It is nearly time! On Monday morning at 4am I will climb on a bus that takes me to Stansted airport, from whence I will travel to Rome, where I will meet my darling sister at the Main Termini. And from there the European tour commences, from which I will not return until August 27th. Preparations are nearly completed: a rucksack has been purchased, nearly 200 pounds in coins are sitting in my room waiting to be converted into Euro, and all I need to do is print out my boarding pass!
The last few weeks have been nice and hectic. We did our final presentations, which turned out very well, I thought. I was very proud of us fish, and hopefully someone will post a recording of our little piece later on in the summer: I'll post a link to it here when it goes up. And then school finished with a beautiful ceremony that we first-years put together for the second years. It was a sort of pagan Greek/Roman luxury spa trust fall/walk inspirational experience with lots of massages, grapes, togas, and blindfolds. We first years, toga-clad, greeted the second-years with music and dancing, married them all together (one of my classmates got "ordained" for the purpose from the Church of Universal Light or whatever) and led them through different stations that were intended to help them relax after a long hard year and to help them prepare for the future. These included a massage parlor, an inspirational quote and trust fall section, and a blindfolded "journey to mount Olympus". After we cycled them all through these stations, we had them take off their blindfolds to see us all "punting" them into the future by the canal, and they each got a flower to throw in the canal with a wish. By this time it was raining as well, so the atmosphere was amazingly emotional and joyful. Some of them even threw themselves into the canal along with their flowers and went swimming, to the surprise and amusement of all. And after all this, we went back inside, dried off, ate lots of good food and said good-bye! Several of my classmates have decided not to come back next year, which is very sad, but they're going on to do amazing theatrical things, so it's nice to know they'll be happy and busy.
For the week and a half after the end of school I had the pleasure of being visited by my dad (for a few days) and Roger, so I got treated to all sorts of nice food, a real tour of London on one of the open-top buses, and of course the amazing company. It was so nice to have people from home here. I sometimes lose track of the fact that I'm living in a foreign country, and it was so nice to have that reminder of where I come from. And after the venerable guests left I dove right into working at the cinema and street performing, trying to save up as much as possible for Europe.
And that's where's I'm at! I'll try to keep you all posted during the European adventures, but I don't know how often I'll be able to post, so have a good month everyone, and I'll see you on the other side of Europe! :)
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
A fishy Fourth
Last night was one of the most surreal nights of my life. I worked in the Billingsgate Fish Market from 2am until 10am this morning, for research for our observation piece. How in the world did this happen, you ask? Well, my group has been to the market several times to observe, and on one of our visits we ended up talking to the "king of the market," a talkative fellow whose name is Roger, coincidentally. Just to give you an idea of this fellow: he wears a straw boater hat, a bluetooth earpiece, and a dagger in a sheath to cut open fish boxes. He soliloquized to us about fish, cooking, entertaining young ladies, the "good old days," the war, etc. etc. etc., and then offered for us to come work for him if we wanted. Of course we, being enterprising young bohemians, decided to take him up on it, so at 2:00 last night my classmate John Michael and I found ourselves at the market, being given white coats and assigned to one of Roger's employees to be shown how to do things. Just to give you an idea of the setting, Billingsgate is located in Canary Wharf, the classy business district of London, and its 70's era yellow warehouse structure is in stark comparison to the shiny glass skyscrapers that tower over it. As you approach the car park you hear seagulls wheeling overhead, the squeak of styrofoam, and the shouts of the burly porters who drag massive pallets of fish to the many stalls that are arranged in rows inside the building. Inside the building, the smell of thousands of live and dead sea creatures hits you, as you walk on the slippery green floor dodging men in white coats and wellies. Observing was one thing, but actually doing the job is another thing entirely. One of the first things I learned was how to pick up a sea bass: always by the head and the tail, otherwise you risk getting cut by the sharp dorsal fins. The cold, slippery fish were surprisingly pleasant to handle, I found, and their scent is still on my hands after half a dozen hand washings and a shower. While the market was setting up, I learned how to arrange fish on display, and how to weigh fish for bulk orders, put them in a styrofoam box, cover them with ice, and write the name of the buyer on the side with a bulky crayon. When the customers began to arrive, I was put in charge of selling the live crayfish, which kept making excursions out of their boxes and had to be frequently corraled; the snails, which were live, covered with mud and which sold for 2 pounds a kilo; the razor clams, which look like white tongues hanging out of their distinctive shells, and which will "lick" if you run your fingers over them; and the wild sea bass, selling for 7-10 pounds per kilo, depending on the size. In between all this, I was treated to the near-constant joking of the fishmongers, and even got to indulge in a bit of yelling and jokery myself. The workers were very forgiving, supplying us with information, coffee, and friendly advice such as "I've been working here for 30 years: it's a life sentence. Get out while you can!" As the market closed, we packed up the fish on ice, tried to sell the last dead lobsters for a bargain price, and were both paid 30 pounds in cash and sent home with about 300 pounds (money) worth of fish (which probably would have gone bad before the market re-opened on Tuesday). This included 250 pounds worth of the biggest shrimp I've ever seen, some a full foot long, a whole 2-kilo sea bass (ungutted), a gigantic swordfish steak, and several huge cod pieces. Thankfully, we're having a 4th of July celebration tonight, so after lugging all this fish back to John Michael's house, we spent about an hour cutting the hunks of fish up into managable portions and shelling the majority of the shrimp, which we're going to grill tonight. My hands are covered in tiny cuts from this activity: there's a lot more pointy bits on shrimp than you might imagine.
