Playing Shakespearean Actor for a Day, and a Trip to The Most Magical Place in England

First note: Kindly ignore the fact that the first picture here is from January 2009. I didn't have my camera with me on Monday.

Monday morning, the Shakespeare Literature class did not meet in our usual classroom at 6 Great James Street. Admittedly, there is a group from UW who has commandeered our usual classroom for the quarter, but all the same. We did not meet at the AHA building at 6 Great James Street.

Instead, everybody trooped across the Thames and met up in a Starbucks located on the South Bank, just outside the only building in London with a thatched roof. Class was held at Shakespeare's Globe.

The class was then guided on a tour of the theatre (a reproduction of the re-built theatre, as the company burnt down the original theater during a production of Henry the VIII 400 years ago) by an incredibly cool British actor named Mike. Mike told us about the original theater (which was built on the south bank, as that was outside London city limits in the 17th century and therefore outside the Puritans' rule, and the Puritans hated theatre), as well as about the rebuilt version of the theatre (which is barely 10 years old, was built by an American, and features several paved stones with donor names outside it, including a Monty Python joke: John Cleese bought a stone from Michael Palin for the sole purpose of getting Palin's name mis-spelled on the stone as "Michael Pallin".) The reproduction of The Globe is the only building in London with a thatch roof, because Mr. America was so gung-ho about making the building accurate, that he got special permission from the city to use a thatch roof, despite an ordinance stating that no building may have a thatch roof in the city of London, dating back to the 13th century. The reproduction has extremely Elizabethan sprinklers along the top of the roof as a cautionary guard for the canon scene in Henry VIII productions.

After our guided tour inside and outside of the theatre, Mike took us to a large rec room, where he then led the class in a theatre workshop. This class was a ton of fun; for the first activity, we were split in to two teams. My team was Scotland, and we were having a battle with Norway (from the opening scene of Macbeth, which we will be seeing in Straford-upon-Avon next weekend for Shakespeare's birthday). Everyone's index finger was their sword, and their other hand was placed behind their back as their heart. If you got stabbed in the heart, you died. By the end of the battle, we had encountered many dramatic deaths and most of the floor was covered in dead bodies. Seven of us remained standing; myself and two other Scots, and four Norskis. Unfortunately, unlike the opening scene of Macbeth, Scotland was defeated. Regardless, it was ridiculous amounts of fun to run around yelling and screaming and charging the other team like a group of 6 year olds at recess!

During another exercise, my partner Annie and I were made in to an example. The good kind! We were interpreting an interaction between Macbeth and Banquo, and Mike liked what we did with our lines. So he asked us to present to the rest of the class, which we obligingly did. So good news, Annie and I received a gold star in theatre workshop!

Today, Annie and I had most of the day wide open to us, and the weather was fantastic. So we decided to enjoy the weather. We met up in St. James' Park, where we enjoyed some delicious hot dogs and sat by the river, watching the swans and geese and ducks. Signs along the water encourage feeding the birds, but other signs also request people to not feed the pelicans. I was highly disturbed by this blatant display of bird segregation, and so we left the park.

Next stop was Harrods. We had some difficulty finding Harrods, which led to us strolling around Victoria (for the record, Harrods is not in Victoria, it is in South Kensington/Knightsbridge area) for a while. It was a nice little stroll, and we found a very lovely (and probably ridiculously expensive) housing area. After walking all the way back to Westminster, Annie remembered that Harrods was near the V&A Museum, and so we hopped on the Tube to South Kengsington.

Sure enough, we found the store. Before going in, we walked along two sides of the store, admiring the window displays. They are absolutely insane! Each and every window is elaborately decorated with some theme. That store is LINED with windows! Then we popped inside the store, where we promptly got lost inside the mammoth of a store. I genuinely felt like a kid at Disneyland for the first time. I turned to Annie and said "Annie. We're in Harrods." And then I suppressed a squeal.

We most certainly are going back THERE.

We finished off the day by popping in to a little cafe next to Harrods which had the most fabulous cakes in the window, where we enjoyed milkshakes. All in all, it was a very wonderful day; and the week is only beginning!