2 Weeks Down...11 More To Go

We come to the end of Week 2 with not a whole lot of new stuff to add...mainly because I posted a lot of trivial shit the second it happened, so I couldn't build up an impressive post-length with three or four days worth of information.

Regardless, here are the updates:

1) NEW CLASS

Voice (with Andrew Cuthbert) - This is the first time that I've had the experience of "voice & speech class" being divided into "voice class" and "speech class". So far, it's just been a lot of us making noises...but full, resonant noises. I never liked Voice & Speech before, so we'll give it some time before I judge it.

2) FULL DETAILS OF OUR FIRST SHOWING - "Arts of Shakespeare"

The first three sets of performances/showings are for RADA faculty only. No one is allowed to see these showings, nor are they allowed to photograph or film them...so don't get all pissy if I didn't invite you. Besides, if you're the kind of person to get "pissy", I probably wouldn't want you there in the first place.

Combat Portion - We'll be performing an abridged version of the first scene in Romeo and Juliet, wherein I play Tybalt and fight Benvolio with rapier & dagger. I have an Examiner's Award for Excellence when I took my rapier & dagger skills proficiencyy test, so I'm not too worried.

Dance Portion - We'll be performing various Elizabethan court dances, including the galliard and the pavan...both of which I sort of learned during my first year at Playwrights Horizons, so I'm not too worried.

Clown Portion - We'll be performing famous clown scenes throughout Shakespeare's works. The guy who plays Benvolio in the combat portion and I are doing the gravedigger scene from Hamlet (V,i). We're at a strong place in our rehearsal progress, so I'm not too worried.

Sonnet Portion - We'll be reading a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets in a performance manner. In case you need to know, mine is #71. It's a fairly simple sonnet without a whole lot of imagery, so I'm not too worried.

Singing Portion - We'll be performing two madrigals (songs from the period...not sure why their called madrigals), one will be performed by the entire group of 16, then we were split into two groups who will each sing their own. I'm a bass for both of my songs and that section isn't too difficult...but I'm still going to have to sing. This would be where the worry comes in. Not a lot, but enough.

That's really it. I felt bad about not having any pictures, though, so I looked up "the funniest picture in the world" on GoogleImages. The first two pictures were totally bullshit and not funny. People need to really think twice before saying that a collage of photos of their baby smiling is "the funniest picture in the world"...because it isn't, and you're terrible parents for thinking that. The third picture, however, was relatively funny. This is the picture.

Not the funniest picture in the world, but I'll let it slide...for now.

Duet for One...for Us

I know it's been a very short while since my last post, but certain things need to be addressed now before I forget.

Before I begin, though, a note about today at RADA: classes were fucked. Two of our teachers were greatly delayed due to mass transit issues and two of our teachers were just plain absent (luckily, the combat guy sent in a substitute). If you looked at my schedule, you'd see that 4 out of 4 classes had some problem with the teacher assigned to teach it for today.

Anyhoo....

The Play of the Week: "Duet for One" @ the Almeida near King's Cross

Fantastic two-person play about a psychiatrist helping a former violinist struggle through her depression and anger after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For two people sitting in a single room for two and a half hours, it held my attention rather well. Moving, intriguing, and worth seeing if it every comes to the US.

A few of us who saw the show went out to a pub on the way back to Nido called Slim Jim's (not affiliated with the stick of meat-thing). It's a good thing we did, because we ran into some Australian folks that I met on our first Friday night at the Rocket. I don't have pictures, but their names were Joe, John, Jack, Ben, and Kate. I was mildly upset at Ben and Kate for not being named Jim and Jen...that would have been awesome.

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Also, I would like to change the subject of my...

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DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK!

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The new discovery:

His name was Tim. Thanks go to Joel for providing this delightful nugget of knowledge.

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That's all for now.

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Go away.

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PS - If you're wondering about the crazy periods in between some of the lines, I did that because Blogger doesn't like the fact that I like to space separate thoughts apart like a rational human being. Blogger is a shit.

History: It Happened

This, believe it or not, was my Tuesday classroom this week: the British Museum. Quite nice, actually, having a class here, because it doesn't feel like a class.


The Great Court...you can't miss it. You walk in through the main doors and you see 2 acres of glass doming. We had tea here in a small cafe by the gift shop. We later discovered a very nice restaurant above the Round Reading Room (the cylindrical thing in the middle), but I don't think anyone was going pay to eat there.

We spent a lot of time here, so I'm just going to tell you what the picture is and a quick, fun-fact about it.


