It’s Gonna Be A Thing

We had decided to celebrate Thanksgiving on Sunday, and we had originally planned to go to Kew Gardens in the morning before dinner, but it was raining pretty hard, and since going so far would be quite a trek and expensive, we decided to put it off till a day when we would be happier to go. So instead, we went to Tesco to do some Thanksgiving shopping - really only picking up a few last minute things. (Did you know that it’s damn near impossible to find a pre made pie crust in this country?! Home of the people who thought putting meat in a pie was a good idea?)

After a few feeble attempts at work, we got down to business with making Thanksgiving dinner. In principle, everyone was bringing something. We had made a sign up sheet earlier; I was making my signature leek pie, with added potatoes (for those keeping tabs it is now a potato leek pie) and Sienna made an array of bread and garlic treats. My pie was coming along very nicely, and I was admittedly nervous about it, because I had never made one like it before, and I was really talking it up, and when the time came for everyone to meet downstairs to eat, I was making anyone who would listen smell it. (Yes, it smelled very good!)

As more and more people arrived, I got more and more excited. We had homemade mashed potatoes, my potato leek pie, garlic bread, roasted garlic, homemade garlic butter, vegetarian stuffing, non-vegetarian stuffing, two different kinds of mac and cheese, sweet potato and marshmallow casserole (with beef marshmallows so I couldn’t have any), two cranberry sauces, a delicious carrot and broccoli thing, and of course KFC. (I didn’t have any of that either.) We had lots of wine and some adult hot chocolate (which means enhanced with vodka) and then for dessert, we had pumpkin cranberry cookies, pumpkin pies, homemade oreo and ice cream cake, chocolate cookies, homemade whipped cream… and I think that’s it. Practically everything vegetarian, I ate two servings of, though there were a few items that ran out before I could get seconds.

I can say with confidence that I had literally never eaten so much in my life. It was embarrassing, and I was in quite a lot of pain afterwards. I employed the oh-so-famous rule of eating as fast as possible so your stomach doesn’t know you’re full until it’s too late. And then even after my stomach managed to relay the message, I still had some pumpkin pie. Everything was so good, and my pie was a huge success! Geoff started teaching me how to juggle after I had recovered a little, and everyone hit the hay pretty early, too exhausted from eating to do anything.

Monday was a heavier day than normal; needless to say I ate very little. Classes were fine and not particularly eventful. It was long, though. Because after our usual and very long schedule, we had a masterclass with a guest artist from the Royal Ballet named David Drew. I think you can look him up online, apparently he’s a big deal. I wasn’t very interested, because I’m not really into dance and we hadn’t seen him in anything, but it was fine.

Tuesday, since we finished work with Shakespeare, after our Physical Theatre class, we started working on our end of the term project with Richard. We’re doing some kind of adaptation of the Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. It would have been fine, but Richard shows a lot of not-unobvious favouritism towards the the boys in our group, which made me feel a bit expendable, but it’s too early to judge, I suppose. We had a brief masterclass with the guy who gave us our tour of the National Gallery, and he gave us a rundown on an exhibit we were going to go see at the Tate Britain that afternoon. It was mildly interesting, but we really had to fight to stay with him. Then we headed to the museum to see the exhibit, Turner and the Masters, which was basically a comparison of works of Turner’s with his contemporaries and predecessors. It was cool, but would have been more interesting if the guy had been there as we looked at the paintings rather than before we looked at them. The best part of that outing was that when we met Michael, he was wearing a black sweater vest and said it was in honour of our last cultural outing.

Oh god. Too close to the end.

That evening we were going to see the ballet. This guy named Carlos Acosta? Apparently he’s a crazy famous male dancer, and instead of a narrative thing, it was more of a recital, so there was a total of about four pieces that he danced with various partners. Again, I’m not much of a dance enthusiast, but I could appreciate the ridiculous skill and power it takes to do what they were all doing. Really makes me feel inadequate when I see things like that.

Wednesday morning, instead of meeting at school for Theatre History in the morning, we met Richard at the Royal Academy of Arts where there was an Anish Kapoor exhibit. This is also probably researchable, and I recommend it. Anish Kapoor is some artist man who … well, it’s hard to explain. The exhibit was overwhelming, though. The amount of materials that were used for it was a bit sickening at times, and while I enjoyed most of the pieces aesthetically, I did not like the reasons behind them. There was a giant canon that fired off twenty pound cylinders of wax every twenty minutes, and we saw that go off twice. That was epic, but the reasoning behind the “piece” was kind of barbaric. There was also a great moving … obelisk of wax that was just colossal that moved through three or four rooms and took ninety minutes to get from one end to another. It was so big, I can spend time talking about how big it is and you would believe me, but you wouldn’t understand until you saw it. There were some other things, too, but hard to describe and do justice to.

Then we headed to school for more work on the Tailor project then acting. Acting went fantastically well. Alison, our teacher, just loves my and Geoff’s scene. She’s openly saving it for last for our showing next week for Richard, and didn’t really have much feedback to give us. She said, “I don’t want to mess with it.” We then had very short private meetings with Tony of Theatre History. He just wanted to give us our papers back and talk to us about them. We all knew before that grades here were very different; then C actually is average, and that B is good, and that no one every gets As. Well, say hello to the girl who got an A- on her paper! (Just in case it wasn’t clear, no one got a higher grade than that… Mmm)

Thursday after our regularly scheduled classes, Sienna and I went to Brick Lane, which according to Sienna’s aunt has better Indian food than Bangladesh. It was pretty far, and we were accosted by lots of Indian Restaurant Owners offering us 25% off our food and the first drink free. The place we settled on was cute. I only stayed to taste the curry and then left Sienna and Susan to themselves and rushed back to meet Geoff to go see Les Mis. I was so hyper-excited I’m surprised he put up with me. We got great seats in the front row of the first balcony (paid not a small amount), and I was surprised by how big the actors were when they came onstage; because we were close, not because they were fat.

