7 Days and 2 Plays Later

It's hard to believe that I have just finished my 3rd full week, when it feels like I arrived yesterday and have lived here forever.
This was one of those weeks that I actually spent more time at LAMDA than I did at home (but it's becoming clear to me that all of my weeks will probably be like that.) After classes on Monday, school had booked us tickets to go see "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller at the Apollo Theater. Two friends and I decided to run to a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian restaurant in Covent Garden beforehand, and to say that the food was just good would seriously understate the fact that, if it were socially acceptable, the three of us would have been licking our plates clean by the end of the meal. With our bellies (thanks mommy) full we hurried over to Picadilly Circus, the "Times Square" of London, as my professor calls it, but, thankfully, all of the bright lights and big city fanfare outside did not interfere with the brilliant simplicity of the play inside the theater. Our tickets were all the way up in 1st Mezzanine, but the raked stage and stadium seating made it feel as if we were all sitting in the front yard with the actors, watching their lives unravel around them. The play was riveting, and I found myself so grateful that I had not read it beforehand, because of how real and authentic it all felt as it was unfolding. Granted, we were all so emotionally drained by the end of the play, all we could do was herd ourselves home and try desperately to remember our lines for our scene presentations the next day.
Tuesday and Wednesday were both 12-hour days at school, which for me, has become a mathematical equation of sorts;
Wake Up + Dress + Walk to Tube + Tube + Walk to School + Make Tea + Class #1 + 15 minutes for more tea + Class #2 + Lunch, brought from home, that includes another cup of tea + Class #3 + Break, with tea + Continue Class #3 + Dinner - from home, more tea + Either more Class #3 or Mask = 1 (EXHAUSTING) wonderful day at school.
The observant reader among you will notice that I am downing about 5 cups of tea per day, not counting the 1 before and after school. This gross increase in number is due to the fact that I have been graced with the presence of acute Bronchitis in my chest. In the wise words of my mother, "I guess this is what people without tonsils get!". Regardless, it has been a pain in the butt and daily intakes of Robitussin, echinacea, and, of course, tea have become my go-to. I guess that being in another country doesn't really change the fact that my immune systems likes to remind me who's the boss every now and again.
Regardless, the rest of the week was easy, and Friday night LAMDA's Student Council set-up a "Getting to Know You" Party where all of the classes got to mingle and, hopefully, eliminate some of the segregation of the common-room at break times. It is things like that that remind me that this isn't just a mythical drama-school in the sky, but a real place for students who are just like me, but with more patience.
The weekends have become "squeeze as much of London into 2 days as you possible can" days, and I'm totally okay with that. Yesterday we went to Camden Markets, and specifically, the Stable markets, a converted horse hospital that now holds shops in every one of the old horse stalls. There were so many people there but it was so exciting and I even had my first authentic English Fish'n'Chips. At some point during the day we made the spur of the moment decision to look into theatre tickets for that night and so we ended our day in Picadilly again, this time going to see "Deathrap" a thriller by Ira Levin that just happens to feature Jonathan Groff as one of the actors. Not only was the play amazingly scary and well-thought out, we were total groupies afterward and hung out at the stage door waiting for him after the show. Our unexpected star-sighting was seeing Michael Kors, the fashion designer, walk out of the stage door before any of the performers, everyone felt a bit shell-shocked by his presence there and didn't really register it until he had power-walked far away from where we were. Eventually, we met Jonathan Groff, who asked us what we were doing in London and how long we were there. When we realized that we were there for a similar amount of time someone suggested "Hey - we should hang out!". Well, we weren't necessarily blown off, but his adorable little smile and chortle at our suggestion made it seem like we probably need to work a bit harder next time...
So that's that so far. Today's plan is to get to the Rose Garden before it gets too cold out and then head over to the Tate Modern for an afternoon of art. I guess I have to accept that the formula for these posts is going to be; experience a week, try to recall what you did, then spew it out in one excessively long blog-post, hoping that people don't get too bored to stop before the end.
I guess what I really want to say, not so much about this week, but about this trip, is that, no matter how nervous I was, or how many times I doubted that I should be pushing myself to these extremes, there is not 1 day that I am not so grateful for being here, and, in the words of Uncle Steve Sondheim "that's what it's really about, isn't it?"

