lovers parting, bittersweet

vinegar, leaving; sugar, returning - sad to go; happy to arrive

All packed, excepting PJs, toothbrush and such.

Been such a good last week.

Dream at the Globe was overall okay. Bottom and the mechanicals were hilarious, rollicking fun: truly delightful, they got the loudest applause.

I'll be pondering Timon of Athens (also a Globe production) for a while. Only the second play of Shakespeare's I'd seen without reading the text first, hence the first act tricky to follow. (The first was Julius Caesar, but I think that story is part of our collective memory; easy to follow throughout.) Dark, distancing, disturbing; poignant in its portrayal of (literally) ravenous creditors. Intermission was announced by the actors running through the yard (and swinging over it) shouting, "Get out! The house is broken! Get out!" It took a surpisingly long while for the audience to get the message. I was already buying a snack and a Pimms by the time they at large began exiting.

Did the Globe Rose Theatre and Exhibition Tour yesterday. Was very happy to have a knowledgeable, articulate and witty guide. Interesting to know that the original Globe's site cannot be excavated, though it is a historical site, because built onto it is another historic site: a Georgian building. Legal protection meets legal protection. Listened to Ellen Terry act Juliet's "This dismal scene I must needs act alone" scene: such spirited fright! I stayed longer than planned and spent the late afternoon, early evening walking around, basking.

Today I toured the Tate Britain, and again I wish I had the "extra credits" to take an art history course. (Though over time I know I'll give myself the education.) There were several paintings I stood in front of for a long, long time - ended up sacrificing a last trip to the Royal Albert Hall, where I would have heard several works by J.S. Bach, including the most famous Toccata and Fugue. But I am happy to have stayed. Though nothing beats a great performance in a great performance hall, my Bose headphones do come close; and pictures online or in a book absolutely do not beat the actual work of painters, presented properly.

O, sigh.

See most of you soon! And Prof. McDonald, thank you again for all your informed, entertaining assistance. I will see you (and London) later in life, later in career! (And the poems of Philip Larkin are wonderful, thank you!)

Hoping Heathrow has a West Cornwall Pasty Co., would love to have one last delicious, hearty traditional pasty . . . Also that I, you know, land okay . . .

Typos

Okay, scanned over past blogs, was feeling nostalgic and sad that I must leave soon . . .

And I must say that, yes, I am an English Student (also a Theatre), and also that, yes, I do know how to spell and otherwise write well . . . though apparently when writing quickly, stream-of-consciousness bunny-hop quick (as opposed to the ponderous, turtle-like concentration appropriate for mid-or-end of semester papers or even short story type of writing) I write sloppily, especially substituting words that sound similar to those I intend, like "right" for "write" or - and this being one of those almost appropriate substitutions - "wondering" for "wandering."

Okay, self-bruised ego satisfied.

Almost.

I used way to many commas, ellipses, dashes and parenthetical marks above.

Promised Photos

Been tinkering with some different features on my camera - as is hopefully noticeable. Hope you like them! In order,
Leaf on pavement. Near National Portrait Gallery.
Monument to Prince Albert (part of it, and the name may not be correct). Across from Royal Albert Hall.
Statue of Henry Irving. Near National Portrait Gallery.
Statue of the God Eros. In Picadilly Circus.
Statue of Shakespeare. In Leicester Square.

