Failure

It makes you recognise what you really want.

I like failure. Failure gives me drive. It's grand to have a good dose of failure once in a while, to shake things up, make life worth living. For once you are able to see through clear, unbroken eyes.

More on this later...

Also, being the person someone else wants you to be out of the goodness of your heart (C, D).

Terminus

Today I went to see four shows. The first was Terminus, by Abbey Rd Theatre in Dublin, a series of haunting monologues on a fragmented, picture-framed stage. The performers were all great, hitting the verse and highlighting the poetry but the highlight for me was the male actor, he was just so calm and in control. He really delivered and demanded your attention, kept it quiet and controlled and really brought it. The next play I saw was Fall, commissioned by Traverse theatre company and a co-production with the RSC. Polished script and play but overlong and earnest. It was about politics and a post-apolcalyptic world (sort of) and it was just a bit dank and dark and 'tomorrow is another day!', you know, etc. Great actors though. Third play was Ruhe, which was a German co-production of men chorists and I'm tired so I'll continue this another day.

Edinburgh

Apologies for lack of communication of late, I got really busy in the last week and have been running around like mad. I will recap over that last week a bit later.

Am now in Edinburgh which is wet, wet, wet and am having a great time seeing shows even though most of my day seems to be taken up by being rejected by theatres. The shows I have seen have been awesome, the acting has been awesome, my friend lives in an awesome apartment and Edinburgh is just buzzing with people. Today I met up with Duncan a mate from Sydney and we went to see a show and stroked through the rain as best we could and tomorrow we're going to do more.

The first night I arrived I went to see Santogold, who is this awesome M.I.A. type chick who is just laid back and cool. She had these cool laid-back dancers who wore sunglasses and were completely focussed and in the zone. The next day, after being floored by my friend's really cool arty, old apartment, I went to see the first of my three shows for the day, The Angel and the Woodcutter, a Korean physical theatre/dance piece by the Cho-In theatre company which was phenomenal and so moving. This is the second piece of Korean physical theatre I have seen, the first being A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Sydney Festival last year, and I'm starting to think that the Koreans are really good at it. The story was of a mother and her son who went off to war, and the woman he falls in love with, but it was really incredible, a bit Brechtian, a bit Mother Courage. The intensity and focus and lightness that the actors had were incredible, and with a small cast of five and light and colourful music they made a really moving piece. I really liked their use of breath and how it energised the acting and the movement.

After The Angel and the Woodcutter I had a bit of a break then went to see Class Enemy, by Nigel Williams but re-interpreted and set in Sarajevo and performed in Bosnian. The transferring of the setting and the production was really great, it was a really great play, but there was something missing in the translation of it. The staging and the stage business were good and suited the play but it was like the actors were instructed to perform extra big because of the language difference, so there ended up being a lot of overly-large, forceful performances, I felt. There was only one guy who I felt was in it the whole time but overall there were some nice moments and performances. It's a great play, I didn't realise it until I sped-read through all the subtitles. A lot of old Edinburgh-y people left within the first ten minutes which was a shame because it was a really good play and just because it started with (a lot) of swear words and sexual references didn't mean that the play didn't have a lot of really good things to say.

After that I went with my friend and her boyfriend to watch some comedian perform but he was average.

This morning I had a shit of a time walking round and round in circles trying to find a play I wanted to see that wasn't sold out. In the end I caved and around about 4.30 went to see a play called Surviving Spike, which was about Spike Milligan and the woman who worked for him. It was really well produced, the production and the acting were great, but the storyline was a bit boring I thought. Seriously, it was just Spike Milligan and this lady bantering on until he died. I really can't stand sentimental biopic style pieces but the oldies loved it and it showed. Then later after dinner again I went to see a show with all LAMDA kids in it called Who's Afraid of Howling Wolf, which was phenomenal in terms of the acting and made me all inspired and want to get into that damn school so I can act and write again. I don't know, perhaps it was because it was in a black box theatre and performed by kids who were great, I just felt like it was all totally achievable. All the kids had a great natural style, with the main girl practically oozing sensuality it was all so hypnotizing, like a warm whisky. The script itself wasn't so amazing (it got a bit general towards the end; it was about a lost love), but the dialogue was snappy and witty and the LAMDA kids delivered with such sharpness and wit and focus (how I love theatre that is alive and breathing right in front of me!) that I thought to myself a) fuck, I've got to get into this school and b) fuck, I've got to start writing again and have it said by such talented people and create images with words and images for the stage. So then I went to see Showstopper! The Improvised Musical with Duncan and afterwards we sat and picked at it from an actor's point of view and then felt guilty because we were picking on them.