Of my two favourite characters, Eponine was fantastic and she made me cry during “A Heart Full of Love” of all things, and Javert left a lot to be desired. He had a good voice, but was pretty boring. Valjean on the other hand was phenomenal. Having never had seen the show before, I wasn’t familiar with the story. I only knew the soundtrack. I think the overall deal with that show is that the music is epic, but the fact that it’s based off of a dense book makes it basically impossible to reasonably fit all that story in, especially when everything is in song. And even though it does not take Phantom off its peg as best musical, I’m incredibly happy I saw it, and there were indeed moments that I got chills.

Friday was long. We had Speech (like we normally do), but we finished with Shakespeare a week ago, so the rest of our day was filled with Tailor. Richard is being helped in the direction of it by this actress named Sheila, and I like her a lot. It’s slow going, but it’s no Mr Polly if anyone remembers all that as well as I unfortunately do. Anyway, turning in very early for a heavy-duty weekend. It’s my last weekend here without worrying about packing… Jesus that’s depressing.

Happy Chris and Monique’s Wedding Day! I’m so sad I couldn’t be there to celebrate with everyone, but I know it was a magical day. I instead tried very hard to preoccupy myself with busyness to not think about how much it stinks that I can’t be there with everyone.

Now, to preface, a few clarifying points. First, the scene that Geoff and I are doing together is from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. I haven’t read a lot of Stoppard, but he’s considered the most respected living playwright. I really dislike one of his plays because I think they seem too higher-than-thou, but Arcadia is a wonderful play. It was playing in London at the beginning of term, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. In any case, it takes place between alternating time periods in which we follow the story of characters in 1809-1813, and people from the modern era (modern for when it was written) try to piece their lives together. It’s much more complicated than that, but wiki has a lot of useful information on there. In any case, I’m playing Thomasina and I love her a lot. She’s easy for me to connect with and the scenes we’re doing are both wonderful. Second, I do know about Freud. Not extensively, but enough to know that I don’t like his ideas. I think that by his own analysis, he has vagina envy. I believe strongly that he was a sexist pig searching for meaning in meaningless areas of life, and keen to blow things out of proportion, trying to justify inconsequential information to fit his own preconceived judgments.

Today, Sienna and I got up early-esque to go to Burrow Market. Tim Pinn, a TFL (Transport for London) employee - he works at Warwick Avenue and always cheers us up - recommended it to us for our veggies. We needed leeks for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, so we followed his advice and made the trek to Tower Hill to visit this market. Turns out, it’s actually pretty famous? Anyway, it was big. It very much had the feeling of being set up for the long run - an impression we got both from the fact that it was on our maps, and that the stalls were so big, just one of them would more than fill our flat. They had a lot of stalls with dead animals in them which was upsetting (saw a dead mallard hanging by its feet as well as some mammals I didn’t look too closely at, and giant fish heads next to a squid), as well as kangaroo burgers and duck eggs, but there were lots of yummy vegetarian things. It’s weird to think of how many different kinds of food there are in the world… I got some tofu which I made for dinner, and it was the best tofu I’ve ever had, hands down. I also got leeks for tomorrow and Sienna got some garlic. Then, since we were just down the river from the National Theatre, we walked down. There was a book that I wanted to get from their bookstore that I didn’t think I would find anywhere else, and the National is far for a trip all on its own for a book. But man, it was cold. As I was paying for the book, which thankfully they had in stock, it took about three times as long as it should have because my fingers were so stiff.

From there, we trekked off to Harrods. Man, I thought last time it was crowded because of the parade, but no. It’s just always like that. It was overwhelming and not necessarily pleasant, but we did learn that Harrods sells helicopters. Woah. We had some lunch, then headed towards 221b Baker Street to visit the Sherlock Holmes museum, but at he last minute we decided that we would rather just visit the gift shop, because we thought it a bit too expensive.

In short, it was a good day. We were out from 930 in the morning till about 4 in the afternoon, and I spent the rest of the day doing nothing. Felt good.

Monday was a jump start back into life at LDA. The most eventful thing that happened - but it was quite eventful - was that I did a handstand! A full handstand, and I held it! How amazing is that? I was standing… upside down! On my hands! That really energized me for the rest of the day. And of course stage combat was epic, because now we’re choreographing an actual scene with lots of fighting in it, and as Benvolio I get to break apart a bunch of fights and do some hand to hand. I’m going to try to get someone to tape it, because not only would I like to see it, but I think the rest of the world needs an opportunity to see how kickass I am. Look how accomplishments have kept me modest! (So many exclamation marks, there are just so many things to exclaim!)

I was adequately terrified going into Shakespeare on Tuesday because of how thoroughly he tore us apart the week before, but it was relatively painless. We weren’t good, in fact we were still bad, but we had improved, and Michael could tell. It’s just that one rotten apple in our team that’s bringing us all down. Acting is a team sport, and people don’t really realise this. If one person in the team isn’t putting the work in, we can’t win. Anyway, our showing for that is on Friday, so maybe by then he’ll even have learned his lines. Physical Theatre held up its “favourite class-dom” by being awesome, then we had Rupert Evans come for our Masterclass. He had been in Life As A Dream and was absolutely gorgeous. In fact, we were supposed to have talked to him last week, but we needed to reschedule for one reason or another. He was so sweet, and really cute. Not particularly interesting or uninteresting, basically average. I still prefer Sam West over him, which is a bummer because Sam West is older… Anyway, then we went with Michael to the Freud Museum.

Now, I dislike Freud to begin with, but this was creepy. This was the house that he lived in for one year when he moved to London before he died, and that his daughter, Anna, lived in after. She apparently pioneered child psychotherapy. The guy who worked there was really … hmm. Michael called him “spooky”, but I don’t know how to describe him, really. For one thing, he was clearly obsessed with Freud, but nothing made him much of an expert on the subject and it was as if he was expecting us to treat him as a scholar, and thought we were all … budding psychotherapists or I don’t know what. It was only a fun experience in that while they were showing us some nonsense videos about god knows what, Geoff and I couldn’t stop laughing - because the videos were so ridiculous! We talked with Michael a bit after, before heading back.

