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!
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