Grooving the Square

This last week . . . one of the best; strong feeling of rightness. Aforementioned, Winter's Tale was a wonder. No other show shows this week, but on Friday heard/ saw a selection of the compositions of Janacek at the Royal Albert Hall . . . Taras Bulba (still my favorite) not performed, but the works were very good (and only heard on first listen, first impression, never a good way to judge a classical work) and I figure I'll grab their titles off the BBC Proms website and check them out again later. (Also some good free performances of music outside the British Library at lunch breaks or for a few minutes late afternoons before catching the tube.) As I wanted to and did, lots of walking around, nights, just vagabond-roaming where fancy fancied . . . rewarding, chilled. Know now that there are a lot of little dishes - nothing expensive, all yumyum-tasty - that I will miss: West Cornwall Pasty, this craftiness called a Lamb Donar, lots of the Bizarro-world (vaguely recognizable but distinctly different) sandwiches, and others. (Though I'm looking forward to a pastrami and swiss sandwich at home - I know they've got them here somewhere, but I haven't found them.) Hit Waterstone's bookstore again - there's a something like five-story one in Picadilly Circus, though there drama collection is oddly paltry compared to the one that's a short hike from the British Library. Went there with a Maltese architect friend (who got all dreamy-eyed over the architecture books) and picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the only non-project specific (directly) book I've read this summer. Very good: been devouring it on the tube, during lunch or those few stolen minutes before sleep. Oh, and leaving Waterstone's my friend was thinking about grabbing a photo outside the Malta embassy, which is across the street, but it was dark and he changed his mind with a "That's okay, no one's going to blow it up." Funny. Weekend very good. Spent Saturday hiking all around Picadilly and Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square and farther . . . all places relatively near each other but my wandering was aimless, just for fun so I retread the same ground and took all those alleys you never take when you have to be somewhere at a specific time. Watched the Olympics on a giant screen in Trafalgar Square for about a half hour, apparently the Brits were winning a lot of gold that day (later newspapers and radio confirmed); everyone was happy - and loud. Sunday (today) wondered around the parks again - Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Sunny and right for it. Did finally get to Speaker's Corner - a hypnotically captivating place where all different sorts gather to rant and rave and save the world or your soul, whichever they think is more important - this world or the next, I guess. And one comedian speaker who looked like a diseased John Waters who basically heckled the others and taunted the audience and made parents cover the ears of their children and walk quickly away as he told filthy jokes . . . Project is going better, much. Transcribed the alterations from what I'm almost positive is a recording of a 1952 Old Vic production of Romeo and Juliet, am working through some very good texts now on almost precisely what I'm studying, and on the play I'm studying . . . UNH unfortunately doesn't have them and I can't read them all this week but the Boston Consortium does have them and hopefully I can get them real quick after I get back. Going to order them here, this week, online, to try and make this hope a reality. (The almost is good: an exact match and my work would be reduntant, too much different and my work would be difficult to contextualize.) Will be having my last meeting with my mentor this week, sadly . . . he's been such a great help and, well, he's funny too; good to chat with. Agonizing whether I should just not go to the British Library one day of the five (Monday - Friday) this week and take this off-day and go to the Globe Exhibition Center . . . Maybe. Next weekend is maybe either the Tower or Greenwich again (for the Ranger's House and Queen's Mansion) and Sunday will be for packing and Bach's Toccata and Fugue at the Royal Albert Hall. Monday fly back - mixed feeling about that and also a touch anxious - strikes will be happening at some airports and I guess even at Heathrow (where I'm leaving from) there was a glitch and a lot of lost luggage, some cancelled flights and a lot of delayed recently. Hopefully no hitches! Anyway, if I don't right soon it's because I'm enjoying myself!

Will add some photos soon!

WONDER

On the Globe's touring production of Winter's Tale, or, as a sum, a part of it,

When Leontes and company gathered to behold the statue of Hermione, and throughout this scene, tears were in my eyes, hope was in my heart, goosebumps stood out on the whole of me, and when the statue came to life, my breath was taken away . . .

By far the most miraculous production of Shakespeare I've scene.

God bless those actors who included this play in the Folio.

Apple-spitting

Last week's shows - Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy and a Polish company outdoor production of Macbeth - were wonderful. (Also saw Wives again at the Globe, and just as fun as the first time.)