That night, Sienna’s boy invited me and Geoff and her to go see a gig that some friends of his were playing. It was at a bar somewhere, we took the bus, it was super close. The bar was fairly empty, so I didn’t really know what to expect. We hung out for a while waiting for them to play, and when they went on, The Beat Presidents, they’re called, they were so good. I could not believe how good they were; I mean, legit awesome band. These were the kinds of songs that you would hear on the radio. You want to know why you don’t? Because the band doesn’t get around to recording anything! They keep winning all these competitions, and they won studio time like a year ago, and still haven’t used it! Anyway, John, Sienna’s boy, I think recorded a few of their songs, which you can listen to online. Myspace them. Incredible.

Wednesday was fun. We had another Masterclass after Theatre History, this time with a guy named Frank Barry, who I believe is a pretty big deal. He was in Lawrence Olivier’s troupe once upon a time, and he gave us a lecture/performance on Shakespeare. It was pretty cool, but it had been built up, so admittedly it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. In Acting, the scenes that I’m doing with Geoff are so good! And the best part is that everyone else in the class loves it as much (I think) as we do, especially Alison (our teacher). For the showing in two weeks, she’s keeping our scenes for last because they’re clearly the best.

That evening, Sienna’s aunt came over and we made dinner again for her and hung out. It was really nice, she’s lots of fun, and we’re going to go see Peter Pan again when it comes to the O2 in December.

Thursday after classes, we mostly just focused on Shakespeare because the showing was the next day. So we came home, ate, procrastinated, worked Shakespeare, repeat. So you can imagine we were all a bit anxious when Friday came around. I did not think that our showing was going to be good, especially in comparison to the Taming of the Shrew group, after hearing everything that people were saying about their show. In any case, we ran through it four times today, Friday, including the showing, and Richard… didn’t hate them. He did mention that Shrew was better, and this was due partly to the fact that Hugh - who was in Comedy - didn’t know his lines, and even though he was forced to do the showing with book in hand, he STILL DIDN’T KNOW HIS LINES! Not that I’m blaming the outcome of our show on him, but it certainly didn’t help. I was pretty proud of myself at one moment because I messed up my monologue by jumping over lines then going back and fixing them, but not even Michael noticed. During notes at the end, Richard commented on how difficult Luciana is to play, so it was nice to have him acknowledge it. In any case, it felt good for it to be done, and now we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

We left early early Thursday morning to catch an 8 o’clock train from King’s Cross. (And the fact that that’s where the Hogwarts Express takes off is only partly the reason why we left from there.) The train ride was really long, and we didn’t really know how to deal with English trains at that point, so we were sitting in one group of two and one group of one (Sienna of course being the selfless martyr - she’s my wife!). We sat on the right side of the train as per Richard’ request - then slept for most of it. We did see an absolutely immense cathedral, and about 374 million sheep and the ocean - unexpected. We finally arrive in Edinburgh Waverly station about five hours later and … here it comes … it’s raining! We book it to our hostel, which was incredibly close to the train station, so that was nice, but they wouldn’t let us check in until two (and it was only about one) so we went to the pub across the street (the Three Sisters Pub). The bartender, disappointingly enough, was not only not Scottish (he was Irish) but he was trying so hard to be chill, that he ended up just coming across as an asshole.

Our hostel was very nice. We had our own room (six beds) connected to a flat with two bathrooms and a kitchen. After settling down a bit, we walked to the National Museum of Scotland and walked around there for a bit. It was pretty cool, but we really wished we had had Michael there with us to tell us about everything. We all got bored with reading the things and just ended up in the Discovery game thing that museums have until they closed and kicked us out. So we went across the street to the Elephant House, which was the café where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter - I know: AAAAHHH! I did. And I had the best sandwich I have ever had in my life. It was a brie, apple and redcurrant jelly sandwich on ciabata bread, and it was delicious. Not to mention that this café mixes all my favourite things about life: Harry Potter and elephants.

After that, we headed back to the hostel for a nap before our evening ghost tour. Sienna was determined to go on one, and I wasn’t going to protest to it. It seemed like fun, and we had Geoff to protect us. After our nap, we head out to the Royal Mile (about a block north of us) to meet our ghost tour guide. At first as we saw him walking towards us in his cloak, I was thinking “Oh man, this lame guy either hates his life and the fact that he has to wear that for his job, or he’s a total loser.” But the moment the first sound came out of his mouth, the three of us were in love. His name was Jared, and his voice was like what the water at the bottom of a deep, old river would sound like if it could speak: magical. We followed him around, and he was a very good story teller, and I didn’t get a bit spooked every once in a while, but as was to be expected, I didn’t see any ghosts. You want to know why? Because they’re not real.

Friday morning was absolutely beautiful. We had initially planned on going to Edinburgh Castle that morning, and then hike up to Arthur’s Seat, a dormant volcano that we had been told to visit, on Saturday, but the weather was too good to ignore the opportunity. So we walked our way over, a nice little walk, and then made our way up the slipper slope to the top of Arthur’s Seat. That was definitely my favourite part of the trip. We could see what felt like all of Scotland from the top of that hill, and the wind was so violent, Geoff thought he was going to get blown off! But the feeling of freedom that came with standing on the top of that mountain and looking out over everything and how beautiful and peaceful it all looked was amazing. If December 2012 rolls around and it looks like the world is ending, that’s where I’m going to get the best view.