A few things about the Edinburgh festival: I haven't really described it here but the Edinburgh festival is amazing. It's something like nine festivals put altogether, and in terms of the Fringe itself, there are over 1,700 shows, all of which perform nearly every day. That means from 9am till 1am in the morning THERE ARE SHOWS STARTING EVERY FIVE MINUTES. That's right, you can watch a show every hour, so technically you can see at least eight shows a day if you're organised. The amount of people and art and craziness here is incredible. The other funny thing about the festival is that all the shows are done with the most incredible lighting and set and costume and acting and direction and so forth, but then they're done in the shittiest of venues. It's almost a shame really, because they deserve better venues than that but it's the festival and that's how it goes.

I have to say though, I had a really weird vibe from Edinburgh when I first arrived. First of all, I had just spent the evening with all my girlfriends that were left over from the course staying at my house (long story, but amusing!) plus my flatmates, then a couple hours later hopped on a plane and suddenly I was in Edinburgh. They still used the pound but it's a completely different country. And it was wet. Secondly, the moment I stepped into Edinburgh, I have had things break on me. First my computer crashed and as the Mac man told me I have to take it back to Australia. Then my beloved boots broke and I haven't been able to find a bootmaker (sniff!). Then, after all these weird things, I couldn't get into the spirit of the festival. Yes, I was seeing lots of amazing stuff, I was seeing three shows a day, which in itself is inspiring, and all really cool international and local stuff, but I wasn't feeling like it was sinking in, it was all just surface appreciation. I hadn't had a break since LAMDA and it felt like I just came to Edinburgh and continued working, seeing shows. It was only after watching the LAMDA show and then meeting up with Duncan for a drink and a show that I started to feel inspired and in the groove. And now that I've been inspired I feel like I can take on anything.

My friend is staying at her boyfriend's tonight so I get the double bed all to myself!

The Revenger's Tragedy

Okay, scratch everything I said the other day, scratch it, scratch it all!

Last night I went to see The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton at the National Theatre. This was the first piece of theatre off the West End and not Shakespeare (although he is Shakespeare's contemporary) that I was going to see and I was really yearning for some inspirational theatre. As soon as I walked into the theatre itself I was flabbergasted. Over 1150 seats! And completely full! On a Monday night! That alone was enough to dumb me, wriggling excitedly in my seat like a toddler and a Power Ranger. Then there was the stage itself. The set was split into three so that there were three faces, or three rooms, like in a pie. The stage rotated so that there was this constant flow between the rooms (when required). Frequently it was used to present a sort of rotating montage of action. An apron along the front allowed for more action to occur. The first room was a modest living room with a fireplace and a grey wall with a famous classic painting that whose author I can't remember on it, and a blank area for visual projections, the second was a grand room with renaissance paintings featuring as wallpaper, and the third another grand room with a red spandex couch in the middle of it. Between the three rooms there were corridors for characters to run around in, and the walls of these corridors/the stages themselves were slightly transparent, so that lights and action could be glimpsed behind them. Finally there was some space at the back behind the set that could be lit up for further action to take place.

