"As You Like It" at the RSC Courtyard Theatre

Told you I was going to do it! I want to devote an entire post towards this play because I enjoyed it THAT MUCH. Where to begin...Well to start with, this was not an entirely traditional production of the play. We started in a very gothic Elizabethan court. Everything was black and white. The lights were harsh and created really long shadows on the stage. All of the actors had makeup that made their faces white at the beginning. The set was just a blank white stage with one towering white blank wall. It was very minimal, but very effective for what they were trying to convey.

As the play continued the back wall of the set had little doors that began to open up and reveal the forest of Arden. The palette of colors also changed to more natural hues that were in high contrast to the stark blackness of the court.

The thing that really caught my eye in this play was the costumes. The play began in the court with just black and white costumes that were very tailored.

As the plot unravelled the costumes became more and more modern. I really want Rosalind and Celia's dresses that they wore in the final scene.

But I found it interesting that anytime there was a flashback to someone from the court, they were still in the black tight garb of the court. From what I could tell the costumes mirrored the journey of the characters. As they moved through the forests they were freed to become their true selves and change from the strict costuming in color and form of the court. Also it showed the audience how Shakespeare's play, specifically this one, is applicable to all ages. One cool metaphor in the costumes was that Touchstone, the fool, was wearing a straight jacket.

As the play progressed, the straight jacket began to loosen and he began to lose pieces of the straight jacket. It showed how much the forest of Arden let the characters relax and become themselves where they could not in the strict atmosphere of the court.

One thing that really caught my attention was the use of lighting in the RSC play. It started as a real harsh overhead light that isolated the stage and created really long shadows on the actors and emphasizing the light and dark contrasts of their clothes, faces, and set. As the play continued the lights moved downward and softened so that the audience was more illuminated and the mood softened as well. It was more fitting for a forest.

I like Rosalind at the RSC better than the one at the Globe. She was a more mature actress and her character really developed throughout the play. We saw a different Rosalind at the end than at the beginning after her time in the forest.

Also I enjoyed marking the differences between this play's Celia and the Celia at the Globe. At the RSC, Celia seemed more realistic to me. She had many scenes where she just sits behind the action and watches as Rosalind flirts and falls in love with Orlando. At the Globe, Celia was lighthearted and making faces behind their backs; at the RSC, Celia became more and more upset that her best friend Rosalind was drawing away from her and towards Orlando. Both worked in each production, but I liked the RSC's Celia much better.

My favorite part of the play was that I was sitting on the FRONT ROW! I've never been so close to a stage before! It was the most amazing theatre experience that I've ever had. You can see everything in such minute detail. Also, fun things happen on the front row. At one point the fool, Touchstone, ripped his vest off and threw it across the stage which then slid across the stage and into my lap! At first me and the girl next to me were just like uhhhhhh what do we do?! So we just gingerly set it back on the edge of the stage. When Touchstone came back to get it he said "Thank YOU" in a very sarcastic way. It was awesome.

Also at the end there's this awesome like dance thing going on when the god Hymen comes down and marries all four couples, which involved ribbons that tied the wrists of the couples together. Also this scene began with Hymen singing on a squeaking mic like karaoke at a wedding reception. So after dancing for a while the various characters came out to the audience with ribbons. They tied a girl and guy next to me together, and then the character of Celia came over to my area and held out a ribbon. So at about the same time me and the girl next to me from our group hold out our arms. So now I'm married to Alison, I guess. Oops?

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this production of "As You Like It". I won't bore you with anymore details, but can I just say that if you are ever presented with the opportunity to see ANYTHING done by the Royal Shakespeare Company, you are a fool if you don't go!

"All the world's a stage" aka Another Cliche Title...

I want to move to Stratford. It is so beautiful here and I love that theatre is like the center of it all! So much happens everyday that its hard for me to keep up with the blog, so bear with me everyone.

On Thursday we had class in the morning and then went down to the GLOBE THEATRE in London! For those of you who don't know, the Globe was the name of the original theatre where Shakespeare's plays were performed during his time. It is open air so when I looked up I could see the stars (and the airplanes). The stage is a thrust stage which means that its basically a semi circular theatre and the stage juts out into the audience.

You can either stand as one of the "groundlings" for a mere 5 pounds or you can sit on benches further back. My group swapped places at intermission so that each person did both (I liked standing better). This was a theatre experience unlike anything I have ever done. There are raised platforms that go out into the audience so actors make their entrances and exits on those sometimes coming from behind you.

