. (At least, mine was.) I did feel some impatience in this state, almost an irritation at everything, because all I wanted was to go back to #1.
3. Allison called this the “California” state, but I prefer the “Hipster” state. This one, you’re more balanced, but just loose. I was in an almost unalterable good mood with this state. Nothing could really bother me, and moving around was very fluid and easy.
4. This is your average state of tension… Not much to report here…
5. The “Stage Manager” state. This one is starting to get tensed, obviously. I had a need to control everything, and was looking around a lot more than I had been in my other states. My breathing became slightly more shallow, and I was so irritated by the damn person on the phone, because I had stuff to do!
6. The “James Bond” state, or what I prefer to call the “Action Hero” state. This one was as though you are in a dangerous situation, but it’s resolvable. It’s basically being an action hero, and I loved doing this one, because pretending you’re an action hero is the most fun kind of pretend! I was hyper-aware in this state, and my pace was changing a lot.
7. ?
8. ??

After that, we had Shakespeare, which was fairly uneventful. We went over our monologues from Caesar a little bit, and reviewed some scenes from All’s Well That Ends Well because we had tickets for it tonight. Then, everyone rushed frantically home to drop off their stuff before going off to Westminster Abbey to meet Michael there for our tour. It was pretty neat… not quite everything I was anticipating. We walked around for a little over an hour and a half, so by the end of it, I admit all I wanted to do was sit down. But we saw a whole bunch of famous people’s tombs, which was somewhat neat. There was Newton and Darwin (the most exciting), a butt load of artists including Ben Jonson (who is burying vertically because he couldn’t afford a bigger plot) and Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carrol, etc., lots of royals, the most notable of which were Elizabeth I, Bloody Mary, many kings, and Edward the Confessor, who dates back to (I’m almost positive) the 11th century. That’s… that’s very old.

After that, we were so close to the National, where we would be seeing All’s Well, that we went down there to hang out for a few hours before the show. Sienna and I got awesome tickets for Inherit the Wind, starring Kevin Spacey (£12, fourth row) and then we sat with two other LDAers at a crêpe café. I had a huge asparagus, cheddar and lemon sauce crêpe, followed by a nutella and banana crêpe. No doubt that I’ll fit into my corset on Monday…

At the National (which is huge, by the way) I bought myself a Daniel Radcliffe postcard, then we took our seats in the balcony of the Olivier Theatre for the show. (Oh yeah, sidenote! Did you know that Laurence Olivier is buried at Westminster Abbey? Somehow, it really peeves me that actors like him, or Siddons are buried there… Actors?! Anyway…) The set was quite impressive to begin with, though … it would have been significantly more appropriate for a tragedy. I could see it as a wonderful set for almost any of the tragedies, certainly Macbeth, Hamlet or Othello, but a comedy? Especially one that has the word “well” in the title. Twice. Well, trust your instincts.

In all fairness, the show was not as bad as it could have been, nor was it as bad as Troilus and Cressida, but it was not good. There were some cheap laughs, but the period was constantly in flux between at least five different times, the actress who played Helena was weak and not at all a strong enough heroine, and there are also some flaws in the script (sorry, Will). Not only that, but it was half an hour too long, and I was struck by a rolling soreness in the middle of the first half, so that I could not move my arms, and I know at least two other people had this happen. So I guess the workout on Monday really was that bad…

In any case, we were all stuck on the tube after eleven, traipsing miserably home in the heat, sore and exhausted, with homework awaiting us, because we didn’t have time to do any of it during the day. In fact, that’s what I’m off to do right now…

Yesterday was a classic lazy Sunday, followed by some scrambling to get work done. I woke up pretty late, a little after nine, had a slow morning full of yoghurt and showers, before packing a picnic and walking down to Regent’s Park with Sienna. We ate our delicious and healthy lunches and sat around. I watched a very cute family with a newborn girl named Ella (what? I’m not creepy…), making me nostalgic of the days when I was that little. After they left, I wrote a little bit, then conked out for about forty-five minutes. We decided to take the tube back instead of walk, and then I did homework for a while before being lazy again on the computer. Somehow, the laziness in the park, though more extreme, didn’t feel as unhealthy, since we were out in the sun.

