"All the world's a stage. . . "

LONDON
The West End, Shakespeare, Fringe Theatre, dramas, musicals, comedy revues. . .what do these have in common?  London, of course! 

Theater is perhaps THE reason we are all in London this fall.  It’s the focus of the AIFS Study Abroad program here and several of the courses we offer are about drama.  One of my colleagues, Wendy Wisely, is a theatre professor, so she’s taking her students to all kinds of dramatic events from medieval mystery plays to contemporary fringe theatre productions.  For my Shakespeare class, we’ve already seen two performances of the plays we’ve studied: Much Ado about Nothing and The Tempest.

Our family is indulging in as much of the theatre the students attend as we can, plus some other shows we want to see.

Two weeks ago we accompanied my students to see Much Ado at the outdoor venue at the reconstructed Globe Theatre on the south bank.  We crammed into the surprisingly small area below the main stage to take our places as “groundlings” or the part of the audience paying cheap prices for standing room.  Aside from aching feet, it was I think the best vantage point for the play.  The actors really played to us. Beatrice even reached out and clasped hands with one young woman in the audience during a scene and Benedick was constantly hamming it up to our responses.  Seeing the play on an authentic Elizabethan stage with period costumes was a thrill.  (I know we can do this in Ashland, too, but here we were actually almost on the identical SPOT where Shakespeare wrote and performed 400 years ago. . . ) 

Last week we went to see The Tempest at another venue, the Royal Haymarket Theatre in the West End.  This time we had seats very high instead of very low, and in fact we saw more of the top of Prospero’s head than his magical staff.  He was played by the famous actor Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort in Harry Potter 7) who gave a powerful performance.  Afterwards, my students were rather critical of the overall production, however, claiming that Ariel couldn’t sing and that the costumes and flying scenes were inconsistent.  The students will be performing their own scenes from The Tempest in class this week, so we’ll see how that goes. . . .

Also last week the four of us accompanied Wendy to a family-oriented production of the E. Nesbitt classic,  The Railway Children. Believe it or not, the venue was the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station.  Our seats were poised just in front of the railroad track.  During the performance an authentic 1870 steam engine (reconstructed as a diesel) came roaring along the track.  Another thrill!

Next on our schedule in the coming two weeks are Wicked and War Horse. Stay tuned! 

Beth

Stranger and Stranger

LONDON
All these strangers feels strange! 

My life in suburban California is filled almost exclusively with people I know.  I travel from home in "my" car (listening to “my” book-on-tape or “my” radio station) to “my” office with “my” employees.  In the evening, when I pick the girls up from swimming I chat with the other parents I know.  On Sunday I go to “my” church and am surrounded by “my” friends.  Over email I correspond with people I know.  The few newcomers to my world are screened through friends or work.  Shopping at Trader Joe’s and the Burger King drive-thru window may be my only encounters with strangers all week.

Piccadilly Line Eye Candy

My life in London ads a new dimension to this “friends, family and colleague” world: strangers.  My fellow 7 million Londoners.  On the Tube I sit hip-to-hip with my neighbors, look eye-to-eye four feet across the train at my fellow passenger. During rush hour I’m pressed up against people, some forcefully wedging themselves into the car as the doors close.  Walking to the Tube, from the Tube, to the train in the Tube station, onto, off of buses, down Wood Green High Road…there are strangers everywhere! What a range of sizes, shapes, voices, clothes, overheard conversations, choices of reading materials.  Eye contact?  Fleeting.  She’s taking in my baseball cap; I’m checking out her attention-catching Adidas-logo'ed ballet flats.  Whoops, our eyes dart away.  Just occasionally a commiserating exchange of exasperated eye-rolls in exasperation regarding the inebriated fellow Tube rider who is making a scene. 

The eye candy of wild, weird and totally normal strangers, this is a great bonus earned by the carless urbanite. 


Peter

Swim Gala

ELTHAM, LONDON
Last night Abby and I went to our first swim meet, or "gala," as it's called here. We took three different tube lines and a bus to get over to Eltham, but we made it. Upon our arrival were greeted by a couple hundred kids running around a locker room. It was a relief to see some familiar faces in the midst of all the madness. Above: the little yellow group under the blue "arena" sign is our team

Out on the pool deck each of the seven teams had staked out an area. Everyone had team shirts, but all the teams seemed to have either blue or yellow as their color, so it was difficult to tell who belonged with whom. Each team also had its own lane (we were lane seven) with a cheering squad at the end. We spent our time yelling for our team mates, laughing with each other, and getting ready for out own races and relays. The two coaches were busy with their own yelling and time recording. There was one mom on the deck with us who collected people in time for their races. I was a bit surprised when she came over to me and said "Lily, your relay is coming up. Why don't you stand right here and Joe will come to take you over to the blocks." I haven't had that kind of help since my first meet when I was six years old.

Haringey Aquatics ended up coming in third out of seven. The whole event was a great team experience, and I feel really part of the group now. It also helped me realize how universal swimming is. The disappointment of being out touched hurts just as much no matter where you are, and the exhilaration of being cheered on by your team mates (even if they don't know your name) feels just as great.

Lily

Going to a British School

     
  
HORSHAM
I have decided that there is no better way to learn about culture than to be in the culture itself. That's why (or at least partly why) all four of us boarded the train from Victoria bound for Horsham, a small town near Gatwick airport. We were met at the station by our San Carlos friends' cousins the Skipton-Carters (Parents: Luise and Andy, Children: Jemma, Henry, and Felix). After spending a very enjoyable and warm afternoon at their local National Trust property, we felt we had gotten a little more of a taste of Bristish culture. From noticing the history woven into everything here by seeing the grand old manor house  to having sausage rolls for lunch, we saw things you would never see in California. When we got back to their house, we enjoyed a relaxing evening playing lawn games, yet it turned slightly stressful when we tried to get the volleyball over the net 15 times without dropping it. Unfortunately, we never made it but had lots of laughs all the same.

After my parents went home, Lily and I  spent the night with the Skpton-Carters. We were going to go to school with he oldest daughter, Jemma, the next day.  In the morning we had a traditional British breakfast of toast and jam. Then we set off for school.  Jemma goes to an all girls school so it was interesting to watch 1,500 girls in uniforms arrive at the school gates. Lily and I noticed some big differences in this school than our school. First, they have a repeating schedule spanning two weeks with a different order of classes every day. Jemma says that when she finally memorizes it at the end of the year, its a real drag because two months later, she has to get a new one. The second difference we noticed was that the girls here take classes called maths or sciences. There are no specific names for the classes like algebra or physics, so if you asked one of the girls what she was taking, she wouldn't be able to tell you. At lunch time, we ate at her canteen that seemed like the Ritz Carlton compared to the cafeteria at our school. We also noticed that this school offers many more types of art classes including design, technology and cooking. Lucky!

We spent a very enjoyable day at her school though we were surprised to find that their history teacher doesn't teach anything about colonizing America. I wouldn't be here if they hadn't, strange. We walked home for a snack then were dropped of onto the train home. Overall I had an amazing time meeting my friend's mom's sister's family.  Wow, that's a mouthful.

Abby