And that was my night! Believe it or not, I'm planning on going back to work there again at least once, since Roger told me that I'm welcome to come back if I want. There's something about the visceral, old-fashioned work (there's no till at Roger's stand, just a drawer full of money) that really speaks to me, and it feels nice to be doing something so practical and hands-on, especially after so much abstract theatrical work. So there it is, another job to put on the resume, and another really cool experience in London. And now, sleep. I'm hoping for fishy firework dreams. :)
And that was my night! Believe it or not, I'm planning on going back to work there again at least once, since Roger told me that I'm welcome to come back if I want. There's something about the visceral, old-fashioned work (there's no till at Roger's stand, just a drawer full of money) that really speaks to me, and it feels nice to be doing something so practical and hands-on, especially after so much abstract theatrical work. So there it is, another job to put on the resume, and another really cool experience in London. And now, sleep. I'm hoping for fishy firework dreams. :)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sick day
So today I'm not feeling too good, which provides the perfect excuse to stay home from school and write a blog post! Quite frankly, I'd rather be at school, but when my body forcefully orders me to lie down and watch movies for a day I figure I'd better listen.
So... what's been happening? This week was the last week of having improv classes: there's only 3 weeks left in the school year (what???????), so we're gearing up for our final projects. These include:
-An acrobatics presentation, both of a set routine (T-balance forward side roll step half-turn forward roll upward jump two linked cartwheels handstand forward roll full turn jump backward roll straddle backward roll to push-up position shoot through to lie neckspring forward roll jump half turn straddle up to handstand forward roll tuck jump... collapse), and of a free routine, which is fifteen acrobatics moves and fifteen moves of our choice: I'm going to do contact juggling for my fifteen free moves, and Jill is tentatively planning to do a clown version of my routine with a watermelon. It's amazing how much I've learned in acrobatics this year: it's as if all the gaps in my acrobatics knowledge have been filled! So exciting.
-A presentation of the 20 Movements, which are twenty mime-type movements that we've learned throughout the year: they're kind of like the 10 Commandments of LISPA, except there's 20 of them and they're more like the 20 Exhausting Exercises That Ask Unanswerable Questions. We have to string them together in whatever order we choose and present them alone in front of the whole class and all the teachers. Apparently we'll be focusing mainly on these in class from now on.
-A space lab project on "Passions": we choose one passion (love, hate, fear, lust, grief, etc.: I chose fear), and create a "portable structure" based on it, which means a structure that "doesn't like to be put down" and that is dynamic when picked up and carried around. "....huh?" is a perfectly acceptable reaction to this one, I'm not sure I get it either.
-A group observation, where in groups of 5-8 we observe real life places based around a theme and create a piece of theater based on our observeations. This is as specific as the assignment gets, which is terrifying of course. My group started with food as our theme, and yesterday we went to observe at the Billingsgate Fish Market at 7am. It was really amazing, lots of dead fish, live shell-fish and eels, styrofoam, wellies, and wet floors. We met a loquatious veteran fish trader named Roger who told us all about fish, cooking them, entertaining young ladies, the War, etc. etc. etc., and who offered to let us come work with his team for a night! We're actually going to take him up on it, so I'll hopefully be posting about my fishy night sometime next week.
