Yes, we are still here.

So these are slightly out of focus, but that's what I get for seeing picture opportunities when I don't have my tripod with me (yes I actually packed it over here...). These are taken just outside of the Globe theatre after we got out of A Midsummer Night's Dream (which I thought was pretty awful).

Since I didn't have my tripod with me I tried to rest my camera on the railing of the wall next to the Thames. I think that someday I'll have to take my tripod (and a buddy) and go night shooting. I love night photography a lot, but I'm finding that it's actually quite difficult.

As for the performance (it was Thursday night), I honestly did not enjoy myself. The biggest issue was that our seats were absolutely horrible. The Globe has two large pillars on stage, usually not a problem for the majority of the seats, except for ours. It didn't help that the production, instead of playing the show more in the round (to all sides) to accommodate the space, they chose to have the majority of the action take place right in between the two pillars. I didn't really see about 70-80% of the production.

But on top of that, I really didn't like it. I feel like the comedy was being forced and therefore not funny. I feel as though, like children, they found a joke that worked once and told it over and over and over, to everyone that walked into the room. Quite annoying.

They also tried setting the show in the 1920's with flappers and a cabaret type dancer. But they didn't really let it influence anything they did, which is the wrong way to go about it. More or less it just looked like they were in different costumes.

Who knows, maybe I was just bitter towards the show because I couldn't actually see it, but I didn't enjoy myself as much as I could have.

I love creative stuff like this.



Also I'm still alive. I have a bunch of stuff that I can post about, but rather than doing a huge post I think I'll break it up into a bunch of little posts so that you can read them at you leisure (rather than trying to work through a novel of a blog).

Sorry that I'm falling behind. It's been a little busy.

For those of you who don't know my sister, repent ye. She is pretty amazing and one of the best chef/cooks on the planet. She is a foodist. She believes in it and practices it. So I kind of promised her that I would keep a food log of sorts. Here it is. At least some of them. The more interesting ones at least. But don't be fooled, this isn't just for her. Any food fanatic can join in the reading fun!

Today: Lebanese place by the Orange Tree theatre. Sooo good. I had the large mix doner. It was lamb meat and chicken meat put in a pita with "salad" (onions and lettuce) with a garlic sauce on it. I have no clue how this is supposed to be different from a gyro other than the fact that I couldn't pick it up. However, that might have been because the thing was huge. Size of my head at least. It could have easily fed a family of four. The lamb was better than the chicken.

Yesterday: Indian food at Memories of India. This place was a bad choice. We were looking for an Indian place because we had heard that London has amazing Indian food (there is actually a large population of immigrants here). Looking at the prices on the window (everywhere has a menu posted outside) the prices didn't look bad at all. We figured out that the place was authentic when we realized it was near impossible to understand our waiter (not trying to be racist, just honest). The main problem with the restaurant is that they charged for everything. The price for the curry wasn't bad but then they charged for the rice as well. What kind of Indian place charges for rice? Anyhow I got the Lamb curry and we all shared some Sag Aloo and Nan bread. It was okay, but not impressive by any means. Oh well. Live and learn. I'm sure we'll have Indian again and we'll see if we can't get a better place.

Monday: Chinese at a small cafe type place (I forgot the name already, it was either Lan or Jen or something). I had the crispy pork and rice. It was pretty good and not that expensive. Jason and Allan both had duck and weren't too impressed. The best part about this place was the dumplings. We got an order of fried dumplings to split and I wish that I had just ordered that alone. They are made (cut and stuffed) when you order them, so they're about as fresh as they come. We may go back and just feast on dumplings. After that as we headed to the show for the evening we passed a little ice cream shop called Pandora. It was crazy. First off it wasn't ice cream it was gelatto (I can hear Nathan screaming in the background). Second, it had the craziest window display. I should have taken a picture. Apparently their specialty is Gelatto in a crepe with whatever crazy thing they want to put in it. There was a ham and cheese one. Anyhow, I was feeling a little ritzy and decided to get a cone with a scoop (pretty cheap too). There were some weird flavors (like green tea) but I decided that I would play it safe and get the cookie flavor. Turns out it was not at all what I was expecting. You see I was expecting something similar to chocolate chip cookie dough, what I got was fortune cookie flavored gelatto in a waffle cone. It was weird, but good.

So those are the food exploits that I can remember for now. I'll keep posting every so often. Because food is good.
Oh, and occasionally we try to cook in our flat. But usually it's not that exciting. This is a picture of a day when we tried making Tikka Masala from a jar with chicken and spaghetti, it was... food.

