London Calling

Goodbye, London

Well, it’s my last day in London.

Later today, my cast and I will perform Oh What a Lovely War for our friends, classmates, and families. We have worked our bollocks off (look, I speak English!)for the past five weeks and I am so proud of the work we’ve done. We’re ready to share it.

These three months have been incredibly grueling and fun. As I sat at my kitchen table trying to think of a way to summarize all that’s happened this semester, it struck me that I don’t need or want to summarize my time here. It is something that doesn’t need to be summarized, nor can it be in a few lines. 

I love this city. I feel as at home here as I do in Rhode Island or at Vassar. 

These classmates have become my friends, some of them for life. 

I only hope that one day, our lives bring us back together.

So, goodbye, London. I’ll miss you, but I’m certain I’ll be back.

The Final Countdown

We’ve entered the stretch of time where everything becomes a last:

My last Saturday/Sunday/Monday etc in London. Our last group outing. The last time I’ll grocery shop here. So on and so forth.

This week is going to be so hard. We have a ton of work to do in terms of rehearsals, I have to pack, we have a show at the end of the week, I want to go home so badly, and I don’t want to leave London at all. There’s a lot to get through.

So far, however, it’s been really great. I cannot believe it’s Tuesday night and we perform on Friday.

Yesterday was our first work through in the space, and we experienced some of the technical elements for the first time! Pretty exciting. The show is going to be quite good, actually, which is sort of a nice thing to know. I’m proud of the work we’ve done as an ensemble, and I’ve had so much fun these last 4.5 weeks!!

Cannot WAIT to see everyone from home again. 3 days until I’m home!

Busy Bee

This week has been crazy busy.

Monday, after rehearsal, I went out for a friend’s birhday.

Tuesday a bunch of us saw Legally Blonde: The Musical, which was a blast.

Wednesday we watched Shakespeare in Love.

Thursday Liza and I went to Matilda, a brand new musical based on the book.

Last night we went to a fashion show/dance party.

Today we went to Portobello Road (again) and Borough Market… Now we’re either going to a karaoke bar or a 80’s dance party.

Tomorrow my plan is to wake up early and go to the Victoria and Albert, British, and Tate Britain Museums! It’s a ton of stuff to do, but I’m kind of running out of time and those are all the places I need to go before I leave London in exactly a week!!!

Penultimate!

Welcome to the last week before my last week in London!

Pretty scary.

Hamlet at the Young Vic was interesting. I thought Michael Sheen was fantastic, and the production was incredibly bold. I think it’s difficult to take a text as well known as Hamlet and really do something different with it, but that some of the choices made didn’t really work for me. 

I am going to Legally Blonde the musical tonight, and probably to the Barbican on Wednesday, but there’s a strike so it might have to wait. 

Rehearsals are going well. We begin doing full runs today, which I’m excited and nervous about. I think the show still needs a lot of polishing, but that’s a good place to be the week before you go up. Rania, my director, is a maniac (in the best possible way) and the process has been so much fun thus far. I hope it continues to be so.

My good friend Liza and I decided that since we only have two weeks left, we can’t let a single day go to waste. So we’re planning on doing something fun every day after rehearsal.

Yesterday, we went to Heaven, which is a gay bar. Monday nights are student nights, though, so there’s no cover and fun dance music and a more mixed group in the club. We danced until 2 in the morning or something.

Needless to say, I am a little tired, but I’m also so happy we went out dancing! Might even go back next week!

Well, I’ve got to caffeine in my system before I leave the house, so I’m off to make more tea.

xo

Tis I, Hamlet the Dane!

Woke up this morning at 5:30 to go and rush Hamlet at the Young Vic, starring Michael Sheen.

Thrilled to be going to see it tonight, as I have heard mixed reviews.

Also, may or may not be going to see the Barbican’s production sometime this week, too. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Cheeky!

So my Dramatic Criticism professor is always going on about how one year some student wrote a haiku for the final essay and it was brilliant and how much he loved it.

Well, I had two essays due this week, and by the time I got around to writing the second one (after memorizing lines/working in rehearsal ALL DAY), I really wasn’t feeling it.

So instead I wrote a sonnet.

Hopefully this goes over well.

I actually am not nervous about turning it in at all, although my iambs are presently a little sketchy. I need to edit! But I think he’s going to find it really funny.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Globe Trotting part 2: Ireland!

It started with my alarm going off at 4 a.m. which was pretty rough.

By 5 a.m. Rachel, Hannah, and I were (groggily) hailing a cab to take us to the bus station. At 6, we were on our way to the airport. We were there by 7, which left us with 2 hours to clear security etc.

Security in England does NOT take nearly as long as it does in America. We had cleared it by 7:05 and didn’t know what to do with ourselves for two hours. We bought books and breakfast and settled in. 

By noon, we were in Dublin. We were staying in Rathgar, which is a suburb of Dublin, so it took us about another hour to get a bus from the airport to city center and then another bus out to Rathgar.

When we arrived at Annie’s (our host) house, we crashed. All fell asleep in the living room.

I went out to dinner with my relatives in Dublin, and did a lot of catching up with them. Then we had a pretty quiet night in Rathgar, falling asleep pretty early. 