Statue from Easter Isle: On the back of each statue, a record is kept of the annual "bird-man", which is some asshole who swims to a nearby island, climbs a giant rock, steals a bird egg, swims back to Easter Isle with the egg intact, and is essentially proclaimed the leader of the island.


The Rosetta Stone: Though it was quite possibly the most crucial archaeological find in the sense that it helped decypher the Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic written languages, when translated, it's just a proclamation of tax amnesty for temple priests.

The Colossal Bust of Ramses II, the Younger Memnon: First off..."colossal bust"...heh heh heh. Anyway, the hole in the chest was put there by French archaeologists in an attempt to get better leverage when trying to move the statue. That failed, they wrecked the statue, and now the British have it.

The Assyrian Winged Bulls: In between the back two legs of this gigantic stone structure, somebody carved the outline of a Middle Eastern board game (which is still played today, aparently).

Carvings of an Assyrian Lion Hunt: When hunting lions, Assyrians would barage them with arrows, badger them into attacking the king's chariot, where the king would kill them with spears...all as a method of making the king look strong as a warrior. It more or less just makes him look like a douche.

The Parthenon Marble Frieze: Because these sculptings were displayed on the outside of the Parthenon, the exhibit is technically inside-out.

The Parthenon Eastern Pediment: The horses on the far left are only shown from the neck up because they are apart of Helios' chariot, emerging from the sea at the dawn of each day...meaning the horses spend roughly 12 hours a day underwater.

Mesopotamia: Nothing interesting happened in Mesopotamia. Nothing.

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Now, if you're wondering what happened on Monday, you'll be bored with the answer. So, I've decided to spice things up with...

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THE DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK!

Sandwich Express: They're tucked in he middle of nowhere and they make good sandwiches, without obligatory mayonaise, lettuce or cucumbers on these sandwiches (unless you want them on it). This is the most straight-forward sandwich shop I've ever encountered. They hide nothing, nor do they imply anything. You want a sausage sandwich? They cut up links and put the meat between two slices of bread. Extra shit costs extra.

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And in case anyone was wondering...

The County Hotel finally got around to fixing their marquis. I think the bell-hops overheard us refer to this place as "the Cunty Hotel" for too long. We still don't know if this was an accident or vandalism...but it was funny regardless. However, don't let this incident turn you off to the notion of advertising in big letters in a city like London. The chances of suffering unfortunate damage like this is slim to none.

Okay...maybe the chances are a little less slim that someone's going to mess with your sign. It's funny how London is the city with the most surveillance in the world, but we see shit like this on a weekly basis here in King's Cross alone.

Three Days @ The RADA

No...we did not go to the Rocket. We're actors, not idiots. Nobody wanted to do brand new Shakespearean monologues in front of half of our RADA faculty with a hangover from Tuesday night.


This is the main building for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I completely misjudged how long it would take to get there, so you are currently looking at the building at 8:00am, a half hour before they even open. It was cold. I was not happy. Once I got inside, though, it was quite nice.


And yes...RADA has its own pub. It is safe to assume that every educational institution provides alcohol to its students. However, they do not serve students during academic hours, which is somewhat of a no-brainer.


So, we found a pub that did during our break. Nice place, relatively close, and good food.


The Play of the Week: "The 39 Steps", playing at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus

I would strongly recommend seeing this play (I'm pretty sure it's on Broadway right now). It's a farcical adaptation of the novel/Hitchcock film and there's only a four-person cast, of who three people share nearly a hundred roles throughout the course of the play. Funny, fast, and very British.


We walked home from Picadilly, which was quite an excursion. We came across an inflatable Corona bottle-man. None of us saw a pub nearby, so his presence was somewhat of an enigma.


Just to prove that the RADA kids aren't all about pubs, on Thursday, a group of us went to a little Italian place near Gower Street. Utterly fantastic food for relatively cheap. The next day, we ate in the cafe at Castle von Hitler...and we really missed Trattoria Mondello. We will be returning here often.

Our Thursdays at RADA are going to be relatively long, staying in the building from approximately 9am-9pm. We were not told this when we signed up for the program. We took a tour of the Gower Street building (which is the main RADA complex) with the head of the technical department. He showed us all the workshops and theatre spaces and what-have-you. Then, he showed us this:


That, right below the lighting grid, several feet above the seats in one of RADA's theatres, is a Canadian invention that is like a mesh of woven steel wires. It allows the lighting crew to walk safely and directly to the lights to focus them and it allows the light to pass through it onto the stage. Not only that, but during some performances, actors can use that as another acting surface. For example, when they did "Guys and Dolls" here, when the guys were shooting craps in the sewers, the police came in from up top here and shined their flashlights down onto the stage and audience. This is, quite possibly, the coolest technical theatre invention I've ever seen

Before I go any further, let me give a quick rundown of how I feel about my classes thusfar. I will probably be giving this rundown every week, because our schedule is very eratic and classes are constantly changing:

Singing (with Andrew Charity) - It's not what I expected at all, really. It's a very academic and technical look at singing, which I feel more comfortable with than if we were to just learn songs and do solos. It's going to focus much more on Elizabethan choral singing, so I can hide behind people. Andrew is a older gentleman, somewhat quiet, but he has a certain positive energy to him that is somewhat easing.