Sorry that I've fallen behind a little bit. I promise one of these days I'll try to catch up on everything that's been happening. I still really want to tell you about Women Beware Women, one of the most incredible shows that I have seen in my lifetime (and one of the actors was the guy who played Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter movies in it, if that is exciting to you...).

But for now, other stories. Well this is actually more of just a picture post. Yesterday (Tuesday) we took a group trip to the London temple, so of course I brought my camera along. It was an absolutely beautiful day (a little cold but whatever). For those who haven't been to the London Temple, the temple is beautiful, but almost pales in comparison to the extensive grounds (is that blasphemy?). It feels almost like the temple is on the grounds of a forest. There are acres upon acres (I'm awful at measuring distance)(32 acres according to wikipedia) of little groves of trees that have benches hidden among them so that you can sit and contemplate life. It was absolutely gorgeous. Have I said that already?

So the problem is that I take lots of pictures and a lot of them look a lot alike. I'm horrible at decisions and revisions and so I love them all. That's where you (the magic readership) come in. I'm going to put little numbers above each of the pictures and you should comment and tell me which are your favorites (there is no minimum or maximum). Got it? Go!

So that's it. Well, that's 20 out of the hundreds I took. But my favorite part about all of these pictures is that they're all essentially straight out of the camera. I only made minor adjustments to brightness, contrast, and saturation in some areas. So yay!

Today was rather boring. I did laundry. Yaaaaay... Exciting right? Well about 3:30 we went to go find some stuff to do. We made a plan. We were going to go to the Imperial War Museum, get some fish and chips, and then go see The Habit of Art at the Royal National Theatre.

It kind of worked.

I really enjoyed the museum. We spent most of our time learning about submarines and MI6 (think James Bond). There were a bunch of exhibits that we just didn't have time to see. So we're going back at some point. One thing that I loved about the museum is that on the sign next to the tank, missile, airplane, etc. they would have a short description of when and where it was used and then it would have a picture from the war of the weapon. There were some amazing pictures. There were some images from WWI and WWII that were just stunning, especially so if you consider the type of equipment limitations that they had to deal with. It makes war photographers of today look like pansies.

After the museum closed we decided that we had just enough time to go get fish and chips. You have to understand that, for me, having my first English fish and chips seemed like a sort of right of passage, or initiation. We needed to do it right. After some research we found a place that was close to the theater and the museum, was cheap, and most importantly, got great reviews.

It is called "Master's Super Fish". Sold.

It was great. I got the cod and chips. Unfortunately we had little time and had to get the food take away, but it actually made it more fun because she wrapped it in the paper (one of those customs that seemed to add authenticity and legitimacy to my experience) and we ate on the walk over to the theatre.

When we got there we found out that the show we were going to see and had heard was amazing was at standing room only for the night. I was not a fan of standing for the whole show, I had already done that at the globe for Macbeth (which I still need to write about...). So we decided that we would see one of the other shows at the National. To be fair, most of the shows that are playing there currently sound great, so we were fine with switching shows since we were going to see the other ones anyways.

We ended up getting tickets to see Love the Sinner. The idea of the story was actually not too bad. But (in my opinion) it was pretty poorly executed.

The story is about a man who is struggling with his sexual identity and also examines religion's role in matters of homosexuality. The main character is a volunteer for a conference at which the international leaders of his church are gathering to discuss their bylaws, specifically the one dealing with homosexual bishops, unions, blessings, etc.

At this same conference, the main character has a homosexual affair. He then returns home and has to figure out who he is, what he stands for, how to deal with/hide from his wife who is struggling to get pregnant. Things get really twisted when the man who he had the affair with shows up from Africa to his house in England and essentially blackmails/begs him for help in gaining asylum in England.

I think that there were some interesting moments in the show. Watching the main character struggling with his decision and his double life was difficult in the good way (the kind that seems to teach us something and leads to a catharsis). It was interesting to watch him become hyper-religious to try and force an identity upon himself, and how he was so unwilling to accept any of his actions and yet his inability to forgive himself for anything. Just very interesting all around.

The issue was that I felt a lot of the acting was off, there were scenes missing, and the lines were just terrible. Jason made the argument that they were going for a natural feel to the conversation and that they were just talking around the issue and not naming it. I agree with him on that fact, but I felt like it was pushed to an extreme to where it was so "real" that it was actually surreal. I feel like if I had read the script next to an absurdist script there wouldn't have actually been that much of a difference. And yet it wasn't being played in an absurdist way, it was being played as realism which created this awful disconnect for me.

... Anyway...

