Shows week 6&7

These past two weeks I had to see shows number 15 through 19 for Dartmouth. We saw Welcome to Thebes at the National Theatre on Monday and the play was okay, not my favorite of the week, but it held my attention for longer than most of the shows we've seen at the National. Directed by the director of Notes on a Scandal and written by Moira Buffini in response to claims that women cannot write political dramas, this show was very ambitious. The play commented on democratic commitment to helping repair African states effected by war and genocide through the Greek tragedies and democratic Athens involvement in Thebes. The plot worked very well and was interesting, but I felt the show moved a bit slow for me.

Tuesday the 27th we saw a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons at the Apollo Theatre in the West End. This was my favorite show of the week by far and incredibly well done. Set Post WWII, this play revolves around the Keller family whose father was suspected of having built faulty planes during the war but cleared, and whose son is a missing pilot. As the story unfolds, we discover the family's younger son now wants to marry the missing sons sweetheart and that the father is not as innocent as it seems. It was refreshing to see such an American play done so well and a very relatable story.

Thursday night our Dartmouth group went to see a stage adaption of the Swedish film Through a Glass Darkly at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. The lead actress, Zoe Wanamaker, played Jane Eyre in the film and was incredibly convincing in her role as a crazy woman. The show was definitely done well, but I just don't find stories about the mentally insane all that interesting...

Monday the 2nd's show at the National, The Habit of Art, was very pretentious and I was not a fan at all. The play was a play within a play and set at the National Theatre. The play that the actors in the story were putting on was about a gay poet and a gay opera singer and a rent boy, which is the English term for "male prostitute."

Thursday we went to see a Caryl Churchill play at the Arcola Theatre in the East End called A Light Shines in Buckinghamshire. The theatre was really cool and very fringey-it only sat 150 people. The stage was a dirt floor and very eerie, but the show itself was pretty much a dud. Its a historical drama about the Cromwell era, which is an even more boring bit of history than the puritans. I had to do everything I could to keep from sleeping!

To be continued when I'm back... Off to Edinburgh for the weekend!

Many Markets

London is famous for all of its markets, probably the most famous of which is Portobello Road, so thats where I'll start!

Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill is one of the most popular markets in London and definitely a busy place to visit. Open on Saturdays and Sundays, the 4 blocks of Portobello Rd. that make up the market are always packed full of both locals and tourists. This is an especially great market if you're interested in finding silver, antiques or teacups! From here you can also see the Travel Bookshop, from Notting Hill and Hugh Grant's door.

Brick Lane Market at Shoreditch in East London is by far my favorite market. East London is a unique melting pot of cultures. The north end of Brick Lane is filled with lots of charity shops (aka thrift stores) and vintage shops, and the south end of the street is all curry restaurants. The market has a lot of antiques, music, and cheap trinkets and sunglasses. But my favorite part is the twenty-somethings that line the middle of the market selling their old clothes or things that they've collected. I got really awesome green heels from a girl moving to Australia for just £5 and a cream leather wallet from the late 60s/early 70s from a girl who collects 60s and 70s wallets. My friend Colleen also got a really great Louis Vuitton bag in one of the charity shops here too. Brick Lane is also filled with a very neat collection of people-you get a lot of asymmetrical haircuts and androgynously dressed people. This place definitely worth stopping by on a Sunday morning!

Camden Market is located in Camden Town which is a very cool neighborhood (mentioned in one of my first blog entries for the nightlife). Camden was the most liberal area of London during the 60s and where the Beatles and such used to hang out (Abbey Road is located just north of the neighborhood). Today it is very much a hipster area. You'll find lots of kebab stands in this area, as well as some very unique clothing stores (some weird goth ones too...). The daily market is relatively small and all of the vendors sell a lot of the same things. But this is a good place to pick up inexpensive band tee-shirts and trinkets and a fun neighborhood to visit. Make sure you don't confuse this market with it's much more posh neighbor Camden Passage Market, located just off the Angel Tube Station. The goods at Camden Passage are similar to those at Portabello Rd., but in an easier to navigate fashion.