Turns out I like Middleton - when done well - in performance. The Changeling (written with Rowley), seen weeks ago, was not done well, and hence not enjoyed (biggest problem was simply bad acting). This production (of Revenger's) was great, set as a (courtly) rave, with all the drugs, sex, and madness one would expect. Music was a blast - live, Gothic techno. Some of the actors seemed to have a difficult time embodying the text, as if they couldn't quite find their characters with it, but the main guy - Vindice, or something like - got his spot on.

The outdoor Macbeth was thoroughly disturbing. Most of the text went the way of the axe, nightmare-like images were favored. Perhaps a bit reductive as far as the psychological depth of the characters go, but then again, maybe not. The images seemed to retain and enhance something tonally that might otherwise have been lost with the cuts. One image I'm still thinking about - it worked, though not yet sure why. After the murder of Duncan, in a sort of coronation dinner for Macbeth, two servants, without using their hands, devour the same apple, sort of kissing it between them, and while one had the apple in his or her mouth the other chewed and spit their bits all over the face of the first. Weird, but again, it somehow worked, especially with the industrial chamber opera arias going on simultaneously. Other highlights, witches on stilts, real fire, operating motorcycles - I've thought it before and now again, there's something about the olfactory that lends itself to certain productions. (Sometimes it might be unduly distracting, for example - and not done here - like a yummy smelling dinner tantalizing those in the audience who weren't able to catch their dinner before their show.)

Weekend great too - though the rain tried to dampen it. Went to a jazz festival on Saturday and got soaked out in the afternoon but went back that night and saw the James Taylor Quartet; some wonderful, wonderful rock-like jazz. Back to the Victoria and Albert on Sunday with a friend, afterwards coffee; saw some good exhibits that I'd missed before though some we wanted to see were closed in prep for the fall exhibits.

Seeing The Winter's Tale tonight at The Globe; meeting with my mentor today to refocus.

In my "down time" at night I'll mostly be walking around (when not seeing shows) and I think the places I most hope to see that I haven't yet - hoping at least one is open on a Saturday - are the Tower and the Globe Exhibition Center. Hopefully!

Only two weeks left!

;(

brick wall #723

Well, at least the show nights for this week begin today. Much, much, much looking forward to The Revenger's Tragedy at Olivier/ National tonight.

Really glad I started early last week - in between other parts of research - to search and inquire about Gielgud and Olivier scripts; found out that much sooner that - as far as most productions and especially most Shakespeare productions - almost none survive, or at least are here. (No Gielgud, two Olivier - though, as near as I can tell, neither a 'major' production.) There are his three 'big' Shakespeare film scripts, but what I've been trying to focus on is stage productions, and film would likely open my project to a perhaps unmanageable scope.

Also, running across information that there were a lot of Shakespeare burlesque productions in the 1800s, and am not sure what this does for the Irving studies part of my project; don't really have time now to go back and research that new piece of info.

Major problem is I wanted to look for what was the continuity or through-line, and Irving/ Gielgud & Olivier/ Now might've provided it. To the best of my knowledge there was no other major period of staging between Irving and the next - Gielgud came quickly following anyway - as far as major actors/ actor-manager producer-directors are concerned. It seems that an entirely different system came to being during the last third to half of Olivier's career as far as this field goes - even the RSC, perhaps the most influential venue worldwide, though having its star directors and star stars, seems largely more a corporate project.

Going to read some articles and such on how humor functions in Shakespeare tomorrow (which I need to do) while thinking/ fretting about what to do next. Obviously should - or at least must - come up with something + should be receiving some advice soon.

Anyway!

Figuring out all the bells and whistles of my camera finally. B&W shots, widescreen, color enhancements - perhaps I'll get some better photos!

Greenwich &c

The trip to Greenwich was, unfortunately, a bit truncated - the friend I was going with ended up needing to do an errand for another friend of his that took until early afternoon to wrap up - yet still nice. Stood on the longitudinal Meridian line, poked around the Royal Observatory, got to walk underneath the Thames, got to walk around Canary Warf - lots of fancy new buildings there, starkly contrasting the old Roman-esque around the Tower and the Greenwich University. Didn't get to see Inigo Jones' Queen's House or Ranger's Park (which has lots of Renaissance portraits).