On the way down, midsentence (and the sentence was, in case you were wondering, “We totally rocked that”), Sienna slipped in the mud and fell. I felt bad for laughing, but Geoff and I couldn’t stop ourselves from exploding into laughter. Even as I write this now, days later, I’m still laughing out loud at the memory. Not five minutes later, Geoff slips, and - AS HE’S SLIPPING, he hasn’t even hit the ground yet - he curses. Man, I can’t tell you how hard I laughed. Really hard. There was an old little 14th or something century cathedral that had been built near the base of the hill that we played around, and then we went to go observe some massive swans in a small lake at the bottom before heading back. We also tried tackling the castle that afternoon, but they closed relatively soon and we didn’t want to feel rushed, so we hung around the outside marveling at the beauty of it, and meandered down a bit of the Royal Mile. We shopped a wee bit, and because our hostel was so close to the Balmoral Hotel (the place where J.K. Rowling finished the last Harry Potter), we stopped in there to ask if we could visit her room and see the bust she signed. Alas, someone was in the room. Eff that. Oh well, so we headed back to the hostel and had a vacation night in with playing and sleeping. We were still lucky at this point in having the entire room to ourselves.

Saturday morning was still relatively nice. We headed towards the castle, which was so Hogwarts. Just everything about Edinburgh screamed “I’m like this part of Harry Potter!” It’s not a wonder Jo lives and writes there. The castle was really cool, but again, I wish we had had Michael. It was starting to get pretty cold, so we stopped in a café on the castle grounds and ate a little there and had some tea, and then after finishing our rounds, I did some good Christmas shopping in the gift shop there. And, believe it or not, there was a canon fire at one (like there is every day) and we missed it! I don’t know how that happened… Anyway, we went back to the museum straight after that because it was on the way to the hostel, and we didn’t get to finish discovering things in the Discovery room. So we finished discovering things, then I dragged everyone back to the Elephant House so I could have another epic sandwich and relish in the J.K. Rowlingness elephantness of it all.

At this point, it was pretty cold and off-and-on rainy, so we went back to the hostel and played some games and watched some magic tricks, courtesy of Geoff (who for the record becomes a d-bag when he’s in his magician character), and some Australian girls arrived in our room. No big. We took a nap (we were on vacation, OK?!) and then headed out for dinner. Sienna wanted to eat at this place called Wee Windae’s or something and as we’re walking towards it, I start talking about Jared and how much we loved his voice. Not two minutes later, there he is rounding the corner! We were all too starstruck to say anything, but we squealed as soon as he had passed us.

In any case, it turns out the restaurant we had wanted to go to was über fancy, and didn’t have vegetarian haggis which Sienna was determined to try. So we headed down the street to some other super Scottish place where she got her vegetarian haggis (which was actually really good. Want to know why? Because the gross stuff in it is what makes it not-vegetarian. Take that out and it’s just good).

This is mostly to show you Arthur's Seat

Sunday morning we woke up at a reasonable time to pack everything up and catch the train. We checked out at 10 (check out time) but our train wasn’t until 11. So - since it was on the way - I drag everyone to the Balmoral (of course) to see if the people who had been staying there were still there or if I could go see the room. The girl we talked to was not nearly as nice as the one from Saturday, and said that we couldn’t go because, while it was empty, it hadn’t been cleaned. So we went to the train station, I wallowed, and then headed back to the Balmoral to make double sure that we couldn’t go in. We couldn’t. Bummer.

The train ride back was uneventful. Long again, but this time we knew how to handle the train, so we got a table and the three of us sat together. There went the ocean, the sheep, the giant cathedral, more sleeping… Being back in London, however, was like a big breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful time in Edinburgh, but I missed London. We celebrated being back by doing nooooooothing. What more could anyone ask for after a vacation?

“On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach!”
- Bardolph, Henry V

Putting up a whole post about this is going to make it seem cooler than it is, but my Edinburgh post is going to be so long already, that I had to. OK, the food part of the story:

When we arrived at the library, I wanted to get some food, but we were running a wee bit short on time. We had initially arrived early at the King’s Cross tube station before we needed to meet Michael at the library, so Sienna and I wanted to go get our picture taken with Platform 9 3/4. A bunch of other people came with us, and we’re just about 15 meters away from it when people start getting nervous about time, so they make us turn back. Then I decided I wanted food, but at this point, the only place I could go to get food was on the premise of the library. Sienna and I went in while everyone else - needlessly worried about time - went in to meet Michael (we still had time, mind you) but the café there didn’t have any interesting food. So Sienna and I went in. But because for our tours they were self-guided, Michael was just sending people away in groups. Sienna and I had just missed that one group, so we were standing with Michael and talking, and I guess Geoff told Michael that we had gone to get food because Michael said,

“Did you get any food?”
“No, they didn’t have anything interesting to eat.”
“Didn’t you just have lunch?”
“That was like two hours ago!”
“Do you need to eat often?”
“I just eat small portions at small intervals,” I respond, a bit defensively.
“Here, try these.”

And out of his little black backpack he pulls a tupperware with these cube granola things, and of course I protest. “No, Michael! You don’t need to give me your food, I’m fine!” But he does that thing where he doesn’t really hear what you’re saying, and he gave me one anyway, explaining what they were and where he got them, and man! It was delicious.

So, that’s the story of how Michael and I went on a lunch date. Now for a retelling of his anecdotes. Oh boy.

Now, as I’m writing these, imagine them in the voice of Michael Winter, a man who - at first glace - seems incredibly intimidating and brilliant and wise and learnéd and somewhat scary, but is secretly a giant goof ball who knows everything to know about Shakespeare. He started telling us about how he is a people watcher. The first story was how he was on the train once, and this woman gets on, and she’s a little overbundled with bags, and as she sits, one of her suitcases pops open and these doll hands and faces come out and Michael tries to give her a sympathy look - but you’re not supposed to look at people on the tube. She sees him looking at her and gives him a face like the one that accompanies the sound “gruhyrrrw!!!” as she tries to close the suitcase, but a doll head is preventing her from doing so. We’re all laughing, because Michael reenacted this face, and then he falls back with laughter at a story that he just remembered. He starts it off by saying, “Oh, this is funny!”