I feel like the most appropriate word to describe Greenwich Market is "cute." Lot's of hand made artistic trinkety things.

(**picture to come!)

Sundays from 8 am to 2 pm on Columbia Road just north of Brick Lane you will find the most picturesque market in London. At the Columbia Road Flower Market can find just about any type of flower you desire, with bundles of beautiful sunflowers starting at just £3 and dozens of roses for just £5. I went here with my mom and she said that if we had a market like this near us, she'd go every week. Even if you are only here for a short while and are not interested in purchasing flowers, I'd highly recommend checking out the flower market if not because its so pretty, then for the adorable boutiques and vintage shops that line the road.

Greenwich!

Our Dartmouth group took a boat trip to Greenwich along the Thames River this morning and had the whole day to explore there. The boat left at 9:30 from Westminster and our driver had a strong cockney accent which was fun to listen to. He pointed out major sights as well as some entertaining things like where Cher used to live. We arrived in Greenwich at 10:30 and I was exhausted from Friday evening so I ducked into a noon 3D showing of Toy Story 3 before exploring, which was amazing! I definitely recommend seeing it.

Greenwich has many free touristy things to do, including traveling through time and space. The meridian runs through Greenwich marking the change from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. It is one hour ahead on the Eastern side, so you can travel back in time by crossing into the west-something I made a lot of corny jokes about. Not a bad place for a day trip, especially on Dartmouth's tab!

A nice view of the Eye from the boat!

Me, dying in the sun at 9:30 on a Saturday...

LAMDA: Halfway Point

I'm now more than halfway done with my stay in England and three-quarters of the way done with the school portion so I thought I'd blog a little bit about my classes. The focus of the classes that I'm taking is "Shakespeare and His Contemporaries." Every morning I have two different classes depending on what day of the week it is, but each afternoon is the same.

For the first five weeks in the afternoon we worked with director John Link to prepare Shakespeare scenes. My teacher is a very interesting guy: he left school at 14 and acted in London and also in LA before settling in to teaching and also paints portraits of Shakespeare's characters that appear in theatre galleries all over. I was given two scenes to prepare for our final performance. I was Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Celia in As You Like It.

Beginning this week and continuing for the last two weeks, we've moved from Shakespeare in the afternoon to his contemporaries and are working on Jacobean plays. Our new director is John Baxter and he's really awesome. He is supposed to be LAMDA's best director.

My morning classes change everyday, but are typically really fun.

I have seven sessions of Historic Dance which I think are really fun. My teacher, Diana Scrivener, choreographed the recent Robin Hood film, and also choreographed two Heath Ledger films. We've learned a variety of Medieval and English Country Dances.

I have Movement twice a week with Donna Berlin. This is one of my favorite classes because its basically just like Zumba or a Cardio-dance class. We do lots of straightening and coordination work and it kicks my butt for an hour and a half. Donna also plays lots of Michael Jackson, Prince and Queen, and made us learn the words to TLC's "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls" to sing while she makes us work our abs!

We have four Improv and I'm sad its only four because I love improv. Its definitely one of the most useful classes in terms of my own life because I find it more interesting than theatre and would love to possibly do it at school.

I'm studying Stage Combat for the last three weeks which is pretty cool. Were working on hand combat and with rapier and dagger.

I have Singing either once or twice a week with either Gary Peacock or Jenny, an old English lady with bright dyed hair. I've actually learned a lot in this class, like how to match my voice to a note on the piano, which I didn't even know was necessary before... I still can't really sing, but I've definitely learned a lot from it.

I have six sessions of Physical Theatre with Mark Bell who is a very scary dude. Physical theatre is very popular in England, and there are tons of physical theatre companies working all over the UK. In practice, I think its theatre with a much heavier focus on movement and also often incorporates some modern dance. My teacher is just a very angry dude, jokingly, but still kind of scary, though his class is pretty fun.

