You can like the life you're livin, you can live the life you like...

Again, I'm completely behind in my days here, and my days here are dwindling so quickly i can barely stay on top of them. The week neal was here was so busy (and wonderful!) and then jumping back into classes happened so fast and the workload this part is a little more substantial than the first half. we have longer scenes, with longer lines, songs to memorize, everything to block and organize and practice, and three more papers to write. I am upon my second to last weekend in this awesome city. It's terrible. 

But instead of thinking of that, for now, i'm going to try to write about five days. five days. we'll see how far i get. heh.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Today was the day of our tour. Neal and I decided that the best way to see interesting cool things outside of London, while still seeing ALL of the entire city, within a week, it'd probably be best to just do a tour with the three we wanted to see. We chose Windsor Castle, the Roman Baths, and Stonehenge. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but it was just an introduction for us anyway, and we wanted to see everything! We knew we'd get the feeling at each location that we wish we could stay for a few days (except stonehenge of course, heh), but that's...for trips back! :)

We got up WAY early, because we had to be outside this hotel, called the Royal National, at 8 am, to be picked up by the bus. We got there about 7;45 am and were kinda nervous because there wasn't any bus or info about the tour or anything really, but finally we found some people who were waiting for the same thing so we felt better. Then a lady came up and yelled Evans Evans Tours! and we were off! we got on this charter bus which ended up taking us to Victoria Station, because there were a whole lot of charter buses picking up from hotels for other tours and we had to redistribute. We ended up on the same bus with the same lady as the tour guide (heh), and were off by nine am to Windsor Castle.

First of all, Windsor Castle is huge! I thought it would just be like a castle, maybe about the same size as the Tower of London, but it went on forever. The village was really cute with lots of shops and restuarants. and on the land of Windsor Castle was a chapel and lots of other stuff. We got a complementary audio guide tour and decided we would tackel everything at the castle, and we did. We saw EVERY room, and the chapel, and the windsor castle changing of the guard, and queen mary's doll house (so pretty!), and found out that the Queen was actually in residence that weekend (a certain flag was flying). We were there when the Queen was! The castle itself was, of course, gorgeous, and everything ornately decorated (like Versailles, but only not so French). A lady got mad because neal looked at his phone for the time and phones were supposed to be off and she got even madder when we tried to explain to her that iphones don't turn off and that it was silent. then neal just said "it's off now" and she was like "good."  ....people can be really...dumb sometimes. We saw the wing of the castle that had actually burnt down in 1992 (right neal??), but it had all been redone and looked brand new. They even told us some secrets about how they kept certain things (The scorched wood flooring in one room was simply lifted up, flipped over and put back down again). 

Finally we had to run back to the bus and we really needed to get food, so we stopped by an Eat (yes that's a chain here, like Pret a manger), prepackaged sandwiches and stuff. I got some mexican chicken avocado wrap thing (typical), and neal got some chicken basil thing that was sorta like chicken salad (very yummy), and we ate in the bus and then i promptly fell back asleep on the way to Bath.

Got to Bath, only got 1.5 hours there because some lady was late coming back from Windsor Castle (we/they were angry at her). We also got a complementary audio guide tour of the Roman Baths, and I got to see the Baths like I never had before. The entire thing was an Ancient, social, spiritual, SPA! haha. I really liked how they had built the museum because it sorta travelled through and on top of the roman baths so you weren't actually walking on top of hte ruins but could see everything. There are tons of rooms there. And they knew all the purposes of them (or so they said), some had hot springs, some had cold springs, some were for old and sick, and others were for socializing, some were saunas to warm the body up and some were for getting massages! We could see the ruins, and you could still see how they ventilated the rooms to make them hot suanas, it was very interesting. Of course, we saw the famous nasty water pool, where everyone used to come hang out and cleanse themselves. Sounds like one big fiesta public pool to me! :)  then some guy in roman robes came out and starting chanting to the gods and i got scared and hid behind a column because I thought he might pull out a gun but Neal just laughed at me. 

