Archive for August 2012
Welcome, Internet, to the LAST BLOG POST EVER.
Not the last blog post I will ever make in my life. This is almost assuredly not the case. But the last post for this summer on this blog, since I am safely back in Massachusetts, the Motherland. I am able to scientifically determine this based on the number of people I saw today in Red Sox paraphernalia, and the fact that I ate peanut butter for breakfast.
MY DEAR FRIEND.
Because I know my millions of dedicated readers were wondering about my two week absence from the blogosphere, allow me to put all concerns to rest. After BADA ended, my father and I spent a week gallivanting around London. But our temporary quarters did not provide us with any sort of Internet access - not even dial-up - and it turns out that Internet access is sort of essential to, you know, blogging.
But my lack of Internet did lead to me checking my e-mail and Facebook in a bar with free wi-fi, which did, in fact, lead to a free drink.
ANYWAY.
In honor of all the unpacking I have to do, let's discuss the
25. Ticket stubs from Legally Blonde, Hamlet, The Sunshine Boys, The Tempest, The Woman in Black, Taming of the Shrew, Chariots of Fire, (a tragically cancelled performance of) Matilda: The Musical, and Richard III.
That's a lot of theatre, you guys.
Like, a LOT of theatre.
I'm gonna go ahead and say Taming was my favorite, but then again, I did sleep through The Tempest.
24. New perspective on vegetables and their usage in daily life. In the Magdalen dining hall, which is sadly somewhat bereft of vegetarian options, I constructed several excellent salad varieties. I also learned that it's possible - and customary - to get approximately 4 of your 5-a-day in a glass of Pimms!
23. The beastliest arm muscles of my life, thx Insanity.
Me (selfie)
22. The experience of playing Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, seeing as I am neither tall nor blonde.
21. A shirt with Jessie J on it, because she's up there with the fiercest of the fierce. Thank you, Primark, for this important addition to my wardrobe.
20. Comfort in knowing that even though my hand-eye coordination is miserable, I'm at least really good at Mick's One Frog game.
19. The ability to recite the monologue from Act III of Henry V on command!
Special thanks to Dakota Fanning.
18. A bruise that refuses to go away. From falling off a bar. While dancing. To a Jackson 5 song.
17. Scrapes on my knees from my starring turn as Demetrius's spaniel in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Unaware that there was a spaniel in that play? Well, there is. And the spaniel is very important.
16. A business card from a guy on the Tube who liked my shoes.
15. The experience of surviving the West End's famous production of The Woman In Black, proof that I CAN sit through ghost stories, provided I am surrounded by incredibly supportive boys.
14. Many excellent souvenirs for friends and family, including a COMMEMORATIVE BELL for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee! (I am probably the only person who has ever bought one, but whatever.)
13. A whole bunch of British pennies. But actually, what am I going to do with them? Blog readers? Would anyone like a penny?
12. Affirmation of something I already knew: that peanut butter and home-cooked pasta should never, ever be taken for granted.
11. A trashy YA dystopian novel from one of the world's greatest independent booksellers.
10. Friendship with the co-creator of Pokemon: The Mew-sical.
9. An article of clothing from Topshop.
They were on sale. I regret nothing.
8. A glass stone, the loss of my whiskeyginity, a pamphlet from a casino, and a very wrinkled bus map - spoils of war from my last night out in London.
7. Some illegal pictures from Westminster Abbey. Technically, there's no photography allowed, but I was having kind of a ~moment~ in the Poets' Corner and when I saw Auden, it just... happened:
Oops.
Also, who is Anne Brontë?
6. The memory of ninety-three acting students spontaneously singing a round of a song at the Farewell Banquet.
5. OLYMPIANS!
Okay, so I didn't manage to bring any actual Olympians home, but I did encounter them in London! My dad and I staked out prime real estate at the men's marathon - not only did we see the runners six times, but we also experienced several of the side effects of attending an Olympic event, which include the urge to drape oneself in a flag and a sudden rush of pride in every nation.
Most importantly, we saw Kenyans!
Kenyans who run as fast as Kenyans!!!
4. Pants. Lol.
3. An imperial fucktonne of pictures. My camera was the real star traveller of the last six weeks - it took over 400 photos in all places, weather conditions, you name it. I've posted some of them here; the rest are on Facebook, so check them out if we're Facebook friends and you're curious! (And if we're not Facebook friends, honestly, why are you reading this?)
2. Memories that will last a lifetime etc etc ad nauseum
And the number one thing I brought home from Britain:
1. Peace of mind knowing that I at least tried to board the Hogwarts Express.
Bringing home all of these things might have necessitated some last-minute repacking at the airport, but it's also helping with all the missing I'm doing. I miss living in a castle, I miss the friends I'll see again in Evanston and especially the friends I won't, I miss Cornmarket Street and its performers and crowds of people, I miss hearing British accents. Coming home has been, in a lot of ways, a jarring experience. Leaving the country always helps me to understand it better, and the differences between America and the UK were on full display in the line for customs:
Customs in Britain: jolly good please have your passport at the ready
Customs in the US: RESPONSIBILITY. INTEGRITY. VIGILANCE.