John Baxter, who is directing our Jacobean scenes, also teaches Mask. He studied Comedia del Arte in Paris and is very funny. We haven't done much mask work in the morning sessions, but are incorporating some of the work into our Jacobean scenes.

I have Voice lessons twice a week which are all about breathing right and using your diaphragm and all that jazz. For the first four weeks I didn't really like this class cause my teacher, Ginny Avery, believed in herbal medicine and I think that's a load of crap. But now we have two teachers each week, George and Melanie Mehta, who are a lot more fun.

We have Alexander Technique once a week with Bethan Pugh which is a really weird class and I always fall asleep in it. What this class entails is laying down with your head on a book for twenty minutes with your eyes closed to help your posture. We're supposed to lay with our head on a book every day for fifteen minutes outside of class too-I never do...

Mostly school is just a lot of playing games which is fun. My classmates are from all over the world so I've definitely learned a lot from them. At the end of my program I'm going to visit one of them in Istanbul and another in Dublin. Overall, an interesting experience.

This is my Shakespeare Scenes group with our director John Link.

Billy Elliot & Sucker Punch

For Colleen and Charlie’s last night in London we went to see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre. The show is based off the movie and is a very dance heavy piece-it took 23 weeks for all the actors to prepare for the show. The entire cast was huge and included not only the stars, but an ensemble of neighbors, 12 different adults that played the miners and police and over a dozen little girls in the ballet class. There are 4 different boys that play Billy depending on the night, but all of them are either 12 or 13 years old and can do intense backflips and dance moves. The cast was full of talented kids and was very impressive.

Sucker Punch was an amazing show. This new play by Roy Williams premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square on June 11th and its run time has been extended because it has been so successful. Sucker Punch is set during London in the 1980s and addresses issues of racism through the story of a boxer named Leon. The stage is a boxing ring and the audience is seated like they're surrounding the fights. This marks show #14 and was definitely one of the best plays I've seen here.

Brighton Beach

I took the National Rail to Brighton on Sunday with Colleen and Charlie to soak up some rays for the first sunny day all week!! The Southern Line takes you from London Victoria to Brighton (the Southern Coast of England) in under an hour, so we just went for a day trip.

Brighton is a very cool sea side town with a unique history. King George IV visited Brighton in the 18th century and was so impressed by the town that he had the Royal Pavilion built. Brighton became the place for scandal and still is: Kemp Town or "Camp Town" is England's first nude beach and Brighton also arguably has the most active gay scene in England.

The beach itself in Brighton is pretty rocky but it was great to just be in the sun! Brighton Pier is what I think Coney Island would be like. The pier had lots of rides and games and was like a carnival over the water. I walked through the pier just to see it. The beach was full of seagulls, but I escaped their wrath. Colleen and Charlie were not quite as lucky (Charlie was fortunate enough to be shit on twice!).

Beyond the Horizon and Danton's Death

I went to two shows at the National this week and had very different experiences at them both. Beyond the Horizon by American playwright Eugene O'Neil was amazing. The show is closing this week, and I really wanted to see it before it finished so I went with a friend of mine from school Tuesday night. The show has been sold out all summer, but the National holds 20 tickets for students and releases them at 9:30 in the morning for that evenings performance for just £10. The show is set on a small town farm in the South and two LAMDA grads played the lead roles. I was extremely impressed by the quality of the productions. The actors were all amazing and their American accents weren't too shabby.

Danton's Death is an early 1800s play by Georg Buchner about the French Revolution. This is a play that we had to see for Dartmouth, but was not my favorite. Absolutely nothing happens in the play except in a few short scenes. Danton, the main character, is pitted against Robespierre and has been hailed by critics as the first modern hero, but I wasn't able to stay interested at all. Fortunately, the show was under two hours and allowed me to get out in time to celebrate with my two friends from home who arrived Wednesday night-Colleen Herrmann and Charlie Giger!!