After the Baths, we walked around for a bit and got Ben and Jerrys, despite the fact that it was the COLDEST day so far in England since I've been here (ben and jerrys is our thing!) and walked up and down the street to check out some of the stores and whatnot. For some reason, I really thought all the famous architecture of Bath was Grey, but it was definitely a yellowy stone; I'm still a little confused about that. The tour guide said that the stone can get dirty really easily and if they don't clean it the buildings turn black, but I dont think they had let the entire city of Bath get really dirty the last time I was there. I dunno. Neal got fudge (typical) and then we jumped back on the bus, and I promptly fell asleep on the way to stonehenge.

We only had stonehenge for 45 min. Truthfully, I don't think you could spend much more time there. They, looked like the picture. you can't walk through them or touch them anymore (conservation), so we could only walk around them. and it was freezing. and then don't know why theyre there, haha. All we really did find out is that theyre working on eliminating the road that runs right next to stonehenge and brings people there, and trying to get a road two miles away with "unprecedented visitor facilities and car park" and then youhave to walk a 2 mile spiritual journey to see stonehenge....So I dont think neal or I will be doing that when we come back.  but it was still cool! :)

Then we got back! what a day! 

Common motif: I slept every time we were on the bus that day. haha I think I was still getting over my sickness from the day before, and just tired, too. I don't generally sleep that much on buses though. I missed the entire tour guide's talk on teh way from Bath to Stonehenge. Neal saw pigs and prisons and all sorts of stuff!

When we got home we were pretty hungry, but wanted to be close tohome so we went to Brunswick square and went out to eat at Giraffe. i went there the first day i was here, but didnt eat anything (too exhausted), and I wanted to try the food. We just split, japanese fried prawns with a chili sauce and potato wedges covered in cheese, sour cream, and salsa. Both were very yummy.  That was it for that day!

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tuesday was the day that went the least according to schedule, but also the day we did most stuff. Neal's last day. :( So it was a happy day, and also a sad day. But we still managed to have a good day. :)

We got up early (I think that's a recurring statement), and were at the British Museum when it opened. I really only wanted him to see the Rosetta stone and the stolen stuff from the Parthenon so once we did that we got out of there. 

Then we went over to Green Park and got tomato and mozzarella croissant and drinks from Starbucks to take over to Buckingham Palace for while we waited for the changing of the guard (SO YUMMY by the way, I think our overall favorite snack from the week, minus Bueno Bars and Macarroons and Milkshakes...haha). So we got over there half and hour early and it was already SO PACKED we couldn't find anywhere to stand and sorta just kept moving around. The guard came and we could hear them better than see them, but turns out my pictures captured more than I coudl see because I held the camera up real high. I've come to think, while being here for so long in London, that there are some things, of course, that you should do while you're in London, like Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but what turns out to be the most memorable or fun things, are necessarily the most touristy things. I also realized during that time that I think i have an acute form of ochlophobia (I googled it, Neal!). I don't like to be enclosed with 8 million people all around me speaking different languages. yuck. Finally we found a black fence to sit on and watched the rest from there and then went and ate sandwiches from Pret in Green Park once we got sick of it. Learned that the park used to be a royal park and not has a princess Diana memorial walkway that is very pretty and lined with big trees and benches, nice walk. :)

Then, We went over to the area of Westminster and did Westminster Abbey. I LOVE Westminster Abbey, and remember it pretty well, considering it had been a year and half since I had last been there. We got the audio guide tour (we love those), and got the history of the abbey (SO OLD), and saw all teh famous dead kings and queens there, along with Poet's Corner (Notably buried: TS Eliot, Lord Byron, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Newton, Darwin, and some popular theater dudes, David Garrick and Lawrence Olivier). It was very cool! :) Then we went outside and saw where some monks live with their families...but they didn't have that name, do you remember neal? We also saw College Garden, which is only open three days a week, and I don't remember seeing it the last time we were there. Apparently, it is thought to be the oldest garden in London and still is gorwing stuff today, mostly flowers and some fruit, but back then it's where all the monks grew their food. i twas very pretty and very cool. 