A Week In Review

It's been another full week since my last post and in that time I have
- Turned the big 2-0
- Had my first full-week of classes
- Seen my first show at The Globe
and
- Fasted in a far-away land
all of which were great, and I will elaborate on, for anyone remotely interested.
My actual birthday was fabulous. Being the girl who counts down the days until her birthday starting out at 364, I always have pretty high expectations, and this year did not disappoint. Saturday night a big group of us went out on King's Road - the street that seems to go on forever and has everything from a movie-theater to a cell phone store, and a coffee shop on every corner. It's a great location to have access to, and even though everything is about £10 more expensive here than most other parts of London, it's pretty darn handy to have within walking distance.
Sunday morning we explored the neighborhood and had an interesting brunch at a cafe near the tube station. At some point during the meal we realized that what the food lacked in quality, the experience made up for in great stories to tell when we got home - so in the end, being watched like hawks by the 6 Eastern-European waitresses made up for cream cheese and lox on white bread (seriously... there is a reason England is known for fish'n'chips).
The first week of classes was, in one word, exhausting, but in multiple words, a totally exhilarating opportunity to immerse myself 100% in theatre. I have begun eating, sleeping and breathing my classes, and even though we have now discussed "finding neutral" in 4 separate ways, standing during Kol Nidre turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to practice my new skills! Tuesday and Wednesday were 10am - 9pm days which are a lot easier to get through than they sound because a majority of them are spent doing private rehearsals, laying on the floor, and running around on sprung-floors playing games. We also had our first Mask and Stage Combat classes this week which were SO MUCH FUN and I cannot wait to see what they actually entail (aka - how badly they can really kick my butt).
Thursday could technically be considered a 10am-10pm day, but in all honesty, if that's what I get to do on 12 hour days, I'd pick them every week. We had a bunch of voice classes in the morning, an hour for lunch and movement in the afternoon, but at 530 we all left LAMDA in pursuit of our 1st scheduled trip to The Globe. Mind you - these classes have been working us all pretty hard, to the point that we are waking up pretty much every morning with sore thighs, tight backs and severe blisters, but that didn't stop school from booking us Groundling tickets for that night. None of us knew much about the show, and the elements that we were excited about seeing were slowly being weighed down by the reality that we would be on our feet for the next 2.5+ hours. How wrong we were to be nervous! The show was extraordinary (not to mention, historical - it is the first show written by a woman to ever be put up in The Globe) - the story line was thoughtful, the characters compelling and the singing and dancing created an effervescent atmosphere around a show that mainly dealt with the shady-doings of a mental hospital in 17th century London. Not to mention, 2 of the show's stars were graduates of LAMDA and every one of us left the theatre invigorated and ready to get back to work the next day, sore knees and all.
Yom Kippur was Yom Kippur. I went to shul with family friends, fasted and got grumpy sometime around 5pm. I broke tradition by breaking the fast with Chinese food, and not only with Chinese food, but Chinese food at a restaurant! Now, not having bagels with cream cheese and lox is a tradition that was unthinkable to break to this East Coast girl who eats about 3 bagels within 15 minutes of the Shofar being blown - but all-in-all, not a bad experience!
Now it's Sunday and I get to do all the fun things that this day of the week brings - like grocery shopping, doing laundry, and learning lines for class. It is a constant cycle, but it's one that I'm not too upset about.
The other day someone in class asked me how I was doing and in the brilliant words of my Grandpa Bernie I replied "I make a living" - leaving my classmate with puzzled smile on his face. From retelling that immortal punchline of the "story" I've heard from my Grampa since I was old enough to understand it, I realized that there is so much to be said about making it on your own, especially in a different country. Transportation is long, classes are longer and finding down-time is nearly impossible - but hey, I'm making it work. I know that I've not been great about keeping this thing up-to-date, but since this is as much for posterity as it is for letting those of you who care to, live vicariously though my travels abroad - I hope that it's a good sign that I'm writing so infrequently! It means I'm doing things and not thinking about them, and if things carry on the way they have been, the next 4 months are going to be unbelievable.
Oh - and if someone's reading this to you, P-Pop, rest assured that I'm making a living.

Palaces and Plays and Portobello, Oh My.