May go back - time depending. Have gone back to the Tate Modern for my half-day field trip; thoroughly enjoyed. (My theatre department friends: please, let me find a way to tell David Kaye I now like modern art - most.) Still want to spend a day at the Tower itself and so some more museum and art gallery circuiting. For classical music - Wigmore Hall and the Barbican aren't doing any more until September (the sold out Mozart's Requiem at the Barbican was its last for August), but I can still follow around the BBC Proms and catch superb shows (love the Royal Albert Hall).

Trying to expedite obtaining the Olivier/ Gielgud scripts from Manuscripts at the British Library. Should find out shortly - within the hour. Would like very much to look at their Romeo and Juliets and maybe their Merchant of Venices and then use the audio archives to listen to the same plays over the last few years. Then I can compare to what I've seen now and what I've read of Irving's productions from the late 1800s. Hopefully!

Me and Emmanuel finding our way from the Tower to Greenwich:

Bandwagon

Well, might as well hop on the wagon too. Seems like most everyone abroad has gotten ill or sustained some bodily injury. While for a while the only injury I'd sustained was to my ego, and perhaps my id - research is, well, hard, paradoxically having the ability to excite and sustain you and make you feel impossibly thick and crush you; it can enlighten and baffle (in a way that makes you wonder whether your professors are right to give you As and commend your hard work); but then again life does the same thing to me - well anyway, now I'm burning through a wearying cold, and for about three to four weeks now I've been trying different ways to deal with a hurt ankle. Happened while standing at a Globe performance; had stood before - over three hours for Lear - but something this night made me keep rocking on my feet, stretching my calves and ankles, and well, at some point, something cracked, loudly. Hasn't been the same since - my new super-villain name is the Hobbler, behold as I limp slowly by you, that grimace on my face? pure menace. IB Profin helped for a few days and now an ankle brace is basically keeping my foot attached to the rest of me. When I'm off it for a while it starts to get better but I'm never off it for long enough: mounting St. Paul's earlier this week really did a number on it too. But I'll take a couple days - perhaps while I'm teaching myself Power Point - when I'm home and stay off it.

Reviewed everyone else's blogs a little while ago and very jealous of the pictures: very hard to get a good photo here, for me. I think it's a matter of timing, a few hours each day when it's beautiful and I'm in the British Library. Usually there's a gray overcast - always on the weekends lately - well, clouding the photos, but the biggest problem is the cramped nature of the city: hard to capture a building without getting the corner of another building, a streetlamp, phone booth, passing bus or something; hard to get a statue without a bunch of tourist perched on it like pigeons; and there do seem to be fewer wilder, 'freer' sites like the beaches and bonfires that seem to be on everyone's blog but mine. But I'm slowly accumulating my own good 'slideshow' and hope to really flesh it out when I go to Greenwich tomorrow. Also, oddly, lots of the photos I want to take I can't: insides of buildings like St. Paul's, inside Art Galleries, and the like; or, oddly, of the things that really grip/ disturb/ terrify or enrage me - street performers in the tube, beggars, tourists acting like tourists (they're like random pinballs compelled to smash into each other and the city), the potentially dangerous and irreverant youth, and lunatics (lots of the last two here - run across more waiting for or on the bus at night). But it's a bit awkward taking photos of strangers. Also most of my explorations are alone and I find it hard to hand over my camera to strangers, but - a few days planned with friends - I should get more photos with me - and maybe my bowler hat - in them soon.