Anyway, so I was still entranced by the size and the grandeur of the stage and the audience when the play exploded with colour and sound and movement and dance. This was everything Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air tried to be and failed so badly at. Dancers burst onto the stage, leaping and tumbling. Actors ran across the stage in modern day costume, a mixture of Baz Luhrmann R&J sophistication and a slicker, more muted, contemporary tone, with skinny jeans and angels wings and leopard skin and naked bush. A countertenor in tight jeans sang over house beats. The lighting ran red and bled across the stage. A girl was raped through roaring music, the stages swung, corruption hurtled through corridors. The play then opened with the main character ranting about the rape and death of his fiance, whom the Duke had murdered after she declined his attention, which, unlike the frigging ridiculous opening scene in Romeo and Juliet, made perfect sense because this rape was an actual scene, albeit unwritten, done though the chaos of music and dance and light, as a precursor to the text, rather than a vague attempt at representing the 'symbolism' and the 'themes' of the play. The opening was graphic (apparently the girl who got raped was completely naked), revolting, visceral and absolutely thrilling. What was also so great about this production was that although the play was set in the contemporary world, elements of the the play's original setting were still kept, for example, the actors walked around in modern day clothes but held swords on their hilts. This worked brilliantly because the world was a heightened, hyper-reality, and melded together perfectly the luscious 16th century style art and setting with the modern, PVC furniture and costuming. And the corruption and colour represented in the action and the design were a perfect rendering of the revenge at the centre of the play.

The acting - everyone was excellent, excellent, excellent. Man, I love British actors and their relish for words!!! Despite having performed this play every night for two months the energy remained fresh and specific. Words exploded from mouths, hands delved into flesh. The lead, Rory Kinnear, a very well-respected actor (only 30!) who has won lots of awards, and incidentally is a LAMDA boy, putted through his plosives as if he was spitting ping pong balls from his mouth (such energy!!). Jamie Parker (The History Boys) played the brother, and was recognisable by his gorgeous voice. I was sitting quite high up and I couldn't really see his face - but after a while I was like, hey...! But really, they were all so, so, good. And inspiring to see that the Duke's wife was of African descent, and that there was definitely scope for people of non-British ancestry to perform at the National Theatre in the classics. Every actor was so precise and sharp and connected with the text and each other - it was a brilliant connection of body and voice and words. The dancers, too, were equally brilliant - they were mixed in with the actors and were probably actors themselves - sweeping solo into a scene unnoticed, with flowing contemporary lines and dress or spun-out techno, or behind the back of the stage where only the clued in could notice. And the singing! Really, you can't get better, world-class performers than those at the National!

Now I've just got a few things to say about the director, Melly Still, an American born British director who used to be a choreographer and a designer...wow-a!! Melly Still is only in her 30s/40s, and this is her second production, but what a production! She not only has an exquisite eye for movement and design (obviously being able to do both), she has a unique understanding of the verbal and textual aspects of the play, as evidenced by her overall handling of the play (the luscious corruption of it design wise, and the movement and music to support that), but also her sense of the verse. Perhaps it was all the work of the actors, but although I missed some of the text (I was a bit tired and I was sitting quite far back), I still fully felt the revelations and the realisations of the main character and the consequences and tragedy of their actions. Likewise the revelations the characters made through their speech were simple and clear and touching, not arched or profound but straight and uncluttered. This, plus her handling of the visual, (and the puppetry...oh man, don't get me started on the amazing puppetry), makes me soo excited to be in London witnessing the flight of passionate, stirring and brilliant productions that are treading the boards right now.

Ohhhhh I just found out that Melly Still's partner is Tim Supple, which totally makes sense and blows me away! WOW-A!! What a power couple! That's insane! I was just thinking in my head that the only production that this betters is the Midsummer Night's Dream production I saw at the Sydney Festival, by Tim Supple, that was so visceral and life-changing and here I am watching the works of his partner/wife/girlfriend/whatever!!! Fucking-A, can you get a better combination than that?? If only I could share a partnership with someone as incredible as that! If only I could be tithe as good creatively as a quarter of that! (If only I had a man...but that's another story hehe).

Monday we also had stage combat and movement class, which were fantastic as always. Stage combat we learnt some more of the routine, which I have to say is so great because we learn the principles of attack and defense rather than just choreography. Movement was remarkably moving for me (haha, badoom, chk). I don't know what it was about that afternoon but for some reason I just felt incredibly settled, like I knew what I was doing and that I had been there before. I felt like I had been doing movement class for ages, I had been in this room for ages, that I was incredibly connected. Everything that Vince was saying or doing felt familiar and new at the same time. We went through the movement exercises and my body felt so free. Everything here is so fresh while at the same time being grounded in theory. Vince took us through Laban's eight actions, which I have done before (although it took me a while to realise that LA-ban was the same as La-BAN), but instead of making us run around the class 'slashing' everything, or 'punching' everything, he applied it to a short routine. That moment of taking something old and applying it in movement without having to thrash it out made me want to stay here. And so I went home and started going through my monologues again, ready for my audition on Wednesday.