But I more than made up for it today. We started with Historical Dance, which was fine. I wish I had a scale to confirm this, but I’m no longer at all supported by my corset, but I could swear I haven’t lost any weight. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that I would have gained weight. I think instead is that it’s become muscle weight instead of otherwise. In any case, it’s sad I don’t have a corset that fits. After, we had Movement which is the torture class. Everyone who had already had the class was moaning and sweating, so I was really expecting something awful, but it wasn’t all that bad. There was one thing we did that made me sweat a bit, and I remember shaking from effort a couple times, but I didn’t feel sore or smelly afterwards, which is a surefire sign that I’m getting more in shape! Yay…

Today was also the first day that students who actually go to Heythope College, our venue, started school. So it was a bit more crowded around campus than normal, which isn’t terrible. It’s not exactly like we’ll see them a lot, but it’s nice that it’s not totally empty, and the heat is at last on! Tierney and I did a small presentation on the life and works of Thomas Dekker for our Dramatic Lit class, which all went fairly uneventfully, but it did require that I bring my computer to school, which is heavy. (That comes into play later.) Then, last class of the day, stage combat/sword fighting. My goodness! I love that class. Gordon, our teacher, is wonderful, and I feel so Peter Pan-esque in that class. It makes me so want to be in that show - which is of course my dream role, and I will die unfulfilled if I’ve never played him. (He is officially my favourite literary character.)

After school, Sienna, Tierney and I decided we wanted to FINALLY get tickets for that concert on Wednesday, so we traipsed all the way over to Islington (about forty five minutes on the tube) to the venue to get tickets, so we wouldn’t have to pay credit card fees, or transaction fees, or all those stupid fees they charge you online. Sienna is hungry and thinking of nothing but milkshakes (we had heard about these wonderful milkshakes made with Aero chocolate at McDonalds - now I know what you’re thinking: McDonalds?!?!?! But it’s actually the lesser of two evils in that they are making strides to be as green as one can in such circumstances, and they also have strict guidelines in terms of their slaughterhouses and how they’re run. OK, I’m just trying to justify myself, but it’s actually better to get stuff there than at, say Taco Bell or In-N-Out), and I’m carrying around my insanely heavy computer and all my other school stuff during rush hour. In any case, once we finally find the venue, it’s still pretty convoluted. We climb up a flight of stairs to the sign, then box office is closed. Only open from noon to four… Well, we’re in class all that time, so that doesn’t help us. There’s a sign that says box office is upstairs, so we go up another flight to double check, but no, that sign was actually referring to the floor we were already on. OK, that makes sense… on opposite day. In any case, someone helpful tells us it’s downstairs, so we go down and find people who are manning the doors for the show that was taking place tonight, and we ask them how to go about getting tickets. Long story short, I just bought them online after an hour train ride to get home from Islington, and a mint chocolate McFlurry, when all I really wanted was a chocolate milkshake.

On the bright side, however, we did ride the longest escalator in Britain. Twice.

This morning, I went with Sienna, Tierney and Sinead to the Portobello Market, at Notting Hill Gate to look at the thrift stores and the market that’s down there. We found a £5 store, or several, and everything in it was £5. It was amazing. I bought myself a nice jacket (which I had been looking for), some new pants (which I had also been looking for), shoes (YELLOW CHUCKS! I couldn’t NOT get them…) and a cute animal bag, which will be nice to bring to school, since my backpack is getting pretty banged up. Further down the market, however - which goes on for what seems like miles - was packed with people. It was very unpleasant, slow moving and reeked of cigarettes. Tierney left us after a little while to go meet a friend of hers, then Sinead broke off to mosey around at a slower pace than us. Then, I needed to get out of it, because there was just too many people and it stank, so Sienna went back off up the way to do more shopping and I headed home.

