The Globe Mysteries, Imperial War Museum, Lunch in Kensington

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For theatre class all we do is take tours and see plays! Yesterday we took a tour of the Globe Theatre and later that night we saw a play called "The Globe Mysteries." The theatre that I visited isn't the original globe that Shakespeare wrote his plays in. It's actual a remake of what they think the globe used to look like. The stage is absolutely breathtaking. To the right and left of the stage are boxes that the elite sit in and there are murals that are painted in the background which is something I've never seen before. Right behind the stage is also a seating area. When Shakespeare had plays the richest people that were going to the theatre would sit in those areas. Although it isn't the best view of the play, they weren't there to watch the play but instead would want people to see and watch them. Now that area is used for the band to sit at. There also used to be only two exits and now there are way more. At one time the old Globe theatre used to seat around 3000 people, but most were standing. Now because of fire regulations there can only be 1500 people in the theatre, while 800 people are standing in front of the stage and the rest are seated on wooden benches or private boxes surrounding the stage. It's crazy because it seems as if barely 1500 people could fit in there, I can't even imagine 3000!

In the basement they had an exhibit about the globe, the plays produced, costumes used, and the person who built the globe. They also had some information displayed about how the plays were printed and the printing press. It was fascinating to see how they used to do the special effects. Blood effects would be done with sponges and sheep blood because it didn't clot as easily. They also had models of what the red light district of Shakespeare used to look like and how the original Globe Theatre looked like, or the best version of it.

In between the Globe tour and the play "The Globe Mysteries" I walked over to The Imperial War Museum. I love that all of the museums are free. You can just pop into one an hour before it closes and look at an exhibit at your leisure and come back the next day. There's no way you can get through half of the museums in London in one visit so you can go back whenever you want. This museum is a secret tucked away in London. It's spectacular and is very informative of a lot of different wars that not only London was involved in but their bigger exhibitions are ones that involve London. They had an entire floor and exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust. That's the one we visited because we did show up with only a little over an hour left until closing time. It was the best Holocaust exhibit I have ever seen. It was very informative about the prisoners, how it is believed to have started and also what was happening in Germany not only to the Jewish but also what was happening to the public. It took an hour to get through but was totally worth the time spent. I would probably not go through it again because it's a tad bit depressing although it is informative and interesting.

After finishing that exhibit we made our way back to the Globe Theatre for the play. I honestly didn't know what it was going to be about and thought it would be about the theatre and something along the line of it's mysteries. Oh boy was I way off track. Instead the play was about biblical stories from the Creation to the Last Judgement. I really enjoyed this play and it had some really humorous aspects to it. It opened my mind to new possibilities as to what the personalities of characters in the Bible might be like. Because they stayed true to how Shakespeare would have clothed his actors in modern fashion during his productions it shouldn’t have been any different for this play. In fact the modern wear added to the play and how it was pushing the boundaries rather than sticking to the stereotypical biblical scenes.

Today I decided to join a few friends for lunch in the park. The park in front of Kensington Palace that is. It's a huge park that's right in front of the palace that is open to the public. I never really realized how much I would miss my rottweiler Kyrie until I see other dogs around. The dogs around here are really well behaved. You see a lot of people have small dogs with them as they walk or run down the street and they stay right next to their side and don't sniff around other people a lot. While in the park I saw multiple dogs that weren't on leashes and stayed close to their owners while there were many people around eating lunch or exercising. But I will admit that it's hard to not want to pet other dogs which I'm not quite sure is acceptable in this country because dogs don't go up to you or venture far from their owners. Yet another thing that's different from the States.

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