Customs in Britain: queue up here to cross the UK Border la la la
Customs in the US: OUR CUSTOMS OFFICIALS ARE THE MOST OFFICIAL OFFICIALS.
Customs in Britain: have you got any mates with you or are you travelling alone? Alone? Good. Off you get, then.
Customs in the US: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!
But I guess you can't ever really appreciate a place until you've been away from it for a little while. All of the ordinary perks of being home are present - warm showers in a real bathroom, food, my real cell phone, my bed... but there are other things, too, like not constantly being aware of being an outsider, having people say "have a nice day" back, being surrounded, totally, by things I understand.
I loved the misunderstanding of being somewhere else, though. In the last six weeks I was often thrilled, occasionally terrified, and consistently confused, and I loved every second of it (except for maybe the ones when I was lost in the rain). So thank you, Britain, for one of the best summers of my life. For what it's worth, I'm keeping my pay-as-you-go dumbphone from that first day with the monsoon and the pants.
I'll be back soon.
1 comment
Police rejected Lindsey.
Free falafel smells.
- Last night à la haiku
PART I: PILGRIMAGE
And so it came to pass that this weekend many of the young, curious theatre students at BADA decided to make the pilgrimage to the Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare as It Was, as It Is, as it is Meant To Be. And for £5, you can have the extra-authentic experience of seeing the show standing near the stage as a groundling.
An artistic depiction of the historic groundlings.
According to this website, groundlings were theatergoers too poor to pay for actual seats, and frequently partook in activities such as
fist-fighting,
gambling,
drinking,
prostitution, and
bear-baiting.
Classy. Cheap. Perfect.
The shows currently playing at the Globe are Richard III, Henry V, and Taming of the Shrew. Taming, in my opinion, is clearly the coolest of the three, but this weekend we could only really see it at midnight on Friday night. Saturday, technically.
Which, whatever. It's not like I'm ever asleep by midnight anyway. We have 11pm shows at Northwestern. Midnight show at the Globe, no big deal, right?
Let's re-examine:
A three-hour performance. Standing. Outdoors. In London. At midnight.
And the Tube stops running at around 2:30am - meaning we would have no way to get back to Oxford, and would be left to either pay a lot of money to stay for a few hours at a hostel, or not sleep after the show.
So I was like, okay, it's not meant to be. Maybe I'll go see Henry V on Saturday and hear about the young Phoebus fanning instead.
But a bunch of my friends from BADA decided that they were gonna do Taming at midnight, and throughout the week I kept hearing about it. And I was doing such a good job of being responsible. I really was. Every time someone brought it up, this would happen:
Me: Nah, I don't think I'm gonna do that.
Me: I love Taming, but I don't want to pull an all-nighter in London.
Me: I'll just go to London in the morning! Whateverrr.
And as the week progressed:
Me: I want to, but... bad decision... I... rmgmhmrrhrmm
Me: I'll just see Henry V! Really, I'm just as excited about that. The young Phoebus! Fanning!!!!
Me: STOP TEMPTING ME THIS WAY.
Finally, on Thursday night, I was hanging out in Josh's room. He had decided to do Taming at midnight, and so had our friend Angie, who knocked on his door to talk about plans.
Angie: Juli, are you going?
Me: No, I aslkdlsak;l; I mean idk the young Phoebus
Angie: COME ON IT'LL BE AN EXPERIENCE!
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me: Okay.
And that's how I wound up buying a £5 ticket to see a midnight production of Taming of the Shrew.
PART II: PROBLEM-SOLVING
The issue, of course, was that Josh and I were going to be effectively homeless for the hours between the end of the show and whenever London wakes up. Angie had booked a hostel for more than either of us wanted to spend, and our friends Zach and Lindsey were looking into staying with a family friend of Zach's. So the two of us immediately began brainstorming
1. Find park. Sleep in shifts.
2. Find 24-hour McDonald's. Sleep in shifts.
3. Go to club in hopes of being adopted by attractive strangers.
4. Go to Olympic Village in hopes of being adopted by attractive Olympians.
5. Find church. Sleep in pews. (This led to me Googling "sleep in churches legal london?" And it is, but good luck finding an unlocked church.)
6. Stay at the real St. Mungo's.
7. Wander streets. Find mattress store. When mattress store opens, say we are studying mattresses with an Undergraduate Research Grant. Request to sleep on them for educational purposes.