*Note - I have once again broken up my post by heading off for a few days and then coming back...it is now Saturday, and I came back from Stratford-upon-Avon last night. So, onwards and upwards!

On Wednesday we headed to Stratford on the bus. I sat next to JB and it was just like a school trip, complete with Truth or Dare. When we arrived we were deposited at this rather nice hotel which was a surprise, and sent off to do a workshop with an ex-member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Then we pottered around and did some sightseeing until dinner (with the best banoffi cake I've ever had) and then to the theatre to see Hamlet.

Okay, so Hamlet: this production was widely anticipated by most of us mainly because it starred David Tennant and Patrick Stewart and I have to say it didn't disappoint! When we turned up to the theatre the line for returns (the run is sold out) went all the way outside the theatre and halfway down the street. When we entered the theatre the place was packed packed packed despite it being a Wednesday night. The stage was a thrust stage and the audience surrounded it on three sides on three levels. I hung my feet over the edge of the balcony and buzzled about with excitement!

The play was also set in contemporary land, although from the tiled stage and mirrored back wall, it was hard to tell where or when. The show started in complete darkness, with the stage being lit only by the strong torches the actors held. As the stage floor and the back wall were reflective, the light bounced off angles to light the actors' faces and the action. When the ghost came on he was merely lit by a soft spotlight and surrounded by dry ice that flowed from his jacket. The scene then burst into a flurry of paparazzi lights as Claudius and Gertrude retreated into the ballroom after their wedding, with Gertrude in the first of a series of beautiful silk gowns (she looked, initially, like Glenn Close in the Mel Gibson movie) and Hamlet standing like a silent bat broodily in the corner. From then on the play was a mix of contemporary references (David Tennant as Hamlet doing 'to be or not to be' in a red T-shirt with the outline of his muscles on it, jeans, and bare feet), and period references, for example, the use of swords, which jarred with the occasional use of handguns and helicopters.

Some stand out moments:

- When Polonius was hiding behind the 'arras' (ie. the silver rotating door panel things at the back), and Hamlet shot him, the lights went out, a shot lit up the room and when the lights went up again, the back mirror panel thing had cracked and stayed that way for the rest of the play.

- The Polonius death scene in general was great, with David Tennant pumping energy into Hamlet and against Gertrude the entire time. Gertrude was incredible.

- The interval: instead of cutting somewhere at the end of an act, the interval occurred just as Hamlet was about to kill Claudius, at 'I'll do it!'...Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! Some strange cuts, though, otherwise, in other places, lending to a bit of an odd feel. But everything about the whole play was so connected and paced well that it never felt like dragging, even though it was over three hours and forty-five minutes!

- Ophelia's mad scene, running around and skipping and screaming and pulling her clothes off. Nicely done and well tempered.

- The staging I thought was interesting...I don't know if it was because we were sitting above and therefore we could see the arrangement of bodies in space, whether they do this all the time or whether it was unique to Hamlet, but the actors kept making shapes with their bodies in the space ie. when there was a scene with several of them in it they would often fall into square shapes or triangle shapes. It gave the performance a nice spatial aestheticism and was very clean and went with the pace and the structure of the play. A small observation.

- When the players came out and re-inacted the Gonzalo story, instead of Claudius rising and screaming, 'give me some light!', Patrick Stewart muttered it softly, stood up, walked towards Hamlet, shook his head twice, and walked off. INTENSE.

- Instead of Gertrude drinking the poisoned cup unknowingly, when Claudius says, 'Do not drink,' she realises, and drinks it anyway.

- The duel at the end was a bit clumsy, with Laertes and Hamlet in fencing gear. A weird clash of periods.