Also, while wrapping up research - this phase of it, later thesis paper will require more - will be preparing somewhat for the fall semester, starting my schedule/ planner, doing that whole short list of personal goals (usually do this three times a year - the start of the two semesters and the summer - and usually accomplish about 75% at about 75% capacity, or as well as I would have liked), preparing monologues to audition for the fall shows, getting back into vocal warm ups and such (sadly slacked on those a bit but I can actually feel my body missing them and sometimes still incorporating them - as should be done always - into daily activity, speech: in fact every once in a while when I feel the void pressing in around me, erasing me - or just sad or depressed, though sometimes the sheer mass of people and encountering a sufficient number of angries or crazies here leads to that specific sense of erasure - I often serendipitously find myself humming at first and then maybe singing a little - Sinatra helps - to remind myself that I am here, now; it helps).

Be well, all.

Adventures, Set Backs, Progress

God, I love a good classical performance - the BBC Prom Beethoven's 5th was wonderful, and cost just 5 pounds (had to stand for this price, of course). Going to see if I can attend Mozart's Requiem at the Barbican Hall tonight, after this afternoon's Regent Park production of Romeo and Juliet, which I need to see one last time, and this being my last chance, the last performance - and it looks like it's going to rain and they don't perform when it rains, so hopefully it doesn't rain!

The interview with the Globe's Master of Text largely went wonderful. It's amazing how those first few simple questions are so necessary - "Please tell me a little about yourself," "Please tell me how you came to be involved here," etc. - questions like these really seem to relax the person being interviewed. And a hearty beforehand thanks helps too. Okay, so the Master of Text, as I found, doesn't really have a big hand in altering the texts, but functions more as what I understand to be a cross between a dramaturg and voice coach - he or she helps the actors understand and embody the text, and whereas the director functions as the eye, the Master of Text functions as the ear, though the director still controls the multiple meanings of the word "vision" in the production. So my prepared list of questions may or may not have been ideal - there was some off the cuff improv, as there always is and must be in interviews, but the answers I was getting kept bringing me back to my questions, hinting that they might be fruitful after all, so I asked those - and yes, fruitful, but in a tricky way, because the MoT doesn't have the first-hand knowledge/ reasoning behind the choices to alter the scripts but certainly does have a good second hand knowledge - but, indeed, this may have been better because we were able to discuss a little of each production. And I of course got an insight into behind the scenes at the Globe, which, if I can't directly translate into my project, will still always be endlessly useful and amusing to me - the gentleman I interviewed, a very kind and helpful man, even showed me - quickly, and not quite going in, of course - the tiring house and the green room!

And I've now got 3 Irving scripts with all alterations and have much, much better system, if time remains, to map out the other 4 he has (offhand I think there are only 7 Lyceum Acting Editions of Irving's productions of Shakespeare's plays). Turns out the best, simplest way to transcribe is - if you can find the right website - to download the scripts in word and then mark or highlight or whatnot the changes. I remember my first day tackling the scripts actually spending nearly the whole day typing out Romeo and Juliet - only got about half way - when I figured that I needed a better way - at this time too I was debating about how much punctuation mattered to my project - it does matter generally, but not as much here I've decided - then I tried just typing out the cuts and transpositions specifically, but still that took a lot of time: the beauty of the whole script the way I'm doing it now is I can look when I like easily at what's been altered, just looking for the highlighted bits.

In Humanities One at the British Library - the room where most of my archival research has been done - doesn't have the scripts of Olivier and Gielgud, but Manuscripts may - I spoke with the man at Enquiries on Thursday and he's going to pass on my enquiry to a specialist in the building - hopefully I'll hear back soon, like by early Monday would be nice! If I can look at at least two scripts from each - preferably from the same decade - I think I'll have a sense of what's going on. Then I can do all that fleshing out/ sorting through criticism, autobiographies, letters and such.

It's odd, I mean I'm only going to have essentially a few snapshots, but I now have this sense that maybe, within my lifetime, I might actually obtain a good knowledge of the entire history of Shakespearean staging, and all related topics - acting and staging styles, changes in thought, society, criticism, &c - the list actually is pretty big - and absolutely, my experience here is going to support my passion and career in other endless ways - I've seen interesting ways of handling what's called colorblind Shakespeare, am ever so slowly formulating ideas on how a production works or doesn't, am seeing how even a great production can be reductive (crushing a play into a single theme), am starting to grapple with what some of the greatest directors and scholars of recent years believe the future of production necessary to be and seen some abortive attempts of others to apply these theories . . . SO, SO MUCH.

