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."
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