After nearly four weeks of being here, it was about time I behave like an idiot on the underground. The nearest stop was on the Hammersmith and City line, which stops at Paddington, which is where you can go to get on the Bakerloo line, which gets us home. The only thing is, Paddington is also an above ground train station, and it’s massive. And the only way to get from the Bakerloo line to the Hammersmith and City line is to walk about ten minutes through the station, including swiping your card twice. So I decided I did not want to do this, and that I would rather ride the Hammersmith and City line one extra stop to Edgware Road, which is where the District and Circle lines intersect with the Hammersmith and City line, and I can just take one of those one stop back to Paddington for an easy switch to Bakerloo. Seems logical… Well, of course Edgware Road is in the middle of nowhere and poorly labeled, so after twenty minutes or so of getting off and on trains and going from platform to platform, I get on a District line train going west (the right direction) towards Paddington. Paddington station comes around…. and I just stay on the bus, until I go all the way to school. In any case, I did get home, it just took about an hour.

When Sienna got back from her lovely shopping, we both went to the Paddington Recreational Grounds in Maida Vale, which is very close to where we live. We even walked back and it was a nice simple stroll. We spent a while in that park, walking around, watching dogs and babies and cricket and football, and not a single person played frisbee. It was amazing. Then, home for a very pleasant dinner with my roommate and wife before heading out to a pub called Paradise (doesn’t that sound like a brothel?). It had a really strange atmosphere, very classy. Chandeliers and fake art. It was fun. Once we found a place to settle ourselves, some guys came up and were talking to us and were very nice. Strangely enough, two of them were American. But we talked for most of the time that we were out, and they bought us some drinks, and that was a fun thing I had never experienced before. The pub was insanely crowded though, and I’d really like to go back there one day when there’s not a private party going on, because it was difficult to navigate. After they left us, we stayed for a bit more, and then decided to try to catch the last train home instead of taking the night bus, which we managed to accomplish. Yay, Saturday! It was a good day. Lots of crowds, but good things, too.

Oh yeah, and fear not, for my new yellow shoes have been named. The right one: Romeo. The left one: Juliet. I figured it had to be something Shakespeare since I got them in England, and left side/moon side is your feminine side, so she had to be Juliet, and vice versa for Romeo. Can’t wait to label them when I get my label maker back!

Speech class was the first thing this morning. This woman… I decided today that she looks like she’s come out of the Triplets of Bellville. It was really annoying today, because, she’s still always complaining about things that are wrong and not saying how to fix them, AND she’s incredibly nitpicky about grammar and pronunciation, but she says “try and”. Drives me crazy.

Then we had Shakespeare. I just love Michael Winter. He was in a great mood today and really smiley, which was fantastic. He was telling us all these silly stories (of which I devised he’s probably gay, of course). We did work on Julius Caesar and after lunch when we came back to class, we did work on scenes from All’s Well That Ends Well, which we’ll be seeing on Tuesday of next week. We performed some scenes, which was fun. Hugh is absolutely awful. I mean, laughably. I can’t believe he’s in the program. Really doesn’t say much about how the rest of us got in… And some people you wouldn’t expect to be good were really good, and vice versa.

I had my second and last writing tutorial, just to check that I can string two sentences together. He only had one question about content, to clarify my meaning, and seemed very pleased with my writing. So that was painless. My plan after class, since I got out at 1605 was to go buy tickets for a concert I want to go to on Wednesday, but I wanted to buy Comedy of Errors, because that’s the next play we’ll be working on for Shakespeare. So I went with a really nice girl in the program, who participates (and co-founded with Tierney) Tart Tuesday-turned-Twednesday, to the bookstore on High Street. We spent about half an hour in there, and did not find a single copy of Comedy. I did, however, find Quidditch Through the Ages in British. Bad bad bad…