I don't know if it will be possible to articulate the whirlwind of events that have gone on in the last 5 days or so, but I will do my best to relay the adventures that have already found me here in Londontown.
On Tuesday we met up at school to board a bus to Hampton Court - the palace where Henry VIII lived when he was busy marrying, divorcing and killing his wives. It was a beautiful place and really nice touristy introduction to London. After taking the tour, seeing the gardens and walking around Hampton town, we proceeded to get on a ferry down the Themes for 3 HOURS. The tube ride from start to finish would have been about 20 minutes... still not sure what the point was, but the sights and company were lovely.

My first day of real day of classes was Wednesday and, naturally, lasted from 10 am until 9pm... Happy Rosh Hashanah to me. It's very different being in theatre classes all day because they're so active. There is almost no sitting around and taking notes (except, because it was a day of meeting new teachers, we literally went around the room saying our names, home-towns, colleges and ages about seventeen times each).
The run-down of the classes I've had so far is;
(a) Historic Dance - which was closer to "historic walking in a pattern" than "dance".
(b) Singing, in which I've been informed that I'll be performing an Italian aria... Altos are always especially good at those :-/
(c) Romances; this is a 3 week study of Shakespeare's Romance plays, so in the first 2 classes we've read the entirety of Winter's Tale and Pericles, picked scene partners and scenes, and an off-book date. Intense.
(d) Voice - about the speaking voice, not the singing voice, but at this point, there's no hope for mine ever sounding main-stream, and thank goodeness for that!
(e) Alexander Technique - this one is easier if you just look it up. I was instructed to lay down on a mat with my head on a pile of books and my eyes closed for 30 minutes. Guess who fell asleep? To be fair - so did the other 8 people in my class :)
(f) Improv - simply amazing. That's all.
(g) Acting, which sounds kind of general in comparison to all of the other classes I'm taking, but still just as interesting.
Those are all I've had so far - next week I'll have a mask class and in a few more, Shakespearean Romances will be put aside in favor of Jacobean texts, so things will never get boring. Or easy. But that's what I signed up for! And I made it to second night of Rosh Hashana dinner on Thursday - life is truly a balancing act!
Friday night I went to see a play at LAMDA with a few other people in my class, and in order to kill time between class and finding out if we were getting in off of the wait-list we meandered to Hammersmith to see what we could find. There were two major successes of that night; discovering PoundLand (similar to a dollar store, but it would have to be called a dollar fifty-five store in the US) and how unbelievable the performance was. It was Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke" and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the most beautifully done plays I have ever seen. I had never read it before and it was a free performance so we decided to try, and thank goodness we did. It left the 5 of us in tears, completely emotionally exhausted and totally in awe of the power that great theatre really has on people. A very reassuring feeling for week 1 of theatre training.
In a move very unlike me, I woke up at 8am on a Saturday to go to Portabello road with a few people before our scheduled show. It felt like a much bigger, MUCH cooler version of Eastern Market in DC and I spent far more time people-watching than actually shopping. After spending hours on our feet walking past jewelery, leather bags, antiques, street performers and lots of food, we hopped on the tube and went to see "Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford", Simon Callow's one man show about the life and times of William Shakespeare. It was the first of 5 or 6 tickets given to us by LAMDA and aside from the interesting nature of the performance, Callow is coming to our class to talk about his work and experience as an actor in a few weeks, so it really is a rare opportunity to see him perform and then hear him talk about it.
So now I'm home and taking a breather before my birthday festivities begin. I spent a lot of time worrying, as I often do, that I would have zero friends on my birthday and I would be eating pasta by myself in the kitchen and listening to "It's My Party". Thankfully - that is not the case. I'm really happy with the people I've met here, and while I wish that I had everyone from home here to celebrate with me, it seems rather appropriate to transition into a new decade of my life in a very new place. I think it's going to be a great start to my 20s!