He was on a bus and there was a woman who is was pretty big, and when they stop at some bus stop, this guy gets off the bus and looks in the window at the fat woman and very clearly mouths the word “OBESE!” And Michael just bursts into laughter and says, “That’s the kind of thing you think, not the kind of thing you say!”

Then later, when he was sitting in his seat before the show started, we looked over at him and he mouths “OBESE!”

So there you have it: two somewhat anticlimactic stories that add up to a wonderful man.

Monday was threatening to be a particularly painful Movement class, because Sue - who had broken her very first bone - had finally gotten her cast off. And we all knew that that meant she was coming back with a hyperactive vengeance. We did the usual, some handstands and strength training and stuff. I was sore one hour after that class was over. Historical Dance, blah blah blah. Dramatic Lit, click click click. Sword Fighting: we finally got cast for the Romeo and Juliet fight showing scene thing, and I got the part that I wanted, i.e. there is a fight between the Capulets and Montagues, and then Tybalt and Benvolio come out and have a sort of “featured” fight, and I didn’t want to be Tybalt, because - let’s face it, he’s a douche - so I wanted to be Benvolio. And I am! It was very exciting, and a nice little ego boost. Especially since I’m so not coordinated. Hopefully I won’t kill Vanessa during the showing… but the blades are particularly sharp…

That night we just hung out, and some people freaked out about memorization (I won’t name names, but it was a boy).

Tuesday my group had an incredibly disappointing Shakespeare class. Michael was very disappointed and just tore us apart - took away my Benvolio ego boost. But Physical Theatre was really neat. We did more mask work, which gave me a cool idea for independent study next semester to get more units. It’s still in the primordial stew phase, so I won’t jinx it by talking about it, but it would be cool. We visited the British Library after that, but I had already gone, so Michael just sent me and a few other people (STEPHANIE) to St Pancras station to look around there (I got a crêpe and we did a few social experiments). He also gave me some food of his, because I was hungry (there’s a longer story behind that) and it was wonderful. Ah, Michael… I hovered my hands over da Vinci’s pages again once more before leaving the Library for the theatre to see the show that evening (with a quick stop off at King’s Cross to take more Harry Potter pictures).

The show we saw was pretty far away from us all the way over at Warwick’s Station, in an insanely sketch area of London. The theatre from the outside looks like the kind of place refugees would hide. But the inside is actually quite quaint, and the show, Mixed Up North, was really enjoyable. It’s what’s called a verbatim theatre (or something very much like verbatim), and it was mostly narratives. But it was very well acted and well written. For the most part, I didn’t realise I was watching a show. The gimmick is that they are rehearsing a play and we, the audience, are their guest audiences for the dress rehearsal. So they talk to us a lot, etc. and it felt so natural and conversationalistic. Michael was also there, and bestowed us with some wonderful anecdotes that made us all love him even more (including one that involves mouthing the word “OBESE” to us from across the room - full story of course available upon request).

Today, after Theatre History, we had a Masterclass with the author of last nights play. He was … in Sienna’s words - and there are no better words - the most generous story teller. I had never had a Masterclass like it. I laughed (so did Sienna), I cried (so did Sienna) and I did … all manner of other emotional actions (and I think Sienna did too). He seemed like the perfect guy to just listen to for hours on end. He interviews a lot of people for his plays, and therefore has a lot of stories about life. Some of them are incredible, and some heartbreaking, but he also had a lot of really valuable advice for me as a learning actor. I would have enjoyed talking to him longer.

After our acting class, the evening was spent (in theory) getting ready for Edinburgh. Quick disclaimer: I will be gone from tomorrow till Sunday mid-afternoon, so there will be no blog updates. I’m traveling to Edinburgh (light) and will therefore not have my computer.

We (Geoff, Ann, Tierney and I) had toyed with the idea briefly of going to Bath earlier in the week, and we decided to do it! How fun. So we all got up very early Saturday morning - leaving at seven - to get on an eight o’clock three hour bus ride to Bath. It was slightly stressful in that we seemed to be running a little later than desired. This also meant that I couldn’t stop by High Street to get cash, so the first cash machine that I saw at Victoria I pounced on, only to see ATMs for my bank every three paces after that. Also, no one warned us that the coach station at Victoria was actually quite far away from the tube station, so we did a little bit of running in the crisp London morning air.

All seemed well on the bus. I could tell that our bus driver was going to be one of those obnoxious ones, but fortunately, Geoff and I were asleep for most of the ride to be able to appreciate his … shall we say eccentricities. (I was running on four hours of sleep, while he was running on two.) Our trip basically consisted of the bus being stopped at the side of the road, Geoff waking up and asking what happened, my groggily replying “I think someone is sick,” or the bus stopping at some kind of station and me waking up asking Geoff “Is this us?” and his murmured “No”. It turns out someone had been sick, in the bathroom and in the front of the bus, and that our bus driver had yelled at some other people trying to get on the bus…
Once in Bath, we had lunch at a nice little pub. (I had an absolutely delicious brie and cranberry sandwich.) Then, we made our way into the suddenly freezing wind and rain that was outside and headed towards the Roman Baths. We did the audio tour which - as happens with all audio tours - we listened to in the beginning then abandoned near the end when we lost patience with them. But it was really cool. And it was interesting to see either changes between last time I went, or just rediscovering things I didn’t remember. (Don’t worry, Daddy, it looked more than just “familiar”.) We drank the Bath water after and made faces then headed back into the now colder and darker and rainier and windier outside and followed the sign posts for the Fashion Museum. We had gotten cheaper joint tickets for both the Roman Baths and the Fashion Museum, but man it was much more of a trek than anticipated.