After that, we went to this place called the Chocolat Hotel… It is dangerous. Absolutely amazing. Everything in there is made of chocolate, and is beautiful. It’s like chocolate art, basically. I got a chocolate sandwich and she got a liquid chocolate drink, and we went to eat them in Kensington Gardens (or wherever the Kensington Palace is), and spent a while there. It was really nice. By that time, I didn’t feel like going to get tickets anymore, so we just decided to go home. On the way to the tube, however, something happened that made me feel strangely uncomfortable, and the feeling lingered… After we passed through the turnstile things, some guy walked up to us, showed us his badge in a mildly secretive manner and asked us to show him our tickets. So we pull out our Oyster cards, confused, and he inspects them, then thanks us and walks away. I don’t know why I didn’t like that so much, because they have every right to ask to see our tickets. It was just that we had just walked through the turnstiles, and weren’t even following anyone, and looking so not-suspicious. I just didn’t like it.

Then, Sinead, Tierney, Sienna and I decided to go out. We went to Picadilly to go to the bookstore there so I could buy Comedy, and I decided I wanted Romeo and Juliet, too. So I got both of those, and made friends with the guy who worked the counter at the bookstore, then we attempted to make our way from Picadilly to Trafalgar for some frozen yoghurt.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND! I can walk from Trafalgar to Picadilly no problem at all, and after I’ve done that, I could theoretically just go back and forth between them all night and not get lost. But if I haven’t done Trafalgar –> Picadilly, then I can’t do Picadilly –> Trafalgar. It’s like it’s in an alternate dimension until you’ve traveled there by tube first. So after an hour of wandering (where half the party was just chatting idly as I struggled to find our way), we found a tube stop and rode it back to Trafalgar. Don’t ask me what the hell we did. At one point, we were literally a stone’s throw from our destination, and I said, “let’s turn this way!” and people were all, “no, it’s further up.” Well, they owe me half an hour…

In any case, we finally found the frozen yoghurt. I didn’t get any because £4 is more than I want to pay, but everyone else seemed to enjoy theirs basically. I really wanted to get Chinese food, and we had walked through Chinatown. Sinead wanted to go back home, so we bade her goodbye and made our way to the basically endless row of Chinese food restaurants. All of them had appetizers that were reasonably priced. So we walk into a nice looking one, sit down, choose what to order, make sure what needs to be vegetarian is vegetarian, and then:

“Ten pow minimum.”

Well, that’s stupid. Every place was like that. So at our third try or something like that, after batting away a rudely incessant flower girl, we decide, let’s just get take-out. So Sienna and I shared some egg fried rice and vegetarian spring rolls on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery, and Tierney ate her animal. (I know I’m crude, but it’s in my nature.) After that, we headed back home on the last train, and some weird guy hit on Sienna quite blatantly with the oh-so-original, “That accent is really sexy.”

Supplemental Anecdote:

As we headed back from the long I-must-have-Chinese-food journey, we turned left, then immediately realised we needed to turn right. So we turn around and four guys are standing there and one asks, “Do you have the time?”

I must take this time to say that when we first arrived, we had two hours of our orientation about safety in London, where a cop came in and told us all the tricks pickpockets have of distracting tourists while they steal their money, and one of those tricks is asking you what time it is.

Anyway. “Do you have the time?”

The three of us clutch our bags, and I manage to respond while keeping an eye on my bag. “11:35.”

“Where are you guys from?”
“The states.”
“Where in the states?”
“California,” says Sienna.
“Haha, no way. LA?”
“Yeah, actually, we go to school there.”

(Meanwhile, I’m clutching my bag, counting them and counting us and trying to push Tierney to move past them, but she won’t move and Sienna won’t stop talking.)

“Where are you guys going?”
Sienna explains our Chinese food quest.
“Filling up your livers?” (I believe this was the wording. Translation: Have you been drinking?)
“Not tonight.”
“Well, come in, sit with us, we’ll buy you a pint.”
“No thanks.”