After that we headed over to Parliament with the rain starting to come down only to find out that there was a 3 hour wait to get in. I was very sad, because I knew Neal really wanted to see it. But we decided to go the Imperial War Museum, because I had been wanting to do that, even though it was kinda far away. It turned out to be really cool! My one dislike was that there was this big gigantic room full of tanks, planes, guns and cannons, and boats, and trucks, and cars from different wars and different countries. That part was cool, what I didn't like was that they were all covered in paint so think they looked...fake. like toy, set up. But they were real, because when you looked at the descriptions, they had a description of what kind of vehicle it was, and then they had a description of what that specific vehicle did during which war. it was still cool. Then we did the World War I and II exhibits, which were gigantic wings on one floor. They were VERY cool. They had a uniform from every country involved, and lots of letters home to wives, and supplies, and guns, and maps, and codes, and trinkets, and messages, and pictures and all sorts of stuff. It was cool! And then for WWI they had a trench warfare simulator. You went into a room that was built like a trench and you walked around this winding path and saw a general in his office, some dudes fighitng form teh trench, a guy on the phone with a guy sleeping on teh cot, and then a doctor trying to operate on a soldier with hardly any lighting. it was dark and they had sound affects and whatnot. Kinda lame, but I think we both enjoyed it! :) and then fro WWII they had a blitzkrieg simulator. You sat on benches in this room and listened to a recording of a family of people talking and some are scared somethngs gonna happen, and then when the "lightning" struck, the benches shifted real fast. Then this really creepy guy working there took us through the "wreckage" which was kinda lame, but still terrifying, only cause the guy was really into his job and was really scary. we got out of there quick. Then we went upstairs to the Holocaust exhibit, which I'm sure you can imagine, was terribly depressing, and sorta what you'd expect. They had a lot of photographs though, that were awful. We did as much as we could take and then left. 

We headed back over to Parliament and turns out it was only a fifteen minute wait. The House of Lords ended up being done for the day but we got to see the House of Commons debating over whether to open up a new tax office, which one dude said would help them get out of the recession faster. But truthfully, I have a really hard time following them. A girl from France sitting next to me asked me to explain what they were saying and i was like "Im sorry...i have no idea" haha. They talk pretty fast and have strong accents, many are representing different regions of England and therefore have all the different dialects, and some are much easier than others (ie London over the countryside, heh). It was still fun and I think Neal enjoyed seeing it. Parliament is very old and covered in tradition. and Beautiful of course. 

After that we went and got presents for Reed and Dr. and Mrs Miller (yuuummmm). and took those back to Langton Close, because Neal really wanted to ride a Double Decker and the only route I know really well is from Langton Close to the National theatre, we took that one, haha. We went out to eat at a Slug and Lettuce (sounds gross, but is a chain over here!). I got a grilled chicken salad that was pretty good and Neal got Fish and Chips that were AWESOME because they were from a real restaurant. They were even better because they had actually taken the skin off the fish before they fried it. I don't like how most English people eat their fish with the skin still on it. It's gross. Anyway, dinner was yummy and fun, but kinda sad, too. last night.

Got back, went through all my stuff and gave it to Neal to take home and he finished packing and we just hung out and talked until we were exhausted (which ended up not being very long). Also, all the kids in my program were getting back that night from various parts of Europe (Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam). 

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Neal got up at the crack of dawn and I got up not long after that to help him find a taxi. It ended up not being that bad. We just walked down Gray's Inn Road and found one and just like that, a great week was over. I walked back to Langton Close sleeping and sad and went back to bed until 11 am, because we didn't have class until 1 pm that day (to let the kids who went on trips get some rest). I think I needed it just as much, I don't think anyone, ever, will be able to do that much of London and England in a week as much as we did. I know I made you keep running all the time because we had lots of things to do, but thanks for tagging along. I know you wanted to see everything (so did I!) and ....we did!  it was an awesome break!