Whew! And on top of that there's work, and travelling to plan. Oh, I haven't mentioned this yet: I'm going on an epic young-adult European tour this summer! The itinerary involves meeting Becky in Rome, thence to Venice, Salzburg, Munich to see Hilde, on through the south of France to Barcelona (by myself!), then on to Athens and from there to Crete to do a theater piece for one of my classmate's wedding, then back to Athens to see it for real, and back home to London. It's going to be quite the adventure, I really can't wait!
So that's life at the moment! Or rather, I'm looking forward to all this in the near future, but for now I'm going to make a cup of tea and watch The Full Monty on youtube. :)
So... what's been happening? This week was the last week of having improv classes: there's only 3 weeks left in the school year (what???????), so we're gearing up for our final projects. These include:
-An acrobatics presentation, both of a set routine (T-balance forward side roll step half-turn forward roll upward jump two linked cartwheels handstand forward roll full turn jump backward roll straddle backward roll to push-up position shoot through to lie neckspring forward roll jump half turn straddle up to handstand forward roll tuck jump... collapse), and of a free routine, which is fifteen acrobatics moves and fifteen moves of our choice: I'm going to do contact juggling for my fifteen free moves, and Jill is tentatively planning to do a clown version of my routine with a watermelon. It's amazing how much I've learned in acrobatics this year: it's as if all the gaps in my acrobatics knowledge have been filled! So exciting.
-A presentation of the 20 Movements, which are twenty mime-type movements that we've learned throughout the year: they're kind of like the 10 Commandments of LISPA, except there's 20 of them and they're more like the 20 Exhausting Exercises That Ask Unanswerable Questions. We have to string them together in whatever order we choose and present them alone in front of the whole class and all the teachers. Apparently we'll be focusing mainly on these in class from now on.
-A space lab project on "Passions": we choose one passion (love, hate, fear, lust, grief, etc.: I chose fear), and create a "portable structure" based on it, which means a structure that "doesn't like to be put down" and that is dynamic when picked up and carried around. "....huh?" is a perfectly acceptable reaction to this one, I'm not sure I get it either.
-A group observation, where in groups of 5-8 we observe real life places based around a theme and create a piece of theater based on our observeations. This is as specific as the assignment gets, which is terrifying of course. My group started with food as our theme, and yesterday we went to observe at the Billingsgate Fish Market at 7am. It was really amazing, lots of dead fish, live shell-fish and eels, styrofoam, wellies, and wet floors. We met a loquatious veteran fish trader named Roger who told us all about fish, cooking them, entertaining young ladies, the War, etc. etc. etc., and who offered to let us come work with his team for a night! We're actually going to take him up on it, so I'll hopefully be posting about my fishy night sometime next week.
Whew! And on top of that there's work, and travelling to plan. Oh, I haven't mentioned this yet: I'm going on an epic young-adult European tour this summer! The itinerary involves meeting Becky in Rome, thence to Venice, Salzburg, Munich to see Hilde, on through the south of France to Barcelona (by myself!), then on to Athens and from there to Crete to do a theater piece for one of my classmate's wedding, then back to Athens to see it for real, and back home to London. It's going to be quite the adventure, I really can't wait!
So that's life at the moment! Or rather, I'm looking forward to all this in the near future, but for now I'm going to make a cup of tea and watch The Full Monty on youtube. :)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Fun busking story!
So today I went out busking again, after buying a wig and spray-painting it green, along with my old tattered jazz shoes, so my entire outfit was green. I made about 40 pounds, a buck thirty, and a Euro, but more interestingly I got propositioned by a fellow street-performer. He's a Romanian dancer named Silvio (yes, Silvio), who wears a red military-type coat and sunglasses and does popping and locking to techno music. He came up to me when he first got there and suggested that I add wings to my costume (which was a good suggestion, and I'm considering it), and pretty much straight off asked me out to coffee. I agreed, since he seemed like a nice enough guy, but warned him that I had a boyfriend, so if that was his motive he was out of luck. He then asked me if I ever cheated on my boyfriend, and said, "But you could have two boyfriends!" After our sets, we went over to the coffee bar near the Eye, and he bought me a Snickers, then proceeded to tell me that he doesn't like Romania because there's too many gypsies who do bad things and he doesn't want to be associated with them, that he thinks that the economic downturn was caused by fraud devices in ATM's, and that he's just broken up with his girlfriend because he thought she was cheating on him with his roommate. He then informed me that I was sexy, but not beautiful ("I like sexy girls better than beautiful girls"), and asked me to come back to his house to make a "video". Of course I declined, and left soon thereafter.
........what?????
........what?????