The set was pretty amazing and the music and sound design were very well done. But overall I did not like it. Sorry. But it happens.

We still plan on seeing The Habit of Art and have heard that it is absolutely wonderful.

Tomorrow is church. That should give me a chance to get caught up on sleep and picture editing. Yay!


Sleep.

Today we went to Kew Gardens which is a gorgeous attraction. It's made up of 300 acres of gardens with a few special greenhouses and such. It is a photographer's dream. Landscape, architecture, floral, subjects everywhere. So, I'll let the pictures do the talking. We went and saw an amazing show tonight called Women Beware Women and I'm too sleepy to do it justice, but it is the best thing that I have seen in London, I may even venture to say in my entire life. I'll post on it later. Okay, now for pictures.

I know that I've promised lots of pictures. Always feel free to head over to my flickr account. I usually upload most of my pictures there as a form of storage. I've been pretty good about keeping it organized, but sometimes it's just a mess. FYI.

But here are some pictures to help you get a sense of what I do here (other than the theatre part since pictures aren't allowed during performances and most don't even let you take pictures inside at all).

Today was kind of a lazy day as well (I know I'm slacking, but what can I say?). We didn't have class or anything scheduled for this morning and so Jason and I decided that we would go to a shop we had heard about called Primark. For those who have never been to Primark, it is amazing. It is essentially a large department store with secondhand store prices. So there were t-shirts for a pound, button ups for 3 pounds, shoes for 2-5, I could have bought a full suit for under 20 pounds throw in some real leather shoes and we're up to 35 pounds. It was wonderful. The only issue is that I have a limited amount of room and weight left in my check bag for when I return home. I'm already starting to think about which of the clothes I brought from home I will leave here to free up some space. But due to this limited capacity I actually didn't buy that many things. I did get a couple shirts to make me look more European (although that's not always good since we have a hard time determining whether a guy is European or gay...).

After Primark Jason and I realized that we needed to get to the Tricycle theater and fast. We had a matinee that started at 2:00 and from what the teacher was saying we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get there. We ran into two problems: the directions that the teacher had printed off for us started from our flat, which we were not at, and our helpful roommate Allan had told us which bus we needed to take from Primark... but we had forgotten what number he said. So, it was an adventure. Actually it mostly involved us reading a map. But since we have been mostly using the tube system, we really didn't know how to read the bus maps.

Long story short, we made it. Actually we made it before most of the class did, including the two teachers.

The Tricycle is a pretty neat theatre. Here is its entrance:

They had made a mobile out of three bicycle wheels (granted I guess that would be a tricycle then). And they had a magical corridor of mirrors.


Here's Jason pointing into the worlds of eternity.

Then there was Twelfth Night. This was quite the interesting interpretation of the classic Shakespearean play. It was set in a recording studio, or something. There was no set, and actually no real setting for the play at all. It looked like you had stumbled into a rock concert with seats for the audience. Once the play got going it all made sense.

The show was developed by a group called "Filter" that focuses on the merging of musicians, actors, directors, and all sorts of theatre makers. The idea behind their shows is that they find the highs and the lows in the emotion of the script and then they use music to help tell that story. So, for example, when the Duke Orsino is being a whiny love-sick puppy, it was like a poetry reading in a coffee house with heavy bass and a brush on the snare with Orsino quoting his lines like a beatnik. When Malvolio, the "bad guy" of the show is contemplating how awesome it would be to be a count, it is to the tune of a hard rock song (which he played the air guitar on). And so on.

I loved it. I feel that it worked almost every scene that it was included in. Overall the show was just fun. It was ridiculous and self referential (like Viola speaking to an FM radio which answered her back instead of a messenger). But I think overall my favorite part was the interplay between the two drunk revelers Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew.

The show was set in modern times, everyone was wearing the type of clothing you would expect them to be in on the street. That is, except for Sir Toby. His first entrance, he stumbles in drunk at the back of the stage in full Elizabethan clothing, doublet, tights, frilly starched collar, and starts quoting the "to be or not to be" quote from Hamlet. He then polishes off a beer and wanders off the other side of the stage. The rest of the cast then resumed the play where they had left off.