And we finally get away.

I’m going to preface this post by saying that the most interesting thing that happened to me today was that I finished my grocery shopping, bought everything on my list, and now have a beautifully overstocked undersized fridge full of edamame and yoghurt and a giant tub of Nutella.

So that’s that, to let you know that it wasn’t a very interest day. We had a fire drill this morning, that had been promised to be at 0830, and of course was ten minutes early, so that some people were coming out still dripping and wrapped in a towel from their showers. We had our individual schedules today. I started with audition, which was fine. Then I had Alexander Technique. It’s really great, and I wish we had more of that. I definitely recommend people to take classes. I say classes, but it’s really just … they’re fixing you, really. I told her about how uncomfortable it is for me to sit with my feet on the ground in a chair, and that, like my mother, since my legs are so short, I need them to be raised, and so she’s going to try to help me get over that. Lots of other things as well.

Voice class was fairly uneventful. A scramble happened at the beginning to avoid being paired up with Hay. I was successful. Fortunately for every class, only one person has to be unfortunate. Then Dialect, which was slightly boring, only because I’m already pretty confident with my received pronunciation.

That’s when the highlight of my day took place: the grocery shopping. Sorry for the disappointing post… Maybe tomorrow will be more interesting?

We were granted the luxury of an extra half hour this morning before our first class, Theatre History. We talked more about Elizabethan theatre today, which is cool because it’s the time of Shakespeare, and while I was really interested in today’s lecture, I’m nervous about what will happen to my interest when we move out of Elizabethan. Our teacher, Tony, reminds me of a claymation character, reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit. He’s brilliant, though, and seems to have a very personal relationship with Shakespeare. He read a speech out loud from Richard II, the opening soliloquy, and it was … very powerful.

Then, we had our first acting class! At last! We were originally supposed to have a woman, Hillary, teaching us that class, but due to a directing job in the States that she got, our teacher is Allison. She physically looks like the dark version of Julie Walters’ Mrs Weasley (Harry Potter reference, to those who don’t know). I think I’ll like her, but it’s hard to tell so early in the game. I enjoyed all the activities that we did in class. We started off by going around the circle and talking about someone else in the class, since we all know each other pretty well at this point, and she doesn’t know us. That was a nice change, and I surprised myself a bit. It’s always cool to hear what people say about you when they’re introducing you. Things you wouldn’t think to say of yourself.

We also played a game in which we took items from our bags and went around, making up what the items actually are. For example, I put my Capulet/Montague bag in, and some of the things people came up with were a Loop Jellyfish (very rare and incredibly difficult to catch. This particular one happened to be in very good condition), a portable and high tech chest plate, an invisibility shoe bag designed by Aristotle for Alexander the Great (so no one would steal Alex’s shoes, because as you know, he was very possessive of his shoes; that was mine), and a hat to protect hair from the rain when people had big hairdos. That was a great deal of fun and took up a good chunk of time. The class is 3.5 hours long, so we had time to do lots.

Then, we got paired up and were told to choose a blood relation with our partner. I was with Geoff, the straight and sane male member of the LDA group this year (this is the only class I have with him, and he’s really cool). We decided to be younger sister and older brother. Then, he was told to have a problem, and improv a scene. (We all did this with our own partners of course.) It was so much fun to be acting! It had really been a while since I had done any acting with anyone, and actual acting. I’ve been doing shadows of it for so long, what with extra work and sonnets and stuff, but it was such a relief to get up and ACT! You forget how effortless and comfortable it is. (So don’t worry, we know I’m in the right program.) Then we did some experiments with status, which was also fun. I like improv a lot. The other guy in the class, who I also only have this one class with, let’s call him… Hay (because he carries hay around with him), did the blood relation exercise with another nice and very energetic girl in the class. Already, he comes on very strong and is intense, not in the good way (or else I would call him by his real name), and I think she did an incredible job in handling it. As soon as the scene starts, however, he’s mute. Here is the basic gist of that:

“HIIIII!! Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see! I love the fourth of July, I haven’t seen you since Christmas!”
Silence. He pats his throat.
“Oh… you can’t speak?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you lose your voice?”
No.
“Did you get your tonsils out?”
He thinks. No.
“Oh, I guess not, I guess you would have remembered that, haha!”
Silence.

