Earthquakes in London

Okay, so there weren't ACTUALLY earthquakes, "Earthquakes in London" is just the title of another new play we saw at the National Theatre tonight. This production was very obscure, but very good. It's a play about global warming, and about corporate corruption, and also about family. It was VERY political. While I think that every play is in a sense political, I do think this one was a little too overt about its political commentary and message. Nevertheless, it was innovative and well-performed.

The execution of these pictures is not great -- my camera was having a hard time focusing in the theatre lighting of the space. But this is a picture of part of the set.

Some of my friends and I chose to be "groundlings" for this play which means that, although we had to stand for the whole of the 3 hour production, we got to be up close and personal with the actors during the show. Most of the audience, however, had fixed seating in the upper balconies.

The stage for this show was quite unconventional. A lot of the stage action took place on this bar that snaked through the standing audience. Some audience members even got to sit at the bar!

There were also scenes being played out on two little box stages that opened up behind curtains like the one in the background of this picture. The audience was constantly being directed to a different part of the stage to see what was going on. That certainly kept our senses stimulated!








There's something kind of interesting going on right now with the tube. There's this new system in place (which I find super handy) where we use swipe cards (Oyster cards) to use the tube. People can still use tickets, but it's cheaper to use an Oyster card because you can buy a weekly or monthly travel pass instead of buying a ticket for each ride. It also saves a lot of time because you don't have to wait in line at the ticket booth. However, some people are really upset about it, because the tube system is cutting back on ticket booth hours and, as a result, laying off a lot of workers. Because of this, a 24-hour strike was held starting at 5pm today, closing down every tube station.

Our play didn't start until 7:30pm, and it was pretty far away so we didn't want to walk. What we did instead was pack sandwiches and head over to the area in the afternoon, after we finished with classes for the day. This allowed us a short visit to the Tate Museum of Modern Art which is nearby the National Theatre.

We only had enough time to see this one exhibit before the museum closed for the evening, but there's another exhibit about voyeurism that I really want to go back and see.







Then we had a little picnic outside before the show!




Oh! I almost forgot! My theatre professor, Sheila Fox, knew one of the main actors (Chuk Iwuji) in the show we saw last week, so she got him to come chat with our class today. I was shameless and got a picture with him:

He's fantastic!

Stratford-upon-Avon

Yesterday, we had an all-school trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare lived most of his life!

This is the Avon river. "Avon" means "river," so this is actually the "river" river.

Shakespeare's church

We dressed up in period attire.

Stratford is a really cute little town outside London.

Shakespeare's Birthplace!

There were actors in the garden performing scenes from Shakespeare's plays. They even took requests!

I met Shakespeare's ghost ;)

Hmmmmmm...

...?

My shoelace looks like a bunny! See it, see it?

Erik is standing in front of The Courtyard Theatre, where we saw the Royal Shakespeare Company's FABULOUS production of Julius Ceasar. The set and light design blew my mind!

After a long day, we're ready to make the 2 1/2 hour journey back to London.

Devin's pretty happy about this.

Classes Begin

My classes started on Tuesday, and I am really enjoying all of them!

I'm taking 3 classes the first half of the semester, so they're short courses that will all finish the end of October.

On Tuesday I had only one class: Early Renaissance in Florence and Flanders. My professor for this class is an adorable older woman with crazy-curly hair. Exactly what you would expect an art history professor to look like! She's incredibly knowledgeable and excited about the topic because it's her area of expertise. She wrote a book that specializes on the interaction between Italian and Northern art during this time period, and it's one of only a few books that really analyzes their connection and how these places were influencing each other. Anyway, the format for class is that Tuesdays we meet in the classroom and look at slides/listen to her lecture, and Thursdays we meet in different museums and look at art. This past week we had class at the National Gallery!

The National Gallery is kind of a big deal, so Trafalgar Square, where it's located, is decorated all pretty with monuments and fountains and all that fanfare.

My first class on Wednesday was my Ellen Mease class: The Age of Revolution. This class is about the major thinkers of 19th Century England. We're reading a wide variety of things from John Keats poetry to novels like Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein to essays by Darwin and beyond. Our first class took place at the Tate Britain museum, where we looked at paintings by William Blake (whose poetry we also read) and some of his contemporaries like JMW Turner (who is a cool dude). I couldn't take any pictures in the museum, but these guys are definitely worth googling if you're interested!

We had our second class at John Keats house in Hampstead, which was quite beautiful.

This house used to be a sort of duplex in Keats' time, so he actually only lived in the left half of it.












Ellen was late so here we are waiting in the yard for her.

And here she is making her grand appearance through the front gate.

This sculpture of Keats is also how tall he was (5'1"). Matt decided to demonstrate just how short 5'1" is!

In the kitchen...

...and an example of what Keats would have eaten.

This is a replica of his death mask that is kept in his bedroom. Weird!

This room is where all the magic happened, where he wrote his poetry! He was one of those poets who was never really appreciated while he was alive. Admittedly, it's probably because he didn't write very good poetry until right before he died. One of his most well-known poems is called "Ode on a Grecian Urn." This poem is a sort of narration of the artwork engraved on a cremation urn. The imagery is absolutely beautiful. He discusses how the figures are caught in a moment that will be eternal, frozen in time. The characters, apparently young lovers, will stay young and beautiful, forever loving each other. The poem discusses the allure of eternal beauty versus the passion felt only in fleeting moments. It really is very beautiful, and also hints at something larger about poetry and all art itself. How do we recreate the emotion felt by artists as they created their work, and what other new feelings does the work stir in us after the artist is long dead?



My last class is in the afternoon the same day as my Ellen class: British Theatre in Performance. For this class, we just read and go see plays. We saw our first play as a group on Thursday, "Welcome to Thebes," at the National Theatre.

This is the courtyard areas, and it really reminded me of the tea party in Alice in Wonderland!

Don't you agree?

This was the stage.










I really enjoyed the play, though it was a little uncomfortably violent. It was written by a feminist playwright, and applied Greek mythology (specifically the story of Antigone) to the 1990s war and violence in modern Africa (specifically Liberia). After a string of vicious male warlords, Liberia elected their first female president in the 1990s. She, in turn, appointed a cabinet of mostly women. The people voted for her because they wanted a gentler, more maternal leader to turn them away from their history of violence. What they found was that she had monetarily supported many of the terrible male leaders that had torn the country apart in order to gain the power she did. The play explores issues of power corruption, the human flaws in everyone, and the difficulty of building up the community in a land that has been so destroyed by violence and failed leadership. Also, this is the world premiere of the play which is always fun -- it's important to keep up with what's new in theatre!

During intermission, I went out onto the terrace which had a pretty amazing view of the city!