That was a fun little thing. They had a lot of crazy outfits on display, including some absolutely horrid things I can’t believe anyone wore ever, but also including stunning things. They had the biggest farandole (a giant butt piece, basically, that goes out to the side instead of around the back) and we could even try on hoop skirts and corsets. These were no-nonsense corsets. Not pretty and laced like the ones in class. These were clasps in the front and rope in the back - and this is the best part - THEY HAD ONE THAT FIT ME! It was quite the reality check to see what being in an actual corset would have been like. When they say in history that they fainted, that actually means something to me now. Once the corset was on, however, there was no hoop skirt that fit, and even if there had been, there was no way I was getting in it. Remember how they say that it took an hour to dress, and like three helpers? That makes sense to me now, too. Movement in a corset consists of walking at a slow to non-existent pace… and that’s about it. And you can maybe raise your arms a little, and move your head slightly to the sides.

After the fashion museum, we headed towards the Jane Austen Centre. A gentleman dressed like Mr Darcy greeted us, and I wanted to get my picture taken with him (he called me something about rainbows, and said I was oddly bright for it being such a mucky day - it was awesome) but Ann, Tierney and Geoff were all super lame and were like, “Later! Later!” But of course he was gone, later. We learned about dear Jane a bit, and saw some exhibits that were all a bit lame, and then had high tea in the tea room upstairs. We ordered the “Tea with Mr Darcy”, which consists of tea, a slice of cake each, a scone, cucumber sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, clotted cream and jam. Man… I ate so much that I actually felt as though I had been turned to clotted cream afterwards. And I don’t know how we managed to do it, but we were in the fanciest setting, and everything that we said was the perfect “that’s what she said”. So we were clearly the model of high class.

The long drive back to London was - as far as I know - not as eventful. Then again, Geoff and I were unconscious for more than most of it. After confirming that Hay had actually moved out (leaving some drawings, CDs with scribbles and books) we celebrated with FernGully then bed.

Then, today, I went with Sienna and a boy she has been hanging out with named John to the V&A. Man, it is huge. We didn’t have a camera, though, so we have to go back, because they have costumes to try on that we must take lots of pictures with - and maybe see some other stuff that we didn’t get to see. They also had a video that included Dan Radcliffe bowing in Equus and I got a headache from excitement. (What? They can’t just spring him up on me like that!) Other cool things on display included a horse head from a 1970s production of Equus, Shakespeare’s First Folio and original Beatrix Potter watercolours. And this was all just in the Theatre exhibit. We saw some others briefly, and the jewelery thing was obscene. There were so many diamonds… the smallest of all the brooches would have been worth more than our house… and it’s just sitting there. Seems like a ridiculous waste.

Hung out and … pretended to do work for the rest of the day. It wasn’t bad at all. Just still trying to cope with this registration nonsense. Continual listening to McFly and Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies did help, though.

D’Mommy, my heart is with you this week.

Monday was a fairly average Monday. The only special thing was riding the tube back to Paddington with Gordon (stage combat teacher). That was awesome. We decided that his new nickname for me is The Rainbow Child, and that if I had a lightsaber it would be rainbow coloured.

Tuesday was also pretty average. We started doing mask work in Physical Theatre, and that’s really incredible. She pulls out the mask at first, and it looks exactly like Doug, the cartoon character from the TV show Doug, but the moment the actors put it on (we got through two people today), it became a real person. Granted, the second person to go was Hugh, but when the first person went, I never doubted that that mask was an actual face. And it’s incredible how it changes. I can’t wait to put one on next week. I had hoped to go ice skating on Tuesday, but we had a paper due on Wednesday, so instead we all just hung out and wrote our papers - and watched the worst episode of How I Met Your Mother that has existed.

Wednesday was a little more interesting. First off, in Theatre History in the morning, we were all turning our papers in, a task made a little stressful by the fact that only one of three computers were working - or course - and Hay/Satan (I can’t decide what’s a better name for him) goes up to the teacher and hands him a 18″x24″ piece of somewhat grungy cardboard with a round hole in the middle, and scribbles all over it. Um… WHAT? This was apparently his paper. Tony handled it as best as possible, I think. After class, he asked Hay over and said things along the lines of “How am I supposed to grade this?”, “I asked for a paper,” “I need to do an assessment and I can’t use this,” and ending somewhere with “I can’t accept this.” Hay tried saying, “Can I at least explain it to you?” but Tony, rightfully, just said, “No.” We got a look at it a little later, and it quite literally had nothing even to do with theatre, let alone theatre history.

After, we had a masterclass with Richard, and he showed us a video of some opera starring Maria Callus, or something, who is apparently the best actress he’s ever seen. She wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t have called her the best actress I’ve ever seen by any means, nor would I have wanted to meet her particularly after all the stories he told us about her. Then in Acting, Hay - who must have been in a bad mood because his cardboard wasn’t accepted - was being very obnoxious.

We went to go see a show that night called Life As A Dream, which Fever/Dream, the show that we did freshman year at Oxy was based off of, and it was really interesting to make all the comparisons. It wasn’t bad at all, but it also wasn’t particularly fantastic. Unlike some shows, though, I’m happy I saw it. There was a really attractive guy in it, Rupert Evans, who is coming to talk to us next week, so that’ll be cool. And it turns out one of the actresses who was in (out of two) was Luciana when Michael directing Comedy of Errors for real, and today (maybe as a nicety) he told me I was a better Luciana. ^____^ The show itself was a nice mix of comedy and drama, but there were moments when I tuned out because people had really long monologues, and they just weren’t good at them. And they were fairly frequent. The fact that I liked the story though helped me give them the benefit of the doubt (unlike some, namely Bluebeard).

Yesterday after class, I got a McFly CD (woo00-!) and then Sienna’s newly engaged aunt and uncle came over for dinner, so Sienna made a delicious meal for us and we chatted. I had a great time, we gave them the chalk-full-of-details-leave-nothing-out account of Hay and Hugh and they were quite amused, then recognized them on the way out from our stories. After, we watched Wall-E and I tried to get over the fact that Oxy is retarded and wouldn’t let me register for basically anything (oh yes, I’m a part time student… and there’s no remedy). It almost worked.