The acting was incredible as usual (of course, with one LAMDA boy, playing Rosencrantz!). David Tennant was this incredible, lithe, tousle-haired, skinny, adolescent, Peter Pan-like (I stole this description from another review), wild-eyed, scruffy animal roaming around the stage and confounding Claudius in every way. He was certainly one of the funniest Hamlets I've ever seen. When David Tennant came out initially to say his 'too too sullied flesh' monologue he did the entire thing on his knees with his face to the floor and was still audible. He was incredible with the text, playing with the rhythm and extending it just till it flipped over and then allowing it to gallop again. As Hamlet, and probably with all his characters, he was so present, yet free and alive and flexible with his thin, lanky body. He was probably the first Hamlet I've ever watched so mesmerisedly, and probably the first Hamlet I've ever felt anything for, pandering well to the demands of the text but also giving Hamlet an emotional depth that was hard to resist feeling greatly for. He was a great clown, and probably could have used his energy to go even further into the character - but what a mesmerising, incredible actor. Patrick Stewart was also incredible, and made for a strong, scary Claudius. He was a very solid character, stiffly holding everything in, with this unreadable steel that was freaky as you couldn't tell what he was about to do. Polonius, played by Oliver Ford Davies, was the funniest, bumbliest Polonius I have ever seen, perfect to a T. And Ophelia, although she was a bit bland at the start, warmed up to become a riveting doomed heroine.

The Taming of the Shrew, on the other hand, which we watched on the second day, was not so good. It's such a shame, because it was like Romeo and Juliet in a way, in that it was obvious that the cast were incredibly, incredibly talented, much more so skilled than the Romeo and Juliet cast, world class, really. But even they couldn't rise above a crappily-executed director's conceit. The theme of the evening was that men dominated women, and in the end, was shown up by women anyway, but the way it was executed just didn't lend any empathy to any of the characters, and the director's hand was too dark and too forceful. As a result, or I'm assuming it was as a result, the acting was fine-tuned but demonstrative, and none of the actors were connected to the text or to each other. The scene where Petruchio and Kate banter was crude and crass. The director Conall Morrison has emphasised all the cruel, farcical elements of the play and none of its subtleties. It was good to see in terms of being able to see some fine actors at work, as well as some blind casting (although no LAMDA bodies...that was probably why it was shit) but otherwise I didn't find it a particularly satisfying production. So that evening we went clubbing in Stratford with all the A-level students to drown our woes ;)

On Friday we went to Warwick castle and pottered around for a few hours before coming back to London, and generally since then have been chilling and being a bum. Last night went to a pizzeria which I have to say was pretty orgasmic, (the ortolana pizza was divine) and then out to Old Street for a boogie (in Music Hall? Enio was put off by the indie music and the gay crowd but I loved it) and then spent two hours wandering around London at 2am trying to find another club, which is what always happens when we go out in London, until my friend needed to go to the toilet, so we all went home.

Some thoughts I wanted to mention about my classmates:

- M told me the other day while out clubbing, with her beautiful Italian accent, that I had 'sounds within my body.' Hehe, so cute!

- When we were mucking around doing the hand fish thing on the bus, JB said that we were 'making la poesie with hands.'

It's funny...despite all this theatre stuff which I'm loving, I'm missing film a lot. I do enjoy it and hope to have a career in it one day. I feel like there's something missing...

It is now Sunday...time for some study :)

Lots of leiblings

Hello meine leiblings!

Lots of things to talk about, lots of things to say. Right now I am lying prostrate on my bed, pretending I am a warm silk worm in my now-not-Marc-smelly room and imagining that I am still sleeping. Last night we went out to see a play and then went drinking in the gutter at Kings Cross (long story) and although I didn't actually drink I did go to bed quite late. So am pretending that I am still sleeping after my friend from highschool rang me about an hour ago and disrupted my beauty rest.

Okay so where to start...well just as an initial kick I remember the brilliant thing I was going to say in the last post. Although I have never regretted turning down Norway, I did initially regret not being able to have that travel experience, and to live in a dorm with a million different international students. What I didn't bank on, which is probably quite obvious throughout my posts, was the amount of international students that would be studying here, and how many of them would turn into my friends (a lot of them). I think by the very fact that I myself am 'international', I have ended up spending a lot of time with the other 'internationals' (ie. pretty much anyone who is not local, living in London), as, like the Norwegians in Oslo, the locals don't do the course or if they do, they're not particularly interested in meeting transient people. Which is fine by me, because it gives me a wealth of places to visit after the course (Rome, Venice, Paris, Madrid, Leipzig), and, well, Brits are boring anyway (kidding, kidding!). The only thing that concerns me is that I am not sure how much time I would have to travel afterwards, and that I really should be getting an idea of what the local people are like should I want to live here. But I figure that will come with time, and I already had a small taste of it before starting the course. I'm sure when the course ends and my flatmates come back I will work it out then too.