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
First Embankment busking
So today I went busking next to the London Eye for the first time. I've done this before in Boston and Munich, but I haven't been out for several years now. In case you don't know, I do contact juggling, which involves creating an optical illusion with a clear acrylic ball that seems to make the ball float: tourists love it. Today I went out in a green dress with make-up, and I think I'm going to invest in a green wig as well: the bigger/crazier your costume, the more money you make.
I'm planning to go as often as possible to make money for travel this summer, especially after my experience today. It takes about an hour to bike there, a 15 mile round trip, so the commute isn't too bad. And on a rather dreary Wednesday afternoon during a Tube strike I made about 50 pounds in three and a half hours (plus an American nickel, a coin from the Czech Republic, and a handful of Euro). The set-up down there is perfect for street performing: it's a wide boulevard next to the Thames, with tourists a-plenty drawn to the London Eye and no hostility from the cops. It even has trees to stand under, which is very important for what I do (if I stand in the sun, the ball can burn me). And the competition is certainly not overwhelming or hostile: today there were a couple guys in silly costumes talking to the tourists, some iguanas riding bikes, and an all-blue guitar player, all of whom were very chill. There are plenty of tourists to go around.
So I think I'll go back tomorrow, since we don't have school yet again (stupid Tube strike!). Crazy stories to come, I'm sure! :)
I'm planning to go as often as possible to make money for travel this summer, especially after my experience today. It takes about an hour to bike there, a 15 mile round trip, so the commute isn't too bad. And on a rather dreary Wednesday afternoon during a Tube strike I made about 50 pounds in three and a half hours (plus an American nickel, a coin from the Czech Republic, and a handful of Euro). The set-up down there is perfect for street performing: it's a wide boulevard next to the Thames, with tourists a-plenty drawn to the London Eye and no hostility from the cops. It even has trees to stand under, which is very important for what I do (if I stand in the sun, the ball can burn me). And the competition is certainly not overwhelming or hostile: today there were a couple guys in silly costumes talking to the tourists, some iguanas riding bikes, and an all-blue guitar player, all of whom were very chill. There are plenty of tourists to go around.
So I think I'll go back tomorrow, since we don't have school yet again (stupid Tube strike!). Crazy stories to come, I'm sure! :)
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Summer!
It's finally summer! After months of cold and rain and general dreariness we are now blessed with green things everywhere, birds a'chirping, weather in the 70's, days that are actually sunny (interspersed with more dreariness, of course), and the near constant jangling of our neighborhood ice cream truck, which plays Yankee Doodle Dandy, strangely enough.
School has been moving ahead at a frighteningly rapid pace: we've moved on to character work now, which feels like an appropriate culmination for the year. The first week of this term was spent exploring a character based on a person we observed (in my case, a co-worker), and mine turned out to be a rather dumb loud-mouthed girl named Diamond (I wish you all could meet her, she's a kick in the pants!). This week we're working on another character, preferably one very different from the first, and my second character is turning out to be a neurotic librarian named Roxanne. Apparently our next assignment will be the "quick change," ie: 3 actors, 6 characters. Should be extremely exciting and frustrating, I'll be sure you tell you all how it goes. In addition to all this, we also have the final projects looming over us. The first one is The Twenty Movements, which is a series of technical movements that we've been learning throughout the year (eg: swimming, climbing a wall, rowing a boat, hitting things with sticks...): we perform them individually, and it's up to us to structure them how we like. The second one is a group piece, where we choose a theme or place, go out and observe, and create a piece of theater (which is as specific as the guidelines were). So there's lots to do and think about, and it's only going to get busier: yay!
As for the last month, I had the great joy of having my other half here with me, which is also my excuse for not updating in so long. The break was really really nice: it was wonderful to forget about school and do things like eat out in restaurants, see movies, go biking, and travel... to Poland! We went to Krakow to visit my friend Lauren for five days in the middle of the break, and it was quite the experience. I'd never before been to a place so recently and heavily involved in war, and the atmosphere of oppression and loss was kind of overwhelming. Just an example of the awareness of the past: in the town center, there was a beautiful old church with a tall tower from which a bugler would play a tune every hour. He always stopped abruptly at the same point in the song, apparently to commemorate a bugler who was shot by an enemy archer while playing. We also went to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which was something I'm very glad to have done, and not sure I could ever do again. On the lighter side, we got to eat a ridiculous number of pierogies, see a random brass band dedicating a trolley, ride a ferris wheel at night, visit a salt mine, and lots of other wonderful things (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024163&id=4101276&l=91ced377ce for pictures). Overall, it was a really nice trip, and it was good to get away from London.