Today was an eventful day, my my. Friday the thirteenth indeed. This morning, rumours were circulating about Hay leaving - well informed rumours because they were true. Woa. I just blew your mind. After the Miriam sessions (as painful as usual) Richard sat us all down and told us that Hay had made the decision to leave. I won’t go into the whole thing, but in short, it’s a little silly to be leaving the program 4 weeks from the end, and make everyone scramble to replace you in all of the scenes, etc. But it was his decision, and it’s probably better for everyone this way as it is. Shakespeare was a little tense after that - every one is scrambling to get his parts replaced - and Michael was disappointed that a bunch of people weren’t off book. But Sienna and I had our wedding…

It was perfect! (To begin with, at least.) Geoff was my best man, and we both suited up, and he got us a bottle of wine, and Tierney was the maid of honour. We had a more traditional wedding that I probably will when it’s me and Dan. I didn’t see the bride as she was getting ready, Geoff gave me the talk as we made the bouquet out of newspapers, and the bridesmaids (Stephanie and Ann and Kate) were frantically running around making sure everything was OK. At last, Sienna walked down the aisle to A Whole New World and Eddie married us, and I almost cried. Her vows were so wonderful, and mine were good, but not anywhere near as wonderful. I did manage to keep it together, though. Then we put our necklaces on each other, threw the bouquet, fed each other cheese, drank wine with interlaced arms and danced to Louis Armstrong’s La Vie En Rose. Everything was just so perfect… Lots of pictures will be put up. Then there was also post-marital drunken entertainment, which was caught on tape, but will probably be reserved for the privacy of personal computers, and not be put online.

Basically, it was perfect. Then, after when we were hanging out, the damn kids who also live in our building (I know there was a code name for them once upon a time, but I don’t remember what it was, so we’ll call them Winos) started throwing razors and mushrooms and glass bottles and harassing us through the window. So we called the company who is our landlord on them (yes, it was that bad) but who knows what happened with that. It takes them so damn long to do anything.

In the meanwhile, I’m still only a part time student, and I’m not in the show at Oxy. Thank god for Sienna.

Friday was Speech and Shakespeare, all was as usual. Shakespeare was obviously super fun, and then it was my lucky Friday - i.e. no Miriam, so I headed home early before we got to see the double feature opera/dance show that night. It was Bluebeard’s Castle and The Rite of Spring, and new modern dance to the song of that name (”the Dinosaur song from Fantasia” - courtesy of Geoff Mackenzie Kanik). First of all, the theatre was absolutely beautiful - and simultaneously the most uncomfortable theatre I’ve ever been in, including the Globe. (Though at least the Globe puts on good shows, and the worst are only as bad as Troilus and Cressida.)

“Sitting in those seats, watching the show is what lobsters must feel like before going into a pot of boiling water.” - Geoff Mildred Kanik

Second, the first show was like being charged £16.50 to watch a poor production of my worst nightmare. Mistake #1: it was in English. Mistake #2: it had subtitles, which meant that you really couldn’t ignore what they were saying. Mistake #3: what they were saying was stupid. (The four repeated lines were “Everything is bloodstained”, “All the doors must be opened”, “I will give you the key, but don’t ask any questions”, and “Frightened?”) Mistake #4: The story, which includes four women willingly getting stabbed in the vagina.

“The production concept must have been, ‘The audience is a bunch of idiots who don’t understand anything, so not only will we translate, give subtitles and visually show you everything, but we’re going to beat you over the head with an avant-garde concept and just do things to shock you, so the people who don’t understand art and theatre will stand up and cheer in the audience.’” - Geoff Isabella Kanik

I can’t tell you how upset I was at intermission. I have never considered leaving a show at intermission, but if this one hadn’t been over at intermission, I would have been out of that theatre in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The second half was not good, but seemed so much better because it was not the first half. There were moments with cool choreography, but I really got the feeling that they were doing things for the sake of doing them, and just trying to take as much time as possible doing mundane things because the song was too long. For example, at one point, twenty men on stage take all their clothes off, fold them, then take five minutes to put a dress on, an act that could have taken all of two minutes and took about seven, and including needless nudity. Every time I thought I understood what was happening, they did something weird like hump the floor for five minutes that made me realise that I really didn’t know what was happening.

In order to salvage a ruined night, we all bitched about how awful the show was, and watched The Little Mermaid. In any case, we all went to bed much happier.

Sienna and I had planned to go early to get good spots for the Harrod’s Christmas Parade, but she was feeling very sick, and since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I texted Geoff (I knew he was up early for a skype date) and we ended up going together. We got pretty decent spots right behind two very cute little girls just outside the Harrod’s store, where the parade ended, and watched the parade from there. It was so exciting! Because they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, we just get to skip right into Christmas time after Hallowe’en, so it’s the best of both worlds! They were making fake snow, and handing out free snacks and doing all these awesome tricks! We saw jugglers - an amazing juggler who spun a ball, put that spinning ball on a stick which he balanced on his forehead, then did the hula hoop, spun a pillow in one hand and juggled two balls with the other - and unicyclists and people dressed like presents and ornaments and bunnies and reindeer and faeries, etc. Then the parade started and we got to see the band and the people all dressed up (their theme this year is Wizard of Oz, so lots of those characters), and then Father Christmas came around. He’s much classier in Britain than he is the states, I must say. The crowd after was pretty hectic. We walked around the outer perimeter of Harrod’s, but didn’t even try to do any shopping. We managed to squeeze in briefly but then shot right back out and headed home. That whole morning was spent watching Hey Arnold and another show which will not be named to save my and Sienna’s dignity.