It's weird I have this complex over feeling comfortable around the right kinds of people. It's like I feel like I need to make sure I am comfortable with the local crew rather than the summer folks since they are the kind of people I'd be spending the rest of my time here with should I get in. Yet I don't want to miss out on all this summer school fun. Ah, shut up, me.

Okay, so, on Thursday I was less sick but more sick than I am now. Because I knew I was going to be spending my evening standing in a pit, I tried to conserve my energy and watched my classes instead. Voice with Lesac and the musical instruments is still a delight for me, I think it's so helpful to incorporate something so intellectual like phonetics (odd, I initially wrote physics instead of phonetics...oh my brain...!) with something physical, like pretending to play an instrument. So we filled a whole orchestra with the continuants/nasal sounds (M= viola, N= violin, NG= oboe), and then the semi-vowels (W=, R=, J=). As most of acting is anyway, the combination of the intellectual and the physical. Then on Friday we did improvisation and text, which was heaps of fun. In improvisation we were asked to write down some words that came to our head. Then Steve our teacher told us that these words were characteristics that would make up the character we would be playing as dating agency clients. We would each get one minute to pitch to the camera a sort of 'date me' advert that was natural and improvised. So my character was 42, a student of African dancing, a non-smoker, no kids, liked rap, was born in Townsville, enjoyed silk, steak and chips, Monica Belluci and Eastenders. The other thing we had to do was incorporate a verbal tic and a physical tic into our presentation, as well as inhabit the tempo of the breed of dog we had written down. So my character was as cruisy as a retriever, spun her pencil, and said 'cunt' a lot, while Rob's character coughed and said 'sorry' and was as keen as a beagle, and well, lord knows what some of the other dog breeds were! It made for a lot of crazy characters...but it was really interesting to concentrate on so many different things, especially the inner tempo, which made for a character and an inner life that would be quite different to my initial instinct. Then we had text and argued muchly about phrasing and where to breathe and whether the rhythm of the line should be broken up or not, or should the thought be preserved in a single gasp. Then in the evening we went to the theatre.

A side note: I really enjoy the rigour of study here in London. Already within the first few days I felt my body open up again and my mind ignite. Within two weeks I feel like I've been studying it forever. I came here to solidify what I had learnt already about Shakespeare, which was a lot and not a lot, and since I have been here I have felt my knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and text row dramatically. I knew certain things before but I know them more even solidly now, just in terms of understanding a text and how it sounds. Having listened to a great deal of Shakespeare in the past six months plus has been a tremendous help without me even realising it. Now that I watch plays and listen to the actors' voices I see what they are doing well and what they are missing. I have a better theoretical understanding of things now too. For example, in the past with Shakespeare, I would scan the text, but have no idea why I was doing it, nor could anybody tell me why I was doing it (most of all my teachers...isn't that strange??). Now I know that the text itself by saying it in rhythm with highlight the words I need to hit, that if the text goes off rhythm there are also things I need to hit, if there is assonance or alliterations there are a multitude of things I need to hit...It's like a dance or a song, it's music, this verse...one two three, HIT, one two three, HIT...it's great :) I'm really enjoying the relishing of it, holding words in my mouth like juicy plums. Of course, the American way, the method way, the filmic way or delivering a text is still behind it all, with the emotion and the feeling and everything, but this savouring of the text is beauty in its own right. Here, Shakespeare indicates all the emotions and feelings for you, just like a piece of music, and that alone is enough to colour the drama before getting into the objective and the intention of it. Obviously there is a great deal more I need to learn about Shakespeare, but already I feel like I have a grounding on which to build for the rest of my life.