And back to London... it seems that we won't be moving after all. The hassles of finding a new house, paying a deposit, notifying everyone of our change of address, changing our utilities and internet services, and moving all our furniture seem to outweigh the difficulties we face here. And those difficulties sure make for some good stories, for instance, part of our fence burned down a couple days ago! Our new neighbors decided that it would be a great idea to burn everything in their backyard, which ended up including our fence. The damage:
It was quite the adventure that afternoon: Ana, the neighbor and I were out there with buckets of water, spraying down the fire out the bathroom window with the showerhead, and then the fire fighters came and ran a hose through our hall... so amazing.
And that brings us up to date, I think! More to come in the following weeks...
School has been moving ahead at a frighteningly rapid pace: we've moved on to character work now, which feels like an appropriate culmination for the year. The first week of this term was spent exploring a character based on a person we observed (in my case, a co-worker), and mine turned out to be a rather dumb loud-mouthed girl named Diamond (I wish you all could meet her, she's a kick in the pants!). This week we're working on another character, preferably one very different from the first, and my second character is turning out to be a neurotic librarian named Roxanne. Apparently our next assignment will be the "quick change," ie: 3 actors, 6 characters. Should be extremely exciting and frustrating, I'll be sure you tell you all how it goes. In addition to all this, we also have the final projects looming over us. The first one is The Twenty Movements, which is a series of technical movements that we've been learning throughout the year (eg: swimming, climbing a wall, rowing a boat, hitting things with sticks...): we perform them individually, and it's up to us to structure them how we like. The second one is a group piece, where we choose a theme or place, go out and observe, and create a piece of theater (which is as specific as the guidelines were). So there's lots to do and think about, and it's only going to get busier: yay!
As for the last month, I had the great joy of having my other half here with me, which is also my excuse for not updating in so long. The break was really really nice: it was wonderful to forget about school and do things like eat out in restaurants, see movies, go biking, and travel... to Poland! We went to Krakow to visit my friend Lauren for five days in the middle of the break, and it was quite the experience. I'd never before been to a place so recently and heavily involved in war, and the atmosphere of oppression and loss was kind of overwhelming. Just an example of the awareness of the past: in the town center, there was a beautiful old church with a tall tower from which a bugler would play a tune every hour. He always stopped abruptly at the same point in the song, apparently to commemorate a bugler who was shot by an enemy archer while playing. We also went to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which was something I'm very glad to have done, and not sure I could ever do again. On the lighter side, we got to eat a ridiculous number of pierogies, see a random brass band dedicating a trolley, ride a ferris wheel at night, visit a salt mine, and lots of other wonderful things (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024163&id=4101276&l=91ced377ce for pictures). Overall, it was a really nice trip, and it was good to get away from London.
And back to London... it seems that we won't be moving after all. The hassles of finding a new house, paying a deposit, notifying everyone of our change of address, changing our utilities and internet services, and moving all our furniture seem to outweigh the difficulties we face here. And those difficulties sure make for some good stories, for instance, part of our fence burned down a couple days ago! Our new neighbors decided that it would be a great idea to burn everything in their backyard, which ended up including our fence. The damage:
It was quite the adventure that afternoon: Ana, the neighbor and I were out there with buckets of water, spraying down the fire out the bathroom window with the showerhead, and then the fire fighters came and ran a hose through our hall... so amazing.
And that brings us up to date, I think! More to come in the following weeks...
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Birthday reflections
I am 23! Really psyched, I think this is going to be a good one (partly because it will be completely consumed by LISPA, traveling in Europe, and other wonderful young adult-y things). My classmates and housemates were really amazing: yesterday Jill and Kate made me a tea party with, well, tea, and about half a dozen different types of little sandwiches, and scones, and fairy cakes (cupcakes to us yanks), and the lovely company of about ten of my classmates. It was really the most perfect birthday party I could have imagined, and today I got given lots of hugs and chocolate and good wishes, and even a cake, to my complete surprise! I guess you know it's your birthday when fully half of your lunch consists of chocolate cake. So it's been a really wonderful birthday, and it feels like a good send-off into the next year.
And my birthday gift to you all... photos! As always, let me know if this link doesn't work. :)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023781&id=4101276&l=3975ed0392
And my birthday gift to you all... photos! As always, let me know if this link doesn't work. :)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023781&id=4101276&l=3975ed0392
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