Class. I sorta talked about it a few days ago, we got our new scene assignments. I'll be playing Blanche from Streetcar with Geoff (again!) playing Mitch. If anyone wants to check it out we're doing the first 4 and a half minutes of this video from the show for our assignment:

Lots of lines to memorize!

We also worked out our musical mock auditions with famous people for this wednesday and friday (oh boy). I'll be doing Stars and the Moon from Songs for a New World which Clum actually recommended, which works out well because I know it the best. So I'll be working on that for the next few days.

Then we talked about La Cage Aux Folles. Ohhhh La Cage. Starting as a French film in the mid1970s, it was a great foreign farce for the time, staring two overweigh french comic actors. There were 2 sequels of the movie, and in 1983 it was made into the Broadway musical we know today, which included a team of really strong people: Arthur Lawrence (director of gypsy, west side story and more), Harvey Fierstein, who funny story started his career as a drag performer in NY, with a voice like he had smoked 1 million packs of cigarettes and actaully wrote another play about a drag queen that adopts a kid (that kid was apparently Matthew Broderick's debut...), so obviously he was a good guy to incorporate. And Jerry Herman who composed ehhh, a couple small musicals in the 60s like Hello Dolly and Mame, which are kinda centered on larger than life women (it has even been considered putting a man in for teh role of Dolly. (Note: the Bird Cage with robin williams is just an americanized adaptation. A few kids didnt really realize this....) 

Anyway, La Cage actually didn't do so well in England at first, which is a little surprising, because apparently they're more accepting than we are (okay.), but did great in amateur theaters (kinda like in the US, it's done everywhere).  La Cage was in reality the first attempt of making homosexuality the text, rather than the underlying subtext in the play, and came out in 1983 (midst of AIDS epidemic), with some rock songs that stick with you (I am what i am, etc). 

The show itself, was in a way, great. It was funny and the,....guys were amazing dancers, they worked their butts off. The story is a little lame, and i really had a hard time liking the two supporting roles, the son and his fiancee anne. Once I found out the son was actually the understudy, I felt a little better, but i still didnt like them. But it was colorful and fun and enjoyable, nevertheless. We had good seats, too. Still, not one of my favorites, but it's okay. 

I think it's interesting how every play seems to have some underlying subtext about homosexuality. Or maybe I'm just noticing it because there was in the past like 6 shows we've seen (hmm, or maybe that was a chosen patterned schedule..) 

-Troilus and Cressida: Ulysses and Patroclus (which was apparently for the time wellknown in greek socities, and an unspoken part of Elizabethan court, even King James I was said to have male "favorites"

-Dorian Gray - Well...Dorian. Oscar Wilde made hints in 1890 about what was going on sexually, but couldn't really be as direct about it as Matthew Bourne could today in his dance drama

-Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme  - the main relationship in that entire show is that of Piper and Craig, The playwright Frank McGuinness was even gay. 

-Apologia: this is a little subtler, but Kristen (the lead's)'s best friend is Hugh, a gay guy who seems to understand her better than her own two sons. In that way, Alexi Caye Campbell sort of represents how there is a this common understanding that straight women can get along with gay men pretty well. 

Finally, we discussed how there are two kinds of musical numbers in musicals (generally speaking)

1 - Book number: these numbers help tell the story; maybe not directly, but perhaps the state of mind of a character, or an idea, etc; aka I want, I love, I am songs; all of which fit into the story.

2 - Diegetic - the character is a character who is performing - like the first number in La Cage, They're performing in a nightclub, another example: many in Cabaret.

*Clum also stressed how important it is that the stakes have to be high enough for people to move from talking to singing, otherwise it doesn't fit within the show. they have to be seamless. the audience wants the characters to be talking sometimes, and if you just launch them into songs into inappropriate times, it could be extremely detrimental. 