Clown (with Jeremy Stockwell) - I am 100% convinced that our teacher for this class is not human, but that doesn't work against him. He is arguably the single-most brilliant teacher I've had in the field of dramatic arts, although he may very well be clinically insane. He cannot be stopped or turned off. The classes are high-energy and we never know what he's going to have us do next...mostly because he has no idea either.

Sonnets (with Brigid Panet) - Brigid is the sweetest, little old British lady you could possibly meet. Her goal is to slow us speedy American actors down a bit so that we can fully feel and understand what we're actually saying at a given moment. She was the one who actually suggested that we eat at the little Italian place on Gower. Thank you, Brigid.

Monologues (with Geoff Bullen) - I auditioned for RADA in front of Mary Jane Walsh and Geoff Bullen, and at that time, he was utterly intimidating and he held nothing back when it came to commenting on my work. Now that we have him in a more relaxed setting, he is an incredibly lively, silly individual...who holds nothing back when it comes to commenting on work. That duality to him is something we really need to respect because if we go half-assed on anything, he'll call us on it. His personal motto: "Act like fuck." He works on an extraordinarily personal basis with people, sometimes literally resting on your shoulders like a parrot and coaching you while you are working.

Physical Performance (with Lorna Marshall) - This is a movement-based class, but it's very different from what I've had so far at NYU. Lorna is very much a don't-do-it-if-it-doesn't-feel-good kind of person, which is a very relaxing thing for many of us because there's always a certain level of personal judgment in movement classes. She seems to have found a way to remove that element of judgment.

Armed Combat (with Bret Yount and Phillip d'Orleans) - Half of our enitre RADA group was selected to learn broadsword and half of us to learn rapier. I have been placed in the rapier class, which will be beneficial in the short run because I still need small sword and single sword SPT's within the SAFD, so this will bridge the gap between those eventual classes and my previous experience with rapier and dagger. Our filmed fight will be a knife fight, which will also be beneficial because I need a kinfe SPT as well. Unfortunately, I'm the only one in the RADA program with any sort of extensive combat experience, so Bret is having us move at a cripplingly slow pace. A lot of the shit he is thowing at the newbs doesn't make a lot of sense to me on both a technical and instinctive level, but Phillip (who doesn't say a whole lot) has sort of established a quick bond with me in the sense that we know a lot of the same people back in the SAFD, so he's been paying close attention to my work and just keeping me on point with everything, making sure that I correct very specific things in my technique and whatnot.

Dance (with Darren Royston) - Darren is like a hummingbird...one seldom sees him land. He is your typical British dancer/choreographer. He's going to run us through Elizabethan court dancing, which is good for me because we did a lot of similar stuff during my second semester at Playwrights Horizons. The first class was mostly exloratory, but I can tell it's going to be fun.

Acting Verse (with Geoff Bullen) - Just to be clear, Geoff Bullen is the director of the NYU @ RADA program, so he's going to be everywhere. He's turned this class into a very muscial sort of ordeal when analyzing the rhythm of Shakespeare's writing and it's jsut as high-energy as anything else he does.

So, that's it for my first week of classes, both at the ICA and at RADA. After classes ended, Katelyn wanted to do some exploring after we all cleaned up and rested a bit. Now...to describe Friday night, I will need to concise, as much happened that night. Here's a spoiler, though: we did NOT go to the Rocket.


First, we found a pub called the Camden Head...


...and there was much rejoicing. An interjection: bangers and mash (sausage and gravy on mashed potatoes) is amazing.


Then, we found a pub called the Old Red Lion...


...and there was much rejoicing.

Then, we found a pub called the Lexington. There was much rejoicing there as well, but not as much as in previous locations, as many people either decided to go home after hitting the Old Red Lion or decided to head to the Rocket shortly after arriving at the Lexington. After the Lexington, we all went back to Nido to sleep.

Before I say adeiu, there is something that needs to be brought to your attention. In the UK, there is a bubbling hard cider brand for sale called Scrumpy Jack.

