Day 8: London- 2nd day of study tour

---

Day 8: London (2nd day of study tour) Royal Haymarket Theatre

This day was a great day. We met with the students for group breakfast and then headed off to our first Master Class of the trip. We went to the Royal Haymarket Theatre in the West End for a physical workshop. Yea to odd physical stuff!!! Right up both Adam and my alleys! We love the weird movement stuff. The people at this theatre we extremely professional, prepared, and friendly. The movement work itself is very similar to the styles that we use- but a little different so we all learned something. The students really got into the work and committed to everything the instructor asked. It was fun for me and Adam to be on the other side of things- as a participant in the workshop. We learned this style of the seven levels of energy - 1 being a slug not being able to move and going up to 7- where the energy is so high it is if there is a bomb in the room. The students really got into these exercises- so much so that through the rest of the trip we would use the terminology in both serious and joking situations. When in Stratford Adam said to the students “I need you to become a 1” and then all dropped to the floor- the lady there was a bit freaked out but we thought it was fun. We did some excericses with text, some improv’s and then a cool but weird thing that was about simplicity--- something we keep trying to get the students to understand. But it was a neat exercise with Yanni, Jay and Jory and 3 sticks. Simple and kind of beautiful in an odd way... That workshop was a huge success and would recommend it and go back again. Now we had free time. The students decided that they wanted to meet back at the hotel at 6:45 to walk back to the theatre as a group. So we went separate ways and planned to meet back up.. “planned” being the key work here… Some went shopping then to dinner- some went back to the hotel… adam and I had a quick bite at an outside reastaurant- non pub food! We got back to the hotel and showered and changed for the theatre and went to the lobby. The play started at 7:30. It takes a good half hour to walk to the theatre… Some students showed up and Adam headed over with them. I stayed behind for the stragglers. I also had the tickets…. To make a long story short some of the students went right to the theatre.. which of course I didn’t know cause we don’t have phones… I was in the hotel and had the guys banging on doors and calling room numbers and finally at 7:15 me, Brooks, Jay, Jory and Mike had to RUN to the theatre and we thought we were leaving the girls behind. We got there at 7:30, the girls were there, which of course I didn't know, but we made it just in time. In London they lock the doors at 7:30 so if you are late- you miss the show. We saw Maraguritte, a new musical. It took me about 20 minutes to get into the play because I was frustrated with the whole running to the theatre and almost missing the play thing. But I finally started to get into it. It is a new musical- with plans to go to Japan and then hopefully make it to New York… our verdict (students included) is that it most likely won’t make it to New York. The score needs to be worked on I think. It was not awful- but it also wasn’t Les Mis… It was a cool experience to see a play in the same theatre that we were in earlier that day and the play had a lot in it that we were able to talk to the students about. We were able to take what we experienced in the workshop and apply it to what we saw onstage. After the show we talked to the students for a bit and then parted ways again. We took Stephanie over to the Lamb and Flag pub and had a nice time.

---