Other hopefully minor setbacks . . . had hoped to go to the Globe Research Center for a few days and look at the scripts of the current productions and maybe some director or actor notes - heard they kept such in their archives - and applied to visit well in advance as you're supposed to but got a - very polite - email saying that current production info is kept off the shelf until the season closes. Unfortunate!

SO, trying quickly to figure out how best to organize the remainder of my time, determining what's only here and what I'll still have access to in the U.S. Lots of the supporting evidence - autobiographies, etc. - we have in the Dimond Library actually so I think I'll just sample some more of that here for my presentation and then return to them at Dimond later when I'm writing my thesis. I think primarily what I should focus on is scripts and maybe a few essays and texts on my subject, humor . . . perhaps I'll still try to visit the Globe Research Center for something, or - well, at least - I definitely want to visit the Globe Education and Exhibition Center, which may not be directly relevant but is a MUST, there's lots there otherwise very fun and useful. Also want to sample the audio archives at the British Library - they have lots of productions recorded on CD - perhaps focussing on one play and it's productions for the last few years.

ANYWAY.

Visited St. Paul's Cathedral yesterday. A beautiful place, really magnificent. Climbed all the way to the top - 500 + steps, sometimes very steep and with very narrow, short hallways, little more than low tunnels to shimmy up and got some wonderful photographs. Couldn't take any inside but got lots of outside. Whispering Gallery nice, Stone Gallery pretty high up, Golden Gallery - at the top - very narrow and with the railing surprisingly, frighteningly low (probably actually belly level but still, that high up there should maybe be more separating you and the hundreds of feet drop to the ground?). Really a nice journey.

Outside, before going up, sat in Paternoster Square and sipped an iced coffee and read while listening to a live jazz band set up in the square - very good band, played some Frankie Blue-Eyes and even, to my great delight, a wonderful rendering of the main theme of "Aristocats."

"Oh, everybody wants to be a cat, because a cat's the only cat who knows where it's at . . ."

(And I just love Sinatra too, I hope when I take Musical Theatre this fall and I learn a little about, you know, how to sing, I'll be able to belt his songs out whenever I feel like it, which is often whenever I'm in a good mood.)

Monday I've just got to take off from the research - maybe I'll add next Saturday to replace - because a very good friend I've made here - Emmanuel, from Sierra Leonne - is leaving later in the week and he's wanted to join me for my Greenwich trip but is usually busy on the weekends so we're going to go Monday. Looking forward to it!

Going to be a good show week too. Revenger's Tragedy at the National, a highly physical abbreviated Grotowsky influenced Macbeth (outside the National), Wives again at the Globe. Yay! (I feel most calm, most excited, most at home in the theatres.)

**Later entry, Did get to see Regent's Park Romeo and Juliet again today, in the afternoon (and in daylight), and happily marked the heck out of my script; got even those spliced scenes that I thought'd be too tricky. Failed to see Mozart's Requiem at the Barbican - alack, sold out! Place seems very posh, too posh - meaning pricey. Might be able to see an inexpensive performance of something or other at Wigmore Hall in the morning: must hunt online to confirm info. Oi, wish I could add on another two weeks (or years) to my project, just starting to really feel at home + get a sense of how to do this sort of thing effectively, moving around barriers like water or crashing through them like a Juggernaut. Rarely ever got lost anymore, in fact am asked for - and able to provide - directions most everyday! (Easiest are the tube questions, next streets - it seems others are a bit confused by the lack of street signs too -, lastly bus routes - have been using the bus occasionally for a little over a week but the routes aren't in my mental map yet.)