Here is proof of its existence. The word "scrumpy" is the official favorite word of the RADA students. I looked up the origin of the word: to scrump - to steal fruit, as in an orchard. I am seriously considering thieving from and orchard so that I can be charged with scrumping in an English court of law; just go to an apple orchard and get my scrump on. I'd be easily convicted, but when my cell mate asks me what I'm in for, I shall reply, "Scrumping."

Let the Academia Begin!

So, to start the first day of actual classes, we were told to meet Mary Jane Walsh (head of Tisch School of the Arts London) at the Senate House Library for an induction. One of Londons first skyscrapers, it was the spot from which the VE-Day broadcasts were sent at the end of WWII (see my previous entry if you're shaky on te anagram). A little known fact about this building is if Hitler had succeeded in taking over Great Britain after the blitzkrieg, he would have used this building as his base of operations while in London.

The second I learned that fact, I decided to refer to this building solely as Castle von Hitler. Not many people understand the subtle nature and history behind the humor of this nickname. Some get rather touchy when they hear the phrase "Castle von Hitler".

That would be MJW herself, leading us through Trafalgar Square to the location of our education, the ICA. She suggested that for good food in the area, we eat in the crypt of St. Martin's Church that has been transformed into a little cafe.

That's creepy as shit, so we ate at a pub-like little restaurant in Leicester Square. We discovered the existence of two unfortunately-named cocktails there: the Slippery Nipple and the Cactus Banger. We would have ordered them to see how they tasted, but none of us could seriously order either drink. You lose all man-priviledges if you order a Slippery Nipple and you look like a Saharan sexual deviant should you chose the lesser of the two evils. I had a bottle of water.

This would be the public entrance to the ICA, located on the Mall. Students get a secret entrance in back. I'd tell you where in the back, but it's a secret. Some of us had our first class be Theatre in London...I am one of the some. We will be seeing a theatrical production damn near every Wednesday of the semester. Yes...this will be going on the blog.

During the break in between class and a little housekeeping session with MJW, we wandered back over to Buckingham Palace, mostly because Joel forgot his camera the first time we were there. As we were walking back passed the Victoria Monument, CNN stopped us and coralled us because we were Americans in London. Aparently, they wanted some Yanks in the UK to read bits from MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech for MLK Day and for the upcoming inauguration. Joel read on behalf of the RADA crew because the reporters really liked his hat. They didn't really audition anyone, then, pick the best reader to do a cold readin of an excerpt for the camera. Sort of ironic when you think about it: the person they wanted to read the speech, a speech teaching to judge people by the content of their character and not by their outward appearance, was chosen solely on the basis that they liked his outward appearance. I'm not jealous, mind you; it was a huge chunk of the speech and a cold-reading to boot. Good for Joel. YouTube him or look him up on CNN. I was there!

Yadda, yadda, yadda...classes ended a little early. We decided to walk home through London's Chinatown. Hundreds of paper lanterns...hundreds of whole fried ducks on spits in windows. I don't know what it is, but if a Chinese restaurant, butcher, or any kind of food vendor has a whole duck that they've fried, they just love to put that sucker in the window for everyone to see.

The second day of classes was vastly superior for the Theatre in London group, as most of us were in the same academic classes. It started at 2pm and it was only the one class: Art in London. It think the only pre-requisite to having an NYUL class is that the title of the class must have the words "in London" tacked onto the end of it. Architechture in London, Chemistry in London, Taxidermy in London, etc. Anyway, the Arts in London class meets at a different museum every class period. Yes...this too will go on the blog. Halfway through class, our teacher decided to take us on a brief walking tour to examine nearby examples of Gothic and Neo-classical architecture, which helps further support my theory: every British person in the city is a trained London tour guide.


We saw the pelicans again. Hello, pelicans! As you can see, you can't really tell from photos how big the giant fucking pelicans are, but they are giant. Just a quick photo of them with the setting sun shining on the lake's surface with Buckingham palace in the background.

We headed back to the ICA and ended class earlyso that people could watch the inauguration footage at the institute's cafe and pub. Another note: most of the NYUL-associated buildings have a pub or at least a place within the building to order a pint...which, I feel, is a vastly superior system than the one we have in the US.

Well, it's almost 9pm here in London and there was a recent discovery about the Rocket. Apparently, not only is there a student discount there, but every Tuesday night is £1 Pint Night, £3 Burger Night. We discussed going earlier in the day...but will we go?

Are the RADA students going to get drunk the night before we all need to perform Shakespeare monologues that we've never done before in front of the entire Royal Academy Staff, or are we going to use our better judgment and use this evening for last-minute performance prep? Who will prevail: acting or alcohol? Prepping or pints? Monologues...or beer? I couldn't think of anything for the letter M, so shut up.