She guessed so many things, but whatever she said, he would shake his head, breaking the first and only rule of improv: Never say NO! The teacher eventually stopped them and told him he needed to give her something, so he finally hacked up a hairball and proceeded to tell her about his life. His actual life. I mean, Hay’s life, not Hay’s improvised character’s life. I don’t know what he and Hugh are doing in this program…

I know I’ve been doing a lot of dialogue, which is somewhat lame, but with people like this, there’s no other way of explaining it…
So after that, we had our second Masterclass with the lead actor from the play we had seen yesterday, Joseph Millson. That was a very big contrast to the one with Naomi, who seemed to be able to pick and choose the intellectual roles. He was more of the (in my opinion, more realistic) persuasion that you take what anyone will give you.

Some grocery shopping, then home.

This morning, we started off with Shakespeare. Turns out, I need to reread Julius Cæsar… In any case, our teacher, Michael Winter, continues to amaze me with his knowledge of … things. After that, we had Physical Theatre. I really like that class, and our teacher. We have been exploring the qualities of the elements (air, earth, fire and water) and their movements and how they affect our mood, and how to incorporate them into characters, or vice versa. I made a lot of really interesting discoveries with that. I had always believed myself to be earth, and after these explorations, I stand by my word. The visuals I had I wish I could animate, because it was so cool! I’ll put them in bullet points, so if you want to skip them, it’s easy. (And I like lists.)

• Air - I found air to be pretty boring. It’s easy enough, and I think that’s why we started with it. The weightlessness and smooth/calm actions were really easy, but not interesting.
• Earth - this was the next one we did, and the imagery I had to help me with this one was really cool (to me). I could see roots springing from my feet every time I was about to take a step, reminiscent of the scene in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Cedric is being attacked by the hedges. And when we experimented with sitting, I saw them from my back and neck and arms. It was really cool how weightless my top half felt, and how heavy my bottom half felt, like a tree rooted to the ground, but whose leaves were almost flying.
• Water - I had a hard time distinguishing this one from air. It took a while to get into the hang of it, and I really had to focus to feel as though I was moving through water, but when I had to become water, I kept becoming air. I really needed to work on finding the weight of water that air doesn’t have.
• Fire - I wasn’t doing what she was looking for particularly with fire, but my imagery again was engaging … to myself. I kept seeing myself as pulling towards something that I could light on fire, and it would fuel me, and then after it burned down, I would lose energy until I could jump onto something else. After discovering the elements, we did some improv with a partner, where we each embodied an element and had a motive that she gave us, and took it from very abstract, to more characteristic. I was fire, and my partner was water. I was supposed to be very nervous about something, and she was trying to calm me down. I’m really pleased with how it came out, and that above all else made me realise how useful this exercise was. The teacher had us demonstrate it for the rest of the class - which was exhausting, because she just let us keep going… and I was sweating and nearly hyperventilating, but I was so very much engaged, and honest. More so than I’ve ever been in a class improv exercise.

