Shakespeare and Grahame

I’m not quite sure what has happened in the last week. My last clear memory is of last Sunday when I had three delightful visitors—Justin, Alex 2 and Sara—Occidental College friends on their way to Amsterdam. We visited the Tate Modern museum and I got my first glimpse of the Thames, Big Ben, and the London Eye. I’ve never seen a city with so many landmarks not only within walking distance of each other but literally close enough to be captured in the same frame of a picture. After Sunday, everything begins to blur.

Almost everyday this week my presence was required at 9am at LDA and I was not released until 8pm. We’ve had a sampling of many of our classes: Historical dance (I’ve learned a Farandole, a Renaissance dance that requires a lot of running) Physical Theatre (contact games including looking into each others’ eyes and clapping, jumping, and falling to the floor at the same time) Movement (rolling around on the floor, handstands, running and lots of sweating). But, the majority of the week was spent on Shakespeare’s sonnets and the infamous LDA novel project. Our work on the sonnets involved a lovely old lady called Rosalind Knight telling me how to say my sonnet and why the way I was saying it was all wrong. “So, is it NOT with me, (pause) as with that Muse,/ stirred by a painted beauty to his verse./ Who heaven itself an ornament doth use—/and every fair with his fair doth rehearse.” For the novel project, our 20 students were split into 3 groups and each group was assigned about 5 pages from the novel The Wind in the Willows to present as a performance piece, the only rules being that the language must be clear and not a word from the original text could be added or removed. I’ve been embracing my inner Mole for 5 days now, and will continue to do so for the next two days until our final presentation on Sunday.
Tonight, mercifully, we were done at 5pm, so I’ve been doing all the important things I’ve neglected the past 5 days: cooking a meal that actually includes more than 1 food group, drinking cheap wine from Odd-Bins down the road, setting up a Blockbuster account and renting a movie, and of course, updating my blog. Back to LDA a 10am tomorrow, but for now, all is well.