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!