After class, I went with Sienna, and two other girls to “Tart Tuesday” (soon to be changed to Tart Twednesday due to schedule conflicts). We got some tarts and ate them in Kensington Gardens, and started a rating system, where each week, when we get our tarts, we will assess them in every way possible. It’s impressive.*

Then, we had our cultural outings. I went to the Samuel Johnson and London Exhibit at the British Library with … someone we’ll dub Hugh-Grant-In-A-Super-Gross-Role, Hugh for short. The exhibit was amazing. It was a bunch of very old documents and books and original printings etc. of famous works and such, and I made quite an extensive list of the coolest things, the most notable of which were:

• Eight sheets with lyric drafts written by and in the Beatles hands
• Three pages from the Da Vinci Notebook!! (this was by far the coolest thing for me)
• Beethoven’s tuning fork, and an early draft of his Violin Concerto, in which he was struggling with losing his hearing. You can see some violent scribbles where he was changing things, in a state of emotional turmoil.
• The original Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare, as well as several other very early publishings of some of his famous works, and complete works. (I welled up on site of some early Romeo and Juliets, but what else is new?)
• The original Alice in Wonderland and Persuasion.
• A sheet of paper written in Shakespeare’s own hand.
• Oldest surviving roll of English Arms, dating to the mid to late 13th century, but if you think that’s old…
• … an early Christian manuscript of psalms papyrus from c. 3rd century. (I’m not even sure this was the oldest thing in there.)
• Earliest printed star chart, and Tycho’s Mural Quadrant (does that sound right?) dated to about 1598.
• The original Heart Sutra (a sacred Buddhist document which I learned about last semester).
• A letter in Darwin’s hand and one in Freud’s hand, and the first ever written computer program (written by a woman, I might add).
• And, probably most impressively, the Magna Carta was on display. Woa.

And that’s not even all of it, that’s just the things I thought were really cool. It was neat seeing the handwriting evolve through some of the scrolls, and obviously they had a lot of different religious documents, and the handwriting/language changes there were really neat.

Afterwards, Hugh and I headed towards the theatre where we were seeing a show that night. Judgement Day. But we still had a good couple of hours before it started, and … I’ll try my best to describe what those few hours were, but there’s no way I can make it sound like what it really was. For those of you who are familiar with the Dinner Party in The Office, it was comparable to that. It was a good two hours in which I wished someone was filming it so as to believe how ridiculous it was, and that other people may laugh and benefit from my suffering. Hugh… doesn’t understand … brains. Or humans, or human brains. I really can’t say any more than that, that basically sums it up. I could try to recreate conversations with him, but most of them would look something along the lines of:

“What do you think of me?”
“What?”
“I mean, you know, what do you think of me? Like, you know? What do you think of me?”
“…”
“Because, you know, I know that some people, you know, I just– what do you think of me?”
“I don’t know how to answer that…” (Answer: I don’t like you.)
“You know, just tell the truth. Insert two minutes of blabbering about how you want to make people like you.”
“I really don’t feel… comfortable answering that…”
“But, you know, just, I want to know, you know.”

Even that can’t really describe how senseless his language is, and how uncomfortable his conversation topics are.

Anyway, the show! The execution of it was fantastic. The set was amazing, and the acting was overall not bad. The script, however, was lacking. They really wanted to make sure that the audience got the message (don’t judge yourself… uhm, OK?), and one major change to the ending would have made the whole play much better (I think). In any case, they did a really good job with the production overall. One thing they did which very few productions do these days, and I don’t know why, is that they stayed in character for scene changes, which made such a difference. I hate it when something big has just happened, the lights dim, and then the actors all start running around and moving stuff as though nothing has happened, or we can’t see them. We’ll meet the lead tomorrow in our masterclass. That will be cool.

After that, just because we were super close, Tierney and I ran to King’s Cross and were super touristy with our camera at Platform 9 3/4. Pictures to follow, of course.

*Statistics available upon request.

Yesterday was my first day off in two weeks, and I celebrated by doing absolutely NOTHING (and watching four episodes of DS9). So I didn’t think that deserved its own post.