It's Transition Time

So... London is phenomenal. It is quickly becoming one of those places that I'm shocked hasn't been an essential part of my life for years. So much has happened in the last few days that it's almost impossible to think about all at once, but I'll try for nostalgia sake.
Saturday was my last full day at Chez Mogilner - the wonderful house I'd been staying at since my arrival. We started the day off in Richmond, another town in the west of London (in fact, the most west stop on the blue District Tube line - In case anyone was wondering...) There was a lot of drama with getting my American phone to work with and English SIM card and so that was the place to work it all out, and also for another Boots run (like CVS, but better - I know, SUCH a shonda to say so, but it's true). Post Richmond, their youngest daughter Daniella took me for my first tube ride to South Kensington station, where we checked out my dorm in the very posh neighborhood of Chelsea, and then got on the top layer of a double decker bus to head home- it was a very British way to travel. That night for dinner we went to a Mexican place in the West End, and on the way, they gave me the car tour of London in the day time, and on the way back - the same thing, but lit up! It was BEAUTIFUL and they dutifully pointed out all of the obvious tourist attractions for me (Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace - the queen was even in!). I was drooling all over myself to start exploring, but I had one more night before I really started out on my own.
Flash forward to Saturday; move-in to IES London Residence Hall on Manresa Road. There is literally nothing else on Manresa but us, so there isn't even a number to the address - just the street. It is in the heart of Chelsea, right off of King's Road, and I could not have asked for a better location, even if I had the slightest clue about London geography! Anything I could possibly want is no more than a 15 minute walk - including the tube, which will take me anywhere else I'd ever want to go! A bit of grocery shopping, a bit of shmoozing with the people on my floor from my program, and a lot of unpacking!
Cut to today (or, I guess, yesterday at this point) - Intro to LAMDA. It was an easy tube ride and we went with a pretty big group so we didn't run the risk of losing someone along the way. We got there 15 minutes early and were showed into a big common room with every other student having their first day today - regardless of which program they were on. It was quite possibly one of the most intimidating crowds I had ever been in. There were artsy scarves, black panty-hose, and leather boots everywhere I looked, and when I checked the clock and realize that I still had 14 minutes I knew that I was in for an interesting morning.
By the end of our day at 6pm, all of my artsy-fartsy fears had been releived. The 3o people in my program all seem SO wonderful and the crude language of every professor that introduced him/herself today was one of the more entertaining moments I've ever had in a "professional" setting. After our day of introductions, actor name dropping and improv games (I know at this point some of you are probably wondering why I loved it so much) - they held a party for us in a room they affectionately call "Hogwarts". I died. Harry Potter references in a theatre school in London? There was nothing that could be better! Except, of course, heading home in the midst of a tube strike and realizing that our line was still running for a few more hours and we got to avoid a 45 minute walk home in the rain!
Well - that's all of my ranting for now. I could not have asked for a better intrdocution day, and to my (and many of your) surprise - my transition hasn't been all that bad! I'm starting to see myself here for the next 4 moths and all I can do is quote a pivotal movie of my yester-years and say "bring it on!"

Greetings from London!

So... I made it. My first official post in London (aka - the first time it's legitimate blogging about my "experience") The plane ride was relatively painless, minus the fact that I didn't sleep at all, probably because I had the world's loudest snorer in the row in front of me and a crying baby to my left, I was like Lindsay Lohan in that movie "just my luck".

Arrival was easy but the lady at the immigration desk was not very nice and seemed to seriously doubt everything that I told her, leading me believe that I am a much more suspicious-looking person than I had originally thought. My friend Naomi was there waiting outside customs when I got out and I had my first taste of a London motor way as we drove from Heathrow to their beautiful house in Kew, an area in West London. I did okay with the jet-lag for a while but after 32+ hours of not sleeping I began dozing off in every room of the house, so I allowed myself a 1 hour "snooze" and then kept myself up until 10 pm - not too shabby!

As for my excitement today - we went to a delicious hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant in South Hall and ate until I thought I would explode. There was all of this authentic Indian music on and then all of the sudden "Solo" came on, which I found hilarious, but everyone else was totally unfazed, making me the one stupid American laughing uncontrollably in the restaurant... way to go, Ariel.

So now it's real. I've seen the double decker buses, red pay phone booths, people driving on the wrong side of the road and lots of man-capris - I'm definitely in London. I can't wait to move into my dorm on Sunday and start exploring this place on my own, maybe then it'll feel more real and less like a holiday away. Regardless, from seeing the people here and experiencing the little I have so far, the one thing that is certain is, I have to start dressing better.