You know what else I think is beautiful, actually, is just the motion of typing my words and feelings onto this keyboard...I'm listening to music at the same time and channelling my feelings into my fingers, which are flying as if they are on a piano...It's quite beautiful actually, the connection between my fingers and my heart. Liquid and pepperminty, banana skins and tea :)

Now, the productions...the past couple of days we've been to see a couple of Shakespeare productions here in London. Thursday night we went to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe. The Globe is a recreation of the theatre that Shakespeare used to play in in Stratford. This version is on the Thames and bright white and panelled with dark wood and full of tourists. Leipzig, Madrid and I stood in the pit, but in the interval we moved into the segment right in front of the stage, which was a VERY good idea. The show was a very traditional rendering of Shakespeare, with period costumes and musicians and everything that one would expect to find in the original court. The acting was played out a little bit to the audience, for example, a lot was made of the noise the planes flying overhead were making, but otherwise the performance was great, big and colourful and gaudy and everything a Shakespearean comedy should be. All the actors were so grounded but so big at the same time. And the energy! When the whole cast came out dressed as sprites singing and dancing in the round, it was magical. We were in a hurlyburly of giddiness and delight. It was VERY good. I was a little reserved about the acting and how I would fit into it but I'll get into that later. Afterwards we headed to The Anchor, with me swigging my way through my 1.5L bottle of water, and everyone else getting into a pint or two.

The other production I saw was Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air theatre, last night at Regents Park. This was an altogether very different production, although with the same level of production values and skill. The theatre was this beautiful open air theatre, bigger than the one they use for Shakespeare in the Park in New York. It was massive, this huge almost stadium sized theatre that fit as many if not more people in a typical West End Theatre. The stage was a wooden/brick contraption somewhat similar to the set for Mother Courage in Central Park and was well set up with lights and sound to project all the way to the back. The major disappointment for me here was that they put too much into the production aspect of the show and neglected the text and the connection with the audience/other actors. The theme of the performance was West Side Story meets Romeo and Juliet so there was a lot of hairspray and bomber jackets and all that going on. The problem was that it was very very stylised. There were all this great movement which wa very dramatic and I'm sure in the context of, I don't know, a very sexual, rompy West Side Story it would have it's place, but it was just too melodramatic and ungrounded in this text. The actors were all very good and skilled and I'm sure talented put in the right context but it was colourful and empty and hollow. Romeo was well-trained but badly cast - he spent all of this time during the balcony scene grinning his love to the audience; Juliet was physically perfect, dark and short and cute with big bangs - but spent most of her time 'sawing the air' with her hands and reaching for the audience up the back. The Friar was very good as was the Nurse - who, in a bout of colourblind casting/let's try and make the unimportant characters ethnic, was black - and I didn't mind Paris, who (and it's hard to tell with these Brits) was Indian or Latino or something. There was this random buxom woman who was very musical theatre and thrust herself about the stage without having an apparent character other than a harlot who made out voraciously with all the men - although she did sing very beautifully in the death scene. But once again, this beautiful, practised, performance was ruined by the fact that she started singing before Romeo and Juliet bloody died, so it was like a pre-emptive death, and everyone was standing around like soldiers in their blacks looking remarkably solemn, and Juliet hadn't even grabbed her gun yet (in an attempt to be like the movie Juliet shot herself in the head and forgot all her dying lines). It's hard to be critical of something that obviously had a lot of potential and spark and is obviously a well funded and professional, but there was absolutely nothing to grab onto. Occasionally there was some spark, especially when they left the actors to their devices and just allowed the text breathe, as in scenes between the friar and Romeo or the nurse and Juliet. There were some lovely moments when the words and the text hit home. But by golly, I was too busy giggling over the stylised sex scene to really care for any of the characters, as polished and presented as they were.

Now here is my gripe. I have duly enjoyed my time watching theatre here. London of course is the place to go for classical theatre. The productions are slick, the actors are sharp. But I feel like I have watched a lot of polished performances and not a lot of truth or reality. I haven't been moved by anything I've seen yet, bar one or two moments here and there. The Globe was great fun but I'm not sure if I want to perform traditional Shakespeare for tourists, nor do I think I will ever be cast to do so. The open air theatre was modern and fresh but overdone and disconnected. I have not yet seen any theatre that has moved me or made me think, or well, actually, the only thing that has, has been a bunch of construction workers banging on trash can lids. Do I want to train in a place that will give me a beautiful speaking voice and a lithe body, but ultimately no soul?