8. Wander streets. Find movie theatre. Buy tickets to first showing. Sleep during movie.
Sleeping somewhere in shifts was looking increasingly likely until about two hours before we left for London, when Zach and Lindsey mentioned that one of their BADA teachers, Kelly Hunter, had offered to let us all stay at her house for the night. And just like that, our crazy theatergoing experience started to seem a little less crazy.
PART III: PLAY
The Globe is on the south bank of the Thames, and you have to cross the river to get there from the nearest Tube station. The easiest way to do that is via the Millennium Bridge, one-time victim of a Death Eater attack, so naturally that was a moment. But it was also a moment because it was a perfect night - clear and not too cold, an almost-full moon overhead, the water below us illuminated by the multi-colored lights on the bridge and some badass floating Olympic rings. The Globe was in front of us, St. Paul's Cathedral behind us, and over our shoulder was the Tower Bridge.
Bad iPod picture makes perfect thing imperfect. :(
And then it was almost time for the show.
Stepping into the Globe for the first time is striking. Especially when you've spent years hearing about it and reading about it as a theatre kid. And even though I recognize the historical significance and everything, I couldn't help but think, oh my God, I'm standing on the set of Shakespeare In Love.
Party like it's 1599.
And the show was incredible. It was so refreshing to see a Shakespeare play performed without a gimmick or concept. All of the actors were impeccable, of course, but without being slaves to the text the way so many students of classical theatre are. And seeing a midnight show as a groundling is honestly the closest you can possibly get experiencing a Shakespeare play as a rock concert. Characters jumped off of the stage and exited into the crowd, appealed to the audience, encouraged us to clap along to their songs. It was dirty and ridiculous and there was an actor who looked like Orlando Bloom, so it was basically the best Shakespeare experience ever.
PART IV: PASSENGERS
But by the final bows, even Orlando Bloom couldn't keep us from feeling like we were going to fall over. All of us were exhausted. I think I was dehydrated. Angie left for her hostel, and it was time for the rest of us to catch a cab to Kelly Hunter's house.
So we struggled back across the Millennium Bridge, parked ourselves on a street corner, and tried to hail a cab.
For the first half-hour, every one that passed us either already had passengers or was impossible to flag down. Finally, we managed to get one to stop.
Driver: Where are you going?
Us: Teddington.
Driver: Teddington?
Us: Teddington.
Driver: Zone 6? That's too far. I was about to head home for the night.
For those of you unfamiliar with the layout of the city of London, it vaguely resembles this:
Certified accurate and to scale.
So yeah - Zone 6 is far. In a fit of desperation, I went, "We'll tip you!" but he was already driving away.
And then it started to rain.
At least another half-hour passed, and it was looking more and more likely that we would need to revert to one of the ideas Josh and I had brainstormed when we thought we wouldn't have anywhere to stay. It was getting colder and rainier and closer to daylight, and our only companions on the street were a group of very drunk women dressed as Pink Ladies and the guy running a small falafel store that was inexplicably still open. At this point I was less invested in cabs and sleep and more just basking in the inevitability of human oblivion and the smell of Middle Eastern food. But Lindsey was still motivated, and decided that she would stop the next police car we saw to ask for the best way to get a cab to Teddington.
A few minutes later, a police car rolled up to the red light. Lindsey ran over, waving, and just as she reached it, the light turned green, and it sped off.
Even the constables didn't care about us.
It began to rain harder.
I tried to remember if there had been any viable nearby options on stay4free.com.
Sunrise approached.
The rain continued.
Finally, at a quarter past four, we acquired a cab.
I don't really remember getting in the cab, but I do remember all of us collapsing in laughter because we were in a cab on the way to our teacher's house in who-knows-where, London, after standing for over an hour in the rain after standing for three hours at the Globe. And I do remember going, "I should totally be drafting a blog post," and pulling out my Shakespeare notepad and writing this as neatly as I could in a moving vehicle:
"No, no, sun, you stop that, you go back down." - Lindsey, 4:20am
WHY AREN'T WE HORIZONTAL???
And at a quarter to five, we made it to Kelly Hunter's house. Kelly Hunter, if you ever Google yourself and find this blog post, please know how eternally grateful we all are to you. Josh and I don't even know you, because sadly you are not one of our BADA teachers, but you saved us from sleeping in shifts in a park, and you also have very comfortable pillows and a wonderful collection of DVDs.
We all pretty solidly passed out by five, and at 8:20, we were awake and ready to journey back to the West End to buy show tickets for another titillating day of theatre.
But that's for another blog post. Because Aaron Carter just came on shuffle, and it's been a really, really long 48 hours, and I should probably go to bed or something.
Sleep sweet, blogosphere.
(This post to you brought by Kelly Hunter, male gymnasts, sympathetic taxi drivers, and Jason Mraz.)