The next day, we explored Dublin. It was raining pretty hard, but we went and played in St. Stephen’s Green before going to the Kilkenny Shops and the National Museum of Archaeology. It was really cool. We saw this exhibit on Viking Ireland that was really fascinating!

That night, Annie took us out with her friends to a bar in Rathgar, and we stayed up pretty late. 

Then, we were off to Wexford to stay with my family. We got there in time for dinner, which was delicious! My little cousins are such sweethearts, and it was so nice to play with them. After dinner, my “big” cousins took us out for drinks at this tiny pub called the Thatch. 

We spent two wonderful days relaxing in the beautiful Irish countryside. My cousins took us on a long walk, we visited my uncles and aunts, we went to a fairy ring, and we had a generally wonderful time.

It was incredible to see my relatives again after about 6 or 7 years. I’ve really missed them, and it was a great way to spend midterm break.

I’m sorry it took me so long to update about Ireland. I’ve had a crazy few weeks here in regards to rehearsal. I’m currently supposed to be working on an essay, but so far that hasn’t been going too excellently. Hopefully I can pull it off, because it’s due tomorrow.

Lots of love and hugs from this side of the pond.

I will tell you about my trip to Ireland in the next day or so. But I just wanted to take some time to talk about this half of my semester abroad, because things are pretty different (and it’s only been 2 days!).

The first half of this semester I spent in conservatory style classes, studying acting from a variety of different perspectives (i.e. Shakespeare, high comedy, voice technique, etc). The last day of our eight weeks of class was an audition day. We all paired up and performed dialogues for a group of 3 directors, who then cast us in one of three shows: Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (or The Private Life of the Master Race) by Brecht, and Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare. (One of these things is not like the others!)

I am working on Oh What A Lovely War. 

For the next five weeks, we will all work to stage what is, for all intents and purposes, a professional show. Rather, it’s as close to professional as we’ll get given we were guaranteed a role and are not being paid but rather graded etc. You get the point.

On the last week, we have one chance to perform our shows. 

It’s going to be a ton of work. 

Oh What A Lovely War is an anti-war musical about World War I that was originally devised by Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop from Stratford East Theatre. We have spent the last two days doing read-throughs and basic choreography, and we began to learn the songs. It’s going to be a completely exhausting 5 weeks and I can tell I’m going to be pushed right out of my comfort zone. But in a good way. It’s going to be too much fun AND simultaneously challenging as all get out.

Anyways, I’m off to go sing and dance.

I promise you, no one is more surprised than I am to find myself in a musical.

Go figure. 

Globe Trotting pt. 1: Paris!

Well, I’m back from my little excursion around Europe. It was a whirlwind of a week, let me tell you that!

Rest assured, I will post photos shortly, but I thought I’d tell you a little bit about my trip first.

Paris is an incredible city. Definitely a city that lives up to all the hype, and to my own expectations/dreams. The architecture alone is breathtaking, and I was stunned by what I saw as I simply strolled along. It’s definitely a great walking city. It’s huge, for starters, and a lot of what I wanted to see was a little spread out. When I looked at the map, it seemed as if things were mostly concentrated in one area. But the map was deceivingly small, I’d say. It’s a great place to just wander around from place to place and poke your head into little shops etc. 

When I arrived on Saturday, I met up with some friends from Vassar, Peter and Danielle. Peter is studying in Paris right now, and Danielle is in Madrid and came for a visit (just like me!). Peter took us to the Montmarte area, where we had brunch at this fabulous little restaurant. Then, we climbed up the hill and saw this amazing view of the city. We went on a carousel because it was too great an opportunity to pass up. Then, we took the metro to the Musee d’Orsay. 

d’Orsay was possibly my favorite part of Paris. We spent a few hours wandering around this museum, and I saw SO MUCH NINETEENTH CENTURY ART. It was mind blowing. I saw Monet and Courbet pieces that we talked about a lot in my art history course last year. We walked through the Van Gogh exhibit and saw tons of really famous pieces that I have spent ages talking about in classes. It was thrilling.

Afterwards, we went to Champs-Élysées and we we walked up the entire length of it, until we got to the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc is astounding. It’s way bigger than I realized it would be. The statues carved into it and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are so powerful… I was very moved.

We went to dinner at a fabulous creperie and then walked LITERALLY across the city. We saw Notre Dame and the Fontaine de Saint Michel at night, and I don’t have many pictures of those. 

Sunday, we woke up and went to Luxembourg Gardens, had lunch and wandered around the gardens, which were in full autumnal glory. We went to the Bastille area and walked all over there, then back across town for dinner in the medieval quarter. I ate the best falafel in the WORLD at this place that apparently Lenny Kravitz also really loves. We walked around and poked into shops, and then went to the Eiffel Tower at midnight to watch it sparkle.

Monday morning I was on my own. I went to Musee de Louvre. I loathed it. It was way too crowded and I felt stifled, claustrophobic, and distracted to the point where I could not enjoy the art very much. I made myself stick around and see Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa. Winged Victory was stunning, but the Mona Lisa was surprisingly anti climactic. I also wandered through the 19th century halls. 

I spent the rest of the morning eating a baguette outside a cafe on the Seine and reading. 

I caught my train back to London and was home in time for dinner and the fancy dress (aka costume) party at our pub. 

Pictures and stories from Ireland to follow….

Good night!