Rosalind as Ganymede and Celia

We saw "As You Like It" and there were scenes were the actors would come in from behind you through the crowd and walk up onstage. And during the fight scene, the wrestlers fell into the crowd and stuff. It was so neat!

When I was a groundling I was so close that I could touch the stage as there is no barrier or anything between you and the actors. This was my favorite character the fool, Touchstone. He was so funny! He also interacted with the audience alot.

The whole thing was very interactive as the audience would cheer and boo the events onstage and the actors would respond to the things the audience said or did. They would address certain people in the audience specifically as well.

The play itself was wonderful as well. It was a traditional interpretation and the actors were so funny and really kept your attention (mostly because they kept like sneaking up behind you or appeared in the balcony). I did not like the girl who played Rosalind though. She was just really energetic and then when she switched back to being a girl at the end she lost all the personality she had when she was pretending to be a boy.

Orlando and Rosalind as Ganymede

The next night we saw had class and then saw "As You Like It" again, but this time put on by the RSC here in Stratford. It was absolutely fantastic. I was really just blown away. Ok I may just do a separate blog post on this play because I like it that much and I want to relay every detail to you guys. Like you want to know that much, too bad it's MY blog!

Ok So on Saturday we got up so early to drive to Blenheim Palace on our way to Oxford. Bleheim palace was absolutely ridiculous. It's huge! It is the home of the Duke of Marlborough (I think) and he actually still lives there in the private wing of the house.

This is actually where Winston Churchill was born. It's the Spenser-Churchill family that inherits the title and home there but since he was not the eldest son he wasn't in line for it. Also Princess Diana was somehow a part of this family as well.

One of my favorite parts was just the extensive grounds of these place. There tons of gardens and fountains and paths through the woods that were all a part of this palace. My favorite thing I found was the Secret Garden.

Or not so secret as there were signs directing you towards it. But it was still absolutely gorgeous.

Then we went to Oxford and spent a few hours there. I just walked around and went to Blackwell's which is a ridiculous 3 story book store that has anything you could ever want in print. We also went to the Eagle and Child to just relax.

This is the pub were the Inklings would sit and discuss what they were writing at the time. This included people like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. We actually sat where they were would have sat at the time. So that was neat.

Then we came back to the hotel and just collapsed as we were so exhausted!

I've got another jam-packed week ahead of me at Stratford so I'll try to update again soon!

The Bardathon

Well I am now in the wonderful little town of Stratford-Upon-Avon! It's fairly small and just about everything here has to do with Shakespeare in some way or another (except the local H&M that I hit up this afternoon). So I guess I will start from the beginning of our exciting adventure here...

Sunday me and Kelsey went to Trinity Church. This is where Shakespeare is buried. I was really expecting the place to be practically empty as the old historic touristy trap churches were in Dublin. It was actually a hoppin place. There were families and young people and older people. But most of all the worship seemed genuine rather than just a worn out ritual like the other places. So I really enjoyed that. We're going to visit the church later as a tourist attraction so I'll talk about it more later.

Then me and Kelsey took a beautiful walk along the Avon River.

There was like a market going down and people picnicking everywhere. But best of all....there were puppies EVERYWHERE! I really liked this one because it reminded me of Tebow's favorite activity.

Then on Monday we began our classes at the wonderful Shakespeare Centre. It's adjacent to the Birthplace and basically we're like VIPS. On Monday we had a talk on Russian Theatre as we are seeing some Russian plays that had their international premiere here in Stratford only a few weeks ago.

After lunch we had a presentation of what is in the Library they have there. It's really fascinating actually. They have very old editions of Shakespeare's plays as well as things written by his contemporaries, but also they have extensive collections of various memorabilia from many of the productions of Shakespeare put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. They had pictures, videos, scripts and this ridiculous book (I forgot the term) that the director (or stage manager) makes all the notes in about blocking, props, lighting, etc.

Then we went to visit Shakespeare's birthplace. It was a neat little building.

Overall, I honestly wasn't too impressed with it. It began with this cheesy little intro that was weird. But really it's just that nothing in the house is authentic and looks very out of place in the house. None of the furniture or anything is original and they had very few artifacts from Shakespeare's actual life. This is understandable as he lived over 400 years ago. I guess it was just so built up in my head that it was kinda a let down. This is the room where they think he was actually born, if you can see this tiny picture.