The best scene, however, had absolutely nothing to do with progressing the plot. Sir Toby wakes up from being passed out on the floor, and in his drunken revelry starts whisper/drunk singing a song about love, then Sir Andrew (also drunk) comes and joins him in his singing. Sir Andrew is wearing this amazing hat with strips of velcro all over it and three squishy balls stuck to the velcro. As the scene goes on, chaos reigns. Sir Toby gets the band to start playing along with him and sings at the top of his lungs, Sir Andrew discovers the balls stuck to his head and has the audience try to throw them at him to get them to stick, then they pulled an audience member up and had him wear a velcro hat, then they started pulling audience members up to start dancing with them, then my professor (of his own volition) got on stage and started dancing (and when returning to his seat climbed the scaffolding the seats were on and accidentally broke a light), and then Sir Andrew ran to the back of the audience to the door and shouted "Pizza!" at which point he started passing two pizza boxes through the audience (I didn't get any).

The scene was nuts, but so fun.

I really loved this show. It was all around a good time. Not the best acting in the world, maybe not even the best interpretation, but it was a side of the show that I had not considered before and it was extremely fun, and yet at moments very poignant as well.

One character that is always rather troubling is Malvolio. He is the bad guy, but in reading the script, and in most productions you watch, he gets way more than he deserves. This show handled it in a very interesting way. They made him evil. Very evil. He started strangling the clown.

Then there is the famous scene where Sir Toby tricks Malvolio into thinking that to woo a lady he must dress himself in a ridiculous fashion (Toby fakes a letter from the lady saying that she prefers a man in yellow stockings who is cross gartered). This production was grotesquely hilarious. Malvolio (played by a man with a bit of a gut) stripped down to thigh high yellow socks and yellow booty shorts... and that's it. He then danced around the stage to his hard rock song until he was discovered by his lady (shocked to say the least) and the play continued.

Now if we just left it there, it wouldn't have been too much and it would have been deserved (he is a mean guy). But there is one more scene.

Because of his antics, the lady puts Malvolio under the care of Sir Toby, who hates him. Sir Toby and the clown, Touchstone, then put Malvolio in a lightless prison with duct tape around his wrists providing him with little food and torturing him with constant noise and talking. It is a brutal scene, and this production left the brutality in it. They didn't try to soften it at all.

So I find it interesting that I could have so much fun during one raucous scene and feel like a jerk for siding with the guy who ended up torturing a man in another scene. Good show.

I know this post is rather long, but the one other thing that we did today was get some great middle-eastern food. The Tricycle theater is located, oddly enough, in the middle of the middle-eastern immigrant community. I'm not sure what you would call it, "Little Lebanon"? Anyhow, it was quite good and really cheap.

Tonight we chose not to see another show. We were all tired and just needed some rest. Tomorrow we are going to Kew Gardens, so expect lots of pictures... to be on my camera at least. After that we will probably go see a show. I'm shooting for 6/6 this week.

Hooray!

Today was a rather uneventful day. Sorry. I went to class early this morning (yes we take classes here) and we performed our scene from All My Sons. It went well, especially for being the first group to go. Then I came home and worked on a paper that was due at five.

Tonight we went and saw a show at the Hampstead Theatre called Andersen's English. Now when I first of this show, I didn't care to see it at all. It sounded boring and awful. My opinion has changed fully.

The premise of the story is that Hans Christian Andersen (interestingly enough played by a black actor in this show) shows up unannounced at the home of Charles Dickens. However, Andersen, a Dane, has extremely poor English skills. And so there is a fair amount of humor that comes from his innocent attempts to understand both the language and the customs of the household.

The rest of the story is not so happy as it examines the decaying world of Charles Dickens, who is forcing a son to go to war in India, forcing his wife to separate from him, kicking out the Irish maidservant who is pregnant with his son's child out of wedlock, and so on. It's hard to watch in the way that drama should be. It was incredibly well written and very quotable (I just don't remember many of them...).

Mostly it came down to the wonderful script and some very strong performances by some key actors. Dickens was incredibly engaging to the point of becoming annoying, which helps the audience to connect with his wife and son who have become fed up with his emotional abuse of sorts. Andersen worked very well. This was one of those roles that challenges actors by not allowing them to really use their voice, which is one of their main tools.

Anyhow, the show was one of the better ones that I have seen so far. Also it was one of the cheapest and we had seats in row 2. So the experience was great as well.

I plan on posting more tomorrow (look at me keeping my little resolution thing). Tomorrow we are heading to Primark, which is a chain of second-hand/cheap clothing shops. Then we are seeing Twelfth Night at the Tricycle Theatre as a matinee. There also has been some talk of going to the National Theatre tomorrow night to see if we can find another show.

I know it seems like I'm going to see a lot of shows, but for me that's the whole point of being here. I love it. I'm so happy that there's so much to see.