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Thursday was a pretty good day, and also my and neal's 11 monthaversary :) What an awesome way to celebrate, london for a week, haha. :) Thursday we actually had a divided class, since half the class is doing scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire and the other half is doing When the Rain Stops Falling. We (Streetcar kids) had the early shift), and all we did was read our scenes, sorta discuss each other, figure out their objectives in each scene, and emotional wellbeing and whatnot. It'll be interesting because I sort of have the climax of Blanche. Everyone else sorta has the normal her, the her on top of everything. I have the crazy, old, I hear music in my head, I'm an alcoholic and Mitch has found me out, Blanche. Should be challenging. :)

AFter that I waited for an hour to let the other group finish and then Cameron, Kyle, Ted and I went out to lunch with Clum! We got pizza from our favorite place (starts with an M). It's really cool because every day they have different kinds of pizza, my first time i had potato and artichoke, which sounds weird but was SO good!! Anyway, they make whatever they want every day and it's very italian. I got the only vegetarian one, i dont really know what it was. I think eggplant, parmesan and mozzarella, but it was very good, and italian soda, dont know what that was either because the bottle was in italian, haha. We took our lunches to Gray's Inn Garden and sat next to a tree on the grass and discussed Hoof n Horn, it's current situation and how to make it better, considering we're struggling so badly

Clum actually told us some cool history. After HnH stopped writing its own musicals every year, they were actually tied to the music department and had a paid orchestra and conductor for every show. They also always had a musical director that was faculty, and would sell out their shows as soon as they posted what they were doing. They were just that popular around campus. I guess Duke has a lot more stuff going on now. He also told us about some duke alums that were actually in HnH, including some dudes who are in NY today producing and music directing stuff! crazy! he gave us their emails and told us to get in touch with them.

Pretty much our game plan is to crank out and get through Godspell, rock with Reefer Madness, and then do something really well known in spring, whether we like it or not, just because we know it can sell, cuz we need the money SO BAD. Not to mention we need to start fixing all the Theater Ops relations that a few people have messed up recently (cough jones lerman cough). It was a fun talk, we all enjoyed it and got pretty pumped up about making things better.

So much that when we got back to Langton Close we went into the 1C kitchen and talked more about our plans for the fall. should be a busy fall. After that, we talked about how Ted played Frederick in A Little Night Music his junior year of high school and had the show on his computer so we went and watched it. it was so cute. Id LOVE it if Duke did that, but HnH cant because it's not well known enough (stupid stupid stupid. why cant people just go see shows to support the arts?? whether it has a big name or not doesnt mean its not a good production).

AFter that it was pretty much time to go to the theater: Jerusalm, a new play by Jez Butterworth (nice name huh). This is his second show produced this year!  But his shows are so wellknown for being so good that this show, though completely new, was completely sold out a couple weeks after tickets went on sale. And we saw it after the very first week!

it was performed at teh Royal Court Theatre, which is one of the most prestigious theaters in England; in the 1890s it was known for doing plays with real social significance and issues, in a very wealthy part of london (Sloane Square). Even snotty, upper class girls became known as "Sloanes." Anyway, to this day, it has remained a theater that you know when you go, you will be shaken up a bit. and oh boy we were. 

Jerusalem, looks at sort of what is going on in contemporary England and how it relates to English past and ideals through the eyes of English countryside. There are some eerie traditions and customs that rang out in this play, but it was incredible.

It starred Mark Rylance as Johnny Rooster Byron, who was recently just in Boeing Boeing on Broadway, but has done tons of stuff, lots with the Royal Shakespeare Company, etc. 

A great supporting role was Mackenzie Crook who played Ginger (great role), who was actually in the British version of The Office (which was actually the original! America stole it from them! apparently, theirs was wittier!), but most people would recognize Mackenzie from a single role: the pirate with the fake eye in Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2, and 3. It's amazing to see him acting like a normal human being, though Ginger wasn't all that normal. 

The show was LONG! 3 hours and 10 minutes! and two intermissions! The first two act were extremely funny and the third was incredibly depressing, and I think many of us are still confused about what went on there. SO I think we'll talk to Clum about it on monday and see if we can sort anything out. But I liked it 

Notable stuff:

-Giant Story "you're sitting on it." "But in passing, he did mention he built Stonehenge"

-the entire beginning of teh play, from Phaedra singing to the fiesta, to Lee waking up inside the sofa, hahaha

-Ginger's stories about Rooster jumpin over stuff. "then at the flintock Fair, 1981, he died."

