Last Post from Inglaterra

So, I think this will most likely be my last post before I get back to Texas on Saturday. It's about noon on Thursday right now (just FYI, since I bet the time stamp on this thing is totally wrong right now) and I'm at the Shakespeare Institute Library. I just finished printing out my final paper, which I personally think is a pretty damn good paper. This worries me, since normally I think my papers are trash and Dr. C loves them. Now that I have actually written something I am really proud of I'm afraid she'll hate it. Haha. At any rate, I finished my paper before midnight last night and was really proud of myself for not procrastinating until the very last minute, as usual.

We have our scene showcase this afternoon, which hopefully will go well. I feel more or less prepared, and I'll just be happy to get it over with. Then tonight as our final outing we're seeing a production of Julius Caesar. I can't believe it is already my last night in Stratford. In some ways it's already so familiar that I feel like I've been living here much longer than three weeks, but in other ways I can't believe the trip is already over. I am hoping we'll all go out tonight together after the show, just a final hurrah sort of thing. Then tomorrow most of us are taking the 6:45 AM train to London (ugh!). We figured we'd go really early since a few people actually have flights to catch tomorrow and the rest of us want to spend a full day in London. Then a bunch of us are spending the night in a hotel near Heathrow and on Saturday morning at 8:30 I'll catch my plane home. I'm going to be so exhausted by the time I get home, but I'm okay with that. I'm unemployed at the moment since my job only exists during the school year, and will definitely be giving myself a few days to rest before starting the job hunt again.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot to say about the past couple of days. I spent most of my free time writing my paper. On Tuesday night we saw that production of R&J that I talked about, and it was definitely interesting. Visually it was beautiful, I think it was maybe my favorite lighting designs ever of all time. Conceptually, it didn't totally work. I did actually like the tap dance fighting (although some people in the group HATED it) but they did the show as a play-within-a-play and we were supposed to believe that this was feuding Sicilian mob families putting on the play of Romeo and Juliet as a sort of peace offering to each other...I don't know. It will definitely be a memorable production simply because it was so different, but overall it didn't work as well in practice as it must have worked in theory in the director's head. Flaws and all it was still a pretty good show. I'd say that of the 6 shows we've seen here so far, four of them were absolutely great and get an A+, Romeo and Juliet gets a B+, and Coriolanus just flat out failed. (P.S.-In our session with Jane the other day she asked what shows we'd seen and all of us bitched about how awful Coriolanus was. It was only later that Dr. C reminded us that she is the president of Friends of the Globe. Oops! The thing is, I don't feel too bad. If I were a major head honcho in something that was awful, I'd want to know what people actually thought about it so that I could improve it. Plus she seems like a pretty tough broad, so I think she can handle it).

Yesterday we had a Q&A with the assistant director of Romeo and Juliet, which was really cool for me because I'd love to do more directing and I liked talking to someone who is doing something I'd really like to do someday . She is only 26 years old. I WISH I could be ADing shows at the RSC at the age of 26. Then in the afternoon we had our final Renaissance dance class. I got to wear a period corset for a while so that we could do "bum roll lifts" as we learned the volta (I'm not even kidding, that's what the move is called). The Elizabethan corsets are surprisingly comfortable. They squeeze your ribs a bit and kind of block full breathing in your diaphragm but you can still breathe fully from your chest (which is where most people breathe anyway) and it doesn't cinch in your waist like those terrible Victorian monstrosities.

Last night we had free tickets to go to a poetry reading by Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of England. I have to admit that poetry is not really my thing. I don't dislike it. I love the sonnets and Pablo Neruda and a few other poets, but poetry on the whole is not something I study or read regularly or think about a whole lot. And I have to admit that even though he's the poet laureate I didn't know he existed until yesterday (actually, I have to admit that I don't even know who the poet laureate of the US is right now...I don't even know if I'm spelling laureate right). But the poetry reading was actually really enjoyable. He read a lot of his poetry and a bit from his autobiography and then answered questions from the audience. I only wish I hadn't had my final paper to finish writing because even though I was enjoying the reading I kept looking at the clock going, "Crap, it's already 9:15...how much longer is this going to be?"

So yeah. That's all I have to say. The next time you hear from me it will be when I'm back home with a cell phone I can actually use to make phone calls and my own internet connection! Yay! Can't wait to talk to you all and see what you've been up to the past three weeks.