Tune in next entry to hear what happened!

And on the third day...

...we walked. We walked, and we walked, and we walked. Our Tisch orientation was at 9:30am and it ended relatively quickly, so we just spent the majority of the day walking through the city of London. They entrusted me with the responsibilty of navigation. A wise decision.

The Institute of Contemporary Art (where are classes will be held) is right on the Mall, so we decided the first thing we'd do is walk along side it through St. James's Park. We saw awkward birds, which was decidedly the second-most ornithologically-fascinating event of the day because they looked funny.

We reached Buckingham Palace shortly afterwards to see the Queen. Unfortunately, Lizzy was out, so we couldn't come over to play. We debated storming the palace, but then we realized that the two royal guards with rifles were there with a large handful of police officers, armed with machine guns. We decided against storming the palace.

We walked through the other end of St. James' Park to have our single-most ornithologically-fascinating event of the day: seeing giant pelicans. Apparently, the Queen owns pelicans...GIANT pelicans. They were pretty far away on their little island, but we could see that they were bigger than turkeys. We walked passed Winston Churchill's cabinet war rooms, where he said "This is the room from which I will direct the war". For anyone who doesn't quite fully understand history, he was talking about WWII. For anyone who doesn't quite fully understand anagrams, I am talking about World War 2.

We made our way into the city of Westminster and into Parliament Square, where we saw both the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

We were all somewhat disappointed in Joel when he asked us what time it was. Just to clear up certain American misunderstandings, this is not a picture of Tommy and Joel with Big Ben in the background. What you are looking at is the clocktower of Parliament. Big Ben is the bell within the clocktower. If this was a video, you would probably hear Big Ben in the background because this photo was taken very close to a chiming point at 3:30pm.

Westminster Abbey: the final resting place of Elizabeth I, Henry V, Edward I a.k.a. Longshanks, Henry VII, Elizabeth I, James I, "Bloody" Mary I, Edward III, King St. Edward the Confessor, Charles Darwin, Ben Jonson, Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, George Frederick Handel, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Laurence Olivier, Edmund Spenser, Alfred Tennyson, and many others. Their caskets, along with hundreds of burial commemoration plaques and the British Coronation Throne, fill the interior of this beautiful Gothic church.

It was closed when we got there, so we saw none of the above mentioned stuff. Last admittance on a Friday is at 3:30pm, and we probably would have made it inside if we didn't stop for gimmick photos of Parliament. No one was very disappointed, though, as we were sure that the tours cost money.

We decided to cross the River Thames over the Westminster Bridge and head back to Nido on the other side. Halfway over the bridge, we realized something...

Really good photo opportunity. We were getting a little tired at this point, so we stopped off to rest a bit in a little place by the London Eye, the Dali Universe, and the London Aquarium.

We found an arcade/bowling alley/pub/casino. Things were good...until the zombie hordes overran Joel and Nathaniel. I am so proud of the timing on this photo; it's at the exact moment the machine said "GAME OVER". The utter defeat on Joel and Nathaniel's face, the utter fascination on Jarret's.

It got dark pretty fast, as Tommy triumphantly demonstrates here, so we needed to head home. We needed to walk the entire vertical length of my map to get back to Nido, but we survived. How did we celebrate this miraculous feat without a death from exhaustion, a mugging, a pickpocketing, or a rape?

Pints at the Rocket, of course. Met up with some friends who came with us, met up with friends who didn't, met some new friends from NYU who were also staying at Nido...

...and this guy. For the life of me, I can't remember his name. No one seemed to either. I don't remember a lot of the things he said. All I know is that he's a Liverpool fan from Manchester who has two friends that he brought with him from Spain. An extraordinary social-butterfly. I think he hung out with us for a good 4 hours at the pub.

Some of us were slightly terrified of this man, but he loved us...for God knows what reason. We left the pub when the bartenders did, headed back to Nido, and the majority of us slept passed noon. All and all, a great night. The single greatest moment for me, however, was when we just stepped off the Blackfriar's Bridge and walked passed Fleet Street. We saw this on that famous stretch of road:

This is not a product of Photoshop or MSPaint. This is 100% real. There is a barber shop...above an eating establishment...on Fleet Street, London. When I saw this, I shat bricks. If you don't understand the significance of this, you have never seen the musical "Sweeney Todd"...and you should do so ASAP.

Wait...what's this? A picture of me? On my own blog? Absurd! Anyhoo, that's all I have for today. I'll keep the updates coming once I get them in my life.