If the title confuses you at all it's because tonight's show, Psy, was so absolutely incredible I may have forgotten some of the other things that I did as well. I'm not even sure where to begin. I guess if you need a point of reference you could think of Cirque du Soleil. But it was still quite different. First off, the soundtrack was amazing. The songs were sort of a mix of electronica and tango, a lot of deep bass and some of the best beats that I have heard in a while. Then there was the story. You might say "I thought that the circus and acrobatic show didn't have a story" well you see, that's where this show was different. The show started with some facts being read over the PA about mental disorders (i.e. 25% of people will have enough symptoms to qualify as having a mental disorder). Then each character was introduced and their disease was named off. The diseases ranged from insomniac to amnesiac to manic to hears voices and so on. Each disease was linked to the actor's special ability. For example, the addict was the actor who performed in the german ring, which made sense with the interpretation of addiction being a cycle that can't be easily broken.

Everything was just incredible.
Here are some clips I found online:






So it was wonderful. And after the show, while we were all raving, the cast came out. I felt like the little kid who goes to the actors to ask for their autograph because that's exactly what I did. I had them sign my program. Granted some of them weren't there, but oh well. After talking with the actors, we found that they weren't sure where their tour would take them. It is a fairly new show and they are just now getting some of the producers to come watch. So if any theatrical producer happens to be reading my blog, this show is worth it! Book them!

Anyhow.

The other things that we did today:
-Went to the Museum of London. This is a free museum that focuses on London's history through the great fire of 1666 (at least that's what was open today, there was some construction going on that may have had more stuff). It was neat. I find some of the historical periods fascinating (not all of them though, I'm looking at you neolithic).
-We went to the Smithfield Market thinking it would have the same fair-like atmosphere of the Borough Market. It was closed.
-I had bangers and mash. It was yummy. (Sausage and Mashed Potatoes with gravy... in a box). Jason got the Pie and Mash with gravy. It was a pumpkin and goat cheese pie. And everything is served with mash.
-We went to the Banqueting House. This was actually more fun than I expected. It is a large reception hall that was built back by Henry VIII. It was pretty cool to take the self guided audio tour and to imagine all of the history that had passed through that building and all of the nobles that had been there. Charles I was even executed just outside the main door. The best part about the Banqueting House is the set of nine very large paintings on the ceiling that Charles commissioned from some famous painter that I can't remember. They are gorgeous. I will post pictures later.

Okay. I need to sleep. I am unsure what is happening tomorrow. There is a show that was scheduled as optional, but it sounds like it may be canceled for the class due to content. We'll see, I may have to make some plans on my own, or just get caught up on homework and picture processing for the trip.

I'm in London. Some of you may already know this. But for those who were unaware, I am here doing a six-week study abroad for the theatre program. I'm loving it. However, all my friends were starting these special blogs for their journeys, and I decided that I wasn't going to start another blog that I don't ever post on, until I continue to post semi-annually on this one... if that makes sense. Also there is apparently some new google "let's see if you're really a human" thing that makes you verify your identity via text message, which I am currently without in the UK.

Seeing as I am constantly putting off blogging, there is a lot to catch people up on, and I will try my darndest, but I will also try to keep my writing time (and your reading time) to a minimum, because, honestly, I would rather be doing other things. But I also want to share all of the wonderful things that have been happening and weird experiences that we have had so far.

As is my custom, I will condense most everything into list form.

-I have been here about six full days. (Worth about 9 days in the states, but the exchange rate is pretty bad).
-I have seen five plays in those six days. I see this as an accomplishment, since that is kind of what I came here to do.
-I have seen: The 39 Steps, 11 & 12, Macbeth, Antigone, and Les Miserables. I will try to go back and write about most of these because they were all mostly amazing (minus Antigone).
- I have learned how the tube system works and use it frequently.
-I have eaten lots of wonderful food. (My favorite so far has been the lamb burger with grilled haloumi cheese).
-I have felt like a tourist. (It's not a fun feeling for me).
-I have done lots of other things. (Good description Christian...)

Really though, I'm loving it here. I love culture. I love theater. I am glad that I get to experience both here in great abundance. I find it amazing just how comfortable I can feel in a foreign country after just a week. I have been taking some pictures and I will try to post some in a reasonable time. But for now I need some sleep so that I can continue the adventure tomorrow. I will try very hard to keep this updated on a frequent but short post basis so that I don't fall behind and put it off.

Just as a little preview, tomorrow we're going to the London Museum (that may not actually be what it's called...) and the Banqueting House, then tomorrow night a few of us are going to see a play/circus/acrobatics show called Psy which explores the idea of the seven layers of the psyche. Sounds interesting. I'll let you know how it is.... plus pictures... I promise... no really...