Today, however, I had the hard day of classes. We started out with a light workout… handstands and push-ups and reverse triangle poses and an assortment of torturous poses designed to douse us in pain. The teacher nicknamed me Little Canary (in addition to nicknames she has for other students, including Little Blue Toes among others) because I was wearing a yellow shirt, and she used me for a lot of demonstrations, which was a nice little boost for the ego, and a I made a few discoveries in that class:

1. It is not pleasant to rock on your stomach with your hands and your feet attached behind you when you have no fat protecting your area.
2. My upper body is stronger than my lower body (proportionately), which is the opposite of what it should be - women tend to be stronger in their “birthing centre” and men in their upper body.
3. It feels really good being the most flexible person in your class, especially when you’re not very flexible.

Then we had Historical Dance, where we learned a few old dances: The Pavane and the Farandole, if my memory serves me correctly. They need work. I don’t know what happened this week, but my corset officially doesn’t work. I think it’s because of all the working out (don’t worry, Maman! I’m eating like a pig!), but there is at least two inches that can be removed from my girth if I was wearing a proper corset. Which is disappointing.

Lunch, then Stage Combat. I just LOVE that class! Our teacher is so cool, and I absolutely love the feeling of having a sword, and attacking and defending and throwing swords away from me. It’s a very empowering feeling, once you get over how much it hurts your arm. I can’t wait to start doing fast, more complicated fights, and for the other people in the class to get more confident, because they’re all a little nervous, so a bit hesitant in their movements which slows things down a lot. I understand that it’s better for it to be that way, I’d rather have it be that way than have someone overly confident whacking away at me with a sword…

We ended the day on a low key note with Dramatic Lit. This is the kind of play that really needs to be seen and not read, because I can see so much opportunity for license with performance in it, but reading it is just not interesting.

Tierney (my roommate) and I went afterwards to a record store on Bond Street, and I splurged and bought myself three albums.

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (because how do I not own that yet?!)
2. The Runaways (because I can’t buy anything on iTunes here without getting arrested, and I wanted the song that they sang during the concert scene when I was an extra for the movie of the same name. Such wonderful associations with that song… That was a great day.)
3. McFly’s Radio:ACTIVE (because I absolutely love them, and of their five CDs, only one is released in the US)

And it was with great difficulty that I didn’t get a £7 3-disc Disney Compilation CD, Beethoven’s Piano and Violin Concertos, MIKA, Flight of the Conchords and The Police…

Today, we got up bright and early to leave for Stratford, guided by Michael Winter. It was a long bus ride, but that was just an excuse to use my awesome new headphones. Our first stop was at Mary Arden’s house, the mother of Shakespeare. It was a farm, basically, and they had lots of chickens, pigs, goats and some geese, as well as a few owls and some really cool falcons. I loved the animals, and they had a short falconry lesson thing which was fascinating. I got to hold a bit of day-old chick in order to get a falcon to land on my arm. That was really neat. It was surprisingly light, but man, those claws are scary. I learned a lot of things about falcons. And the farm was cool, too. Some of the doors were barely more than a meter high… woah.

After that, we headed towards Stratford where we saw the outside of Shakespeare’s birthplace (but didn’t think it worth it to buy tickets to go see it), and all the shops are named after Shakespeare things. Sienna and I had lunch at the As You Like It Café, in honour of the wonderful performance of the same play that we had seen earlier this week. There was also an Iago Jeweler, a restaurant called The Food of Love, and other such things. We then had a tour by Michael Winter where we saw a bunch of neat things, including the River Avon, Shakespeare’s grammar school and a Shakespeare statue. We went into the church where Shakespeare and his wife and daughter and sons-in-law are all buried. It was gorgeous.

I'm trained in Falconry...

Lastly, we went to a little place whose name I don’t remember where we visited a church whose significance I didn’t understand and saw some more old things that didn’t have to do with Shakespeare.
Then we came back, and I went with my roommate and a really nice girl in the program to Trafalgar to look for Sam. We hung out with the guy, Rob, on the plinth for a bit and got lost and had some delicious frozen yoghurt.
At this point, unfortunately, I’ve done everything I can to find Sam. It’s no longer in my hands.
I hope that my parents’ days get better. I’m trying hard to send them good vibes.