It's not like I have been totally uninspired. I have heard some beautiful voices and seen some wonderful bodies, but as yet I have not been hit in the gut with anything. I do have to make a sort of decision based on what I have seen here, because I don't want to spend three years training for an industry that I do not feel connected with. I feel that even though I felt I had no structure to hold onto in New York, I learnt so much there about being in the moment and motivation and how to affect the other person. There are still scenes that my classmates did that I can recall vividly in my mind, scenes and moments that moved and tickled me. Here the focus is on the technical aspects of acting - the language, the text, the physical language of the time, all of which is good and what I was looking for, but I still feel as if there is something missing. Although having said all that perhaps I don't need the action/objective part since I kind of already know most of it and working with my scene partner is a breeze because he's a working actor and he knows it too. So maybe it's not that big of a deal. And not being inspired viscerally here doesn't mean it's not worth being here - I can learn all the technical aspects and then go away and infuse it with charged stuff later. And it's not like they're completely dead or anything, those moments of truth are still there. I think it's probably accepted that you know how to act, and they're just feeding you the skills to act Shakespeare. But other than the excitement of all the technical stuff, I need to find some inspiration here.

*A side note - since this post is so long, I started yesterday (ie. Saturday) and it is now Sunday. So just move my last nights to two nights ago and so forth!

**Another side note - since yesterday I received an email from a friend of mine who said of course you can come and stay on my couch in Edinburgh during the festival so I might end up being inspired after all! Edinburgh International Festival here I come!!

I have forgotten most of what I wanted to say yesterday?

Intimidation: a small side step I wanted to talk about. I too no longer feel intimidated by ambitious boys anymore. No, scratch that, I felt slightly intimidated when I met one of the boys in my Shakespeare class for the first time because he said he wanted to get into LAMDA and I was like, ahheeek, so do I, don't freak me out. I think I get freaked out by ambitious boys, or at least ones that I know I am in the running with because I feel like I am on par with them, and good boys are always more likely to get into drama school than good girls, purely by the nature of the industry. But I think intimidation is an indicator of how confident you are. When someone else is confident, it throws your own self-worth out a little bit because you have to be able to hold up to that confidence. So obviously in meeting this boy I was not certain of my own ability. After a while when you get to know them you lose that initial fear but they are still your competition. But at the end of the day you can only control what you are capable of and need to focus on that. I don't get intimidated by actors so much any more, well, I do a little but increasingly less. I think I feel competitive with ambitious boys because they are the epitome of success, if you are going to be a success in this world, and probably most worlds, you are going to be a boy. On the other hand I haven't met that many ambitious girls? And if I do I feel a comradeness with them because as females we all share the same fears and considerations. Ambitious boys don't have anything holding them back, they are pure fire and passion and will stop at nothing to get what they want. And we ambitious girls want to be on par. Stuff all that family and getting married shit, we want to be with the big guns! But at the same time there is that family etc thing at the back of our minds...

Anyway this sort of brings me to another brief thing I wanted to say about study versus work...I was talking to some of my classmates last night, my lovely Italians and we were all lamenting the lack of men in our lives...Maria is in her late 20s, beautiful, and studying acting in Venice. What to do when you're nearing baby age and you're still studying and getting about? I was looking through my emails yesterday and noting the work that other people are doing. As much as I love all this study I do feel like I've got to get a move on with my life somehow. I'm 24 and still living at home! I haven't even started really banging out a career yet! I haven't got any professional credits, I want to work in New York and London and I haven't even done the industry in Australia yet...in a way I wish I could go straight into work right now. There is time for study and contemplation later, right now I feel like if someone offered me an acting job in film or TV I would take it. I am undecided about whether I want to work in the theatre in London, I think they're all very skilled but what space is there for me? So far everything is hollow and shiny and beautiful. Theatre here reminds me of those porcelain/china dolls, the ones that you get at Wedgwood or something, these beautiful pastel, glazed, watercoloured women that gleam like milk but are ultimately hollow inside. I want to be a creative being, I want to write and tell stories and move people and I don't feel like I'm doing that.

I have more to say but I'll leave it for now...gotta get ready to host our barbie tonight! x