Then Tuesday we had a day of lectures, I won't bore you with details but we basically talked about gender roles in his plays and the effect his hometown had on him and his works. After that we walked to Anne Hathaway's cottage which was Shakespeare's wife's childhood home.

The house itself was quaint and the inside was presented, in my opinion, much better than Shakespeare's birthplace. There were some pieces of furniture that were actually older than the 21st century. They also had beautiful gardens and grounds at the cottage.

Then last night we went to see a production of a play called "The Grain Store". This play was commissioned in a project called "Revolutions" done by the RSC. The gave commissions to several upcoming Russian playwrights to write plays for the RSC to perform while exploring what post-Soviet Union Russia is like.

So another cool thing was that when we got there they were filming for a TV special they're doing on the play (since this is its international premiere). I got really excited when I walked in and saw that notice and then while we were waiting the camera people kept coming up to me and asking me to hold my ticket a certain way and pretend like I was reading it to my friend, etc (movie star?). So I was like awesome, I might be on British TV! And then as we were walking into the theatre the camera appeared out of nowhere over my shoulder and I heard the producer person be like "We'll just follow her in". Yes!

It was a very very interesting play. It covered the history of the famine in Russia during the 1930s during which millions of people in the Soviet Union died of hunger. This was due mostly to the fact that the government was confiscating food form the people. Anyway this play follows the history of the playwright's grandmother (although I didn't know that as I was watching the play). Cool fact: the actress who played Mrs. Figg in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was in the play!

She was fantastic, as was the rest of the cast. I wish I had more space to talk further about the play, but this post is already too long!

So I was leaving the theatre and, guess what?! The camera people came up and asked "Can we interview you really quickly?" I was like "I thought you'd never ask." (I didn't actually say that fyi). So I'm basically famous now. And the TV show airs after I leave here so I'll never see it anyway.

Today we had more classes with a lecture to talk about the play we saw, which was very helpful in understanding everything. But the coolest thing was that we got to have a Q&A session with the main actress in the play (Samantha Young)! She was really nice and Scottish too. Apparently we get to have these conversations with someone from every play we are seeing here!

Then this afternoon we got to take a voice class which was so much fun! It wasn't like singing, but looking at a monologue and dissecting the sounds and structure of it. We never had to talk out loud by ourselves but we did a lot of cool exercises to get in touch with the rhythm of the words. We did a lot of walking around and reading at the same time, which is actually harder than it sounds...

No Time For Titles

Alrighty! So sorry it's been so long since I have posted. We've been internetless again and that makes things difficult! But now I've got free Wi-Fi so here we go again!

So we took a 6:30 am flight to Manchester, which means I had to get up at 3:15 AM. WHAT?! Well, I was actually ok until the after noon when I like died of exhaustion on the bus. So be forewarned the following pictures were taken under delirious conditions. Oops? So we arrived in Manchester and immediately got on our bus and drove through Wales. First stop, Tintern Abbey.

It was beautiful, although it is just a bunch of ruins honestly. It's probably most famous for Wordsworth's poem that mentions it.

Anyways, it was emptied around 1600 something because Henry VIII was changing the national religion from Catholicism to Protestantism, I think. Like I said, I was half asleep so...

The delirium resulted in experimenting with the unused features on our digital cameras...

After that we journeyed to our final destination of Bath, England. It is a gorgeous city made completely out of one certain limestone.

It is most famous for...the Roman baths that were located there. It's strange to think that people bathed in these actual places and that the water that's there now, still flows from the same hot spring. It was very authentic...

I especially enjoyed the audio tour...

But not as much as I enjoyed my bath!

Then we went over to Bath Abbey. I have now seen like a million churches so they all run together a little bit. One that stuck out about this one was what was carved onto the outside front facade. It depicts Jacob's ladder, the story in the Bible where Jacob saw angels climbing up and down the stairway to heaven. That was pretty cool.

Also, little known fact, Dumbledore's real pensieve is now being used as the baptismal font at Bath Abbey. So, now you know.

By the way, I'm kidding. The church is really old and you can look through a grate in the floor and see where the original Norman floor and columns were built on top of.

Outside of the church there was some street performers. Now in England and Ireland there are street performers EVERYWHERE. And beggars, which is kind of sad. But for some reason these guys caught my eye and I really wanted a picture.