Then, Saturday night was the night that most of Britain was celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, so Geoff, Tierney, Ann, Sinead and I went to Ravencourt Park to see the fireworks. It was a pretty cool display. At one point, they were actually choreographing fireworks to the Duel of the Fates from Star Wars: Episode 1. Tierney and I got lightsabers and practiced our sword fighting, then we headed home and hung out, watching - what else - How I Met Your Mother and made hot chocolate before bed.

I allowed myself a somewhat late rise on Sunday, but my day was a well-planned work day. I made a list, I checked it twice… ahem. Auditions for next semesters show were today, so I found a monologue from Richard II, I memorized it, I recorded it, I uploaded it to YouTube and then e mailed it in. Believe it or not, that took quite a lot of effort, and most of the day. Stephanie had convinced me earlier to go to a place called The Diner for lunch with her, Marlee and Kate. The service was terrible, and then there was a rock in my food. So, I didn’t eat, but I also didn’t pay, and at least we got a good story out of it? (It’s really the kind of story you have to hear in person. So remind me.)

“I’d need to have read the whole thing to give you an ending quote.” - Geoff Apricot Kanik

Tuesday was fun and plain. Shakespeare and Physical Theatre - more improv and blocking of Comedy of Errors - and then we went to meet Michael for our tour of Kensington Palace. He gave us a bunch of information before going, because he was not allowed to give us a tour inside. It was fun, but I would not have paid the ticket price if it had been my money, i.e. not worth it. There was quite the memorial to Diana, which mostly included dresses she had worn, and a large exhibit about debutantes. Geoff and I “learned to waltz”, and then I learned how to tie a bowtie, something I had wanted to learn for ages, and it was incredibly difficult, so after about twenty minutes of struggle and frustration, that was quite the payoff, and we also learned how to walk a straight line with a book on our heads.

Then we actually got to see the palace palace. It would have been much more interesting with a tour by Michael, but we managed to amuse ourselves with the audio tours and how well we could speak along with them. Really did not retain much information besides what Michael had told us before hand. Afterwards, Ann, Geoff, Sienna and I went to get some frozen yoghurt at Snog. We each got the fruit parfait, and it was to die for. Just absolutely marvelous. Best granola I’ve ever had. Back to school for a make-up Voice class, and then, after some rehearsal for Acting - so much fun, god! I love our scene! - Geoff, Tierney and I had a little How I Met Your Mother party with Stephanie, who did a very good job following along even though she knew nothing about the show and this was a new episode. It was awesome, but what else is new.

Yesterday was my half-birthday, what I prefer to celebrate over my birthday, but no one remembered. Watch me feel sorry for myself. I had a great day, anyway, and without the added pressure of turning basically 21. Because I am now closer to 21 than I am to 20, so I’m technically 21. Woa. Anyway, it was really an awesome day. We had Theatre History, which was a little brutal, but Geoff and I amused ourselves with doodling fancy penguins. Then - our mystery master class. We had been seeing signs for this for a month, but none of us knew what it was. We had guessed it was going to be learning the choreography to Thriller, because there was a picture of MJ on the signs, but by the time it came for us to actually go to the class, the various speculations had become:

• John and Edward from The X Factor
• John and Edward teaching us Thriller
• A slug
• Michael Jackson back from the dead
• Daniel Rahhh— (whoever made this suggestion couldn’t get neself to complete the name. I don’t remember who it was…)
• Sue, our Movement teacher

Fortunately, we had been initially right, and it was just a choreographer teaching us Thriller. Man, do I rock that song. I mean rock it. Let me say that one more time, because I don’t think you understand how much I ROCKED it. Tarts. Obviously. Then Acting, tons of fun of course. We did trust exercises and then scene work, and I love our scene, and the exercise was cool too. It’s astonishing how disoriented we are without sight.

Then, Geoff, Tierney and I headed down to the National Theatre to get some plays. We figured it would be the only place that had the play The Fastest Clock in the Universe, which we had seen and all absolutely loved, but there was only one copy when we got there. Tierney already bought it before, and Geoff was a “gentleman” and let me buy it. No really, it was very nice of him. So I was super thrilled, because this play is astonishingly well written. I was looking over it, and all the stage directions are written as dialogue, because it is! It is dialogue! No wonder the play was so good; it’s written so well, it’s virtually impossible to perform poorly!

That night we had an Aladdin party, but only kind of. We watched the first half hour, for reasons to complicated to dive into, but it would soon be resolved.

Today was the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes day, Bonfire Night, Foreworks day, whatever you want to call it. Class was essentially uninteresting. Caryll is letting me do something from Fastest Clock for an audition monologue, and she seems confident that I won’t copy the show I saw. Alexander made me surprisingly sore… too much awareness for one day, I guess. We got some cupcakes to celebrate the fifth, then Geoff, Sienna and I went to try to see some fireworks. The closest show was still pretty far. We weren’t sure what zone the nearest station to the show was, and instead of asking, we decided to take it to the nearest that we knew was in zone 2 on the tube (we have to pay extra outside zones 1 and 2). Well, that nearest station ended up being about a forty five minute walk from the actual venue. So it took a while to get there, and of the twenty minute firework show, we saw about twelve and a half. It was still cool, and I’m happy we did it, and there will be more fireworks on Saturday. Ann only was able to meet up with us at the end, so we headed back home with her and finished Aladdin along with Stephanie, then ended up watching The Sword in the Stone, too. Get this: every character in Sword in the Stone is someone in or around LDA. Most notably:

• Archimedes…………………Richard Digby Day
• Merlin………………………..Michael Winter
• Young Female Squirrel…Stephanie
• Squirrel Arthur…………….Geoff
• Fat Lady Squirrel…………All of us around Michael
• Bird Arthur………………….Me
• Fish Arthur………………….Sienna
• Mad Madame Mimm……Sue (Movement teacher)
• Human Arthur……………..Tierney
• Mountain of Books……….Ann

Obviously we cast way more than that, but a lot of them are inside jokes and need detailed explanations, so I’ll spare you. But the full list is available upon request.