-Rooster's story to dawn about getting kidnapped by four Nigerians last week. "they said they'd let me go if I said I was sorry." ...."so that was a rough few days. Apart from that, mustn't grumble." 

-Troy's monologue to Rooster. so sad. 

-the set was awesome! there were trees and grass and a real turtle, fish and chickens! very real, very cool.  very sad. :(

Friday I slept in after playing lots of werewolf the night before, and we didn't have class today. I don't really know why other than that Clum decided to let us have another long weekend. i was really disappointed about not being able to go to Belfast with geoff and eugenie to see northern Ireland. Cameron and I decided to go student rush a couple shows and see what we could get. WE went over to Chicago an hour early, and got student price, FRONT ROW TICKETS! AHHHHHHH. we had an hour after that and went to this famous bookstore, Foyles, and looked at musical theater sheet music for awhile and then went back. Taty was there, she had gotten a ticket the night before, not student rush. It was AWESOME! really really different from the movie, but i wish the stupid rights would get released because there's zero set and HnH could so do it. bleh. We liked it a lot. I loved Mr. Cellophane, and of course all the big dance numbers! :) the court scene was really funny too. Velma Kelly was Fabulous! Michelle Williams, actually (one of the three girls from Destiny's Child other than Beyonce and Kelly...) played Roxie. She did okay, but messed up the choreography a lot. it was weird because the lady who played Velma really upstaged her she was so good. But the dancing was still a lot of fun and we liked it a lot. Mama Morton sang some of her song to Cameron, too! (So boost me up my ladder kid...!) hehe it was so funny! At the end of her song she pointed and winked at him.  

After the show we RAN over to the Pheonix Theater to see if we could get tickets to Blood Brothers the musical with book, music, and lyrics by Willy Russell (Very cohesive!). it started at 7:45 and we got out at 7:20 and we got tickets on house left in row G. SWEET. Blood Brothers is in its 20th year at West End, and we didn't know anything about it other than that it had gotten great reviews. I was a little bummed to find out the lead role was being filled by an understudy who usually plays a supporting so a lot of roles got shifted around. But not the two lead guys so that was good. turns out, IT WAS AMAZING. SO GOOD. IM SO GLAD we stumbled into that one. it's the tale of two twin brothers who are separated at birth a sort of curse that follows them through life. It was SO GOOD. so sad at the end. very funny though. The two lead men have to play 8 year olds, 14 year olds, 18 year olds, and adults and were fabulous! the lead lady, too, though an understudy, was INCREDIBLE. i cant imagine what the regular lady was like because she was SO GOOD. Cam really wants HnH to do it, andthough it's not big name, man I wouldnt mind doing that. i dont really know what part id fit into, Cam thinks Linda, but it was still a great show. Im so glad we went. standing ovation too, which was great, well deserved. The show ends really sad, and the actors were so emotionally committted that for their first bow they were all crying. haha. by the fourth time coming out to bow they started smiling though. very good. 

and very good day! you would think that wed want a break from theater when we dont have an assigned show, but when there is all this FABULOUS theater going on in London, it's hard to get enough of it. and i think i could sit and watch shows for the rest of my life haha. so great. Id be a theater critic to do that, but i'm definitely not critical enough (omg it was so good! so good! haha) 

anyway, we're going to need to ask clum why he didn't get us tickets for that. i can understand chicago, but blood brothers was amazing. 

the rest of the weekend really just includes the Science Museum, laundry, papers, memorizing lines, blocking and working on songs, etc. i really need to play catch up. so doesnt sound as amazing as the past couple weeks have been, but im still happy to get things done.

So there you have it! I'm all caught up woot! I know nothing was really awe-inspiring, but at least I got everything down so i won't forget. Maybe this weekend can include some more ponderous writing. 

good night!

much love,

Becca