They were statues. The man kept reaching out his hand and I didn't know what he wanted (I had already put money in his cup) so I just shook it?! I wasn't entirely sure what was going on...

Next we hit up the Jane Austen Centre. Ok, every one of us were huge Jane Austen fans, we love her works and the movies etc. Well this place should be renamed the "Make You Pay A Ridiculous Admission Fee To See Nothing That Is Related To Jane Austen". Yes, it was that bad. They had one letter written by her and that was the coolest thing there was. She only lived in Bath 5 years. The "museum" is not even in the place where she lived. I breezed through that place in like 5 minutes. They even had a silhouette that said "probably Jane Austen." I mean, come on.

Mary Helen was not a fan either. The thing that I found most interesting was a letter written by actress Emma Thompson to the Jane Austen Centre. She was Elinor in the movie version of Sense and Sensibility (also Prof Trelawney in Harry Potter among many other things) and she sent them some pictures from the movie or something. So that was the best thing there.

The last thing we did was the Fashion Museum! It was cool. They had collections from lots of British designers as well as clothing from the 1700s. Try this on for size...

They had some pieces that were actually famous. They had a dress worn by Queen Victoria and they had this cool suit that was worn for the coronation of one of the King George's along time ago. Like 1700s maybe? Like I said, I was tired and not paying much attention to dates.

The museum also had a place where you could try on corsets and hoop skirts! I love adult dress up!

Obligatory middle school mirror pic...

Hot.

I am definitely bringing this fashion choice back.

Well that put an end to an exceedingly lengthy day. The next morning we got up and drove to Stratford-Upon-Avon the birthplace of Shakespeare. I spent the day today just walking around but we'll be taking classes here at the Shakespeare Center and seeing lots of plays done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I am in English major heaven!

Ok THIS is my last post from Dublin

I thought I would leave you with a few pictures of my last night in Dublin. First of all there was a nasty wreck between a bus and the light rail that I saw on the main street that runs through Dublin. 22 people went to the hospital but I haven't heard anything else.
We took some pictures in front of the spire. We don't know what it's famous for or who built it, but people keep talking about it!
Also I went to pay homage to Molly Malone. I think there's like folklore about her or something.
Also, special treat, our bus driver throughout our tour of Ireland, Seamus, decided during the first day or two of travel that we needed to learn the song about Molly Malone. So here's a video! I know it's hard to hear, but don't worry, we can't understand him either!

Last Post from Dublin

Today is my last day in Dublin so let me catch everyone up on what I've been doing since my last post. I've spent alot of time just walking around the city. There are lots of statues and monuments to look at around town. One place in particular we visited was the General Post office.
Sounds boring right, like a bunch of stamps or something. Actually the GPO was the place where the Easter Rising of 1916 took place. Those who were trying to gain independence for Ireland barricaded themselves for almost a week and fought from this site. The GPO was destroyed in the process as the British troops were firing straight at the building. So they have a few monuments and plaques to that event. Sorry I didn't have my camera with me for alot of this!
Next we stopped by the Irish Potato Famine statues. They were kind of creepy. Everything about these sculptures was emaciated and elongated. But the famine is important to how Ireland and even the United States is shaped today as most Irish immigrants came to the US during that time.
Yesterday we went to the National Gallery of Ireland and took a tour that showed how the formation of Irish nationalism through art. It was a really cool gallery. I've never been to a legit art museum before actually. They had several paintings of very famous artists there. Jack Yeats brother of W.G. Yeats had an extensive collection there. I also saw a Monet, de Goya, and a Vermeer. They had this special exhibition of sketches including one by Raphael (what!), Albrecht Durer, and others. This picture is the Caravaggio that I saw called the Taking of Christ.
Every since then I have been trying to pack. We are leaving Dublin tonight/tomorrow morning at 4 AM! That's insane. Oy. Bigger problem. The airline we are taking has a weight limit on suitcases of 44 pounds. Eek. I'm just kind of hoping for the best. I thought about wearing two pairs of jeans on the plane but that in the end I decided against it. So we've all been planning how we can maximize our coat pocket space, etc because our carry on bags have a weight limit as well. So tomorrow morning I will be wearing a t shirt, sweatshirt, thick sweater on top of that and my heavy north face jacket over all of that. I think I saved like 10 pounds right there. Problem: it's hard to move with that much stuff on your body. Proof:
Kelsey couldn't move her arms. Just like A Christmas Story.