Day 11: 5th day of study tour

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Day 11: National Theatre Tour and King Lear at the Globe (5th day of study tour)

After group breakfast we headed to the National Theatre for our tour. It was a great tour. We got backstage of the three spaces and got to see the scene shop and prop shop. It is amazing the elements and space that that theatre has. The Olivier theatre, the largest of them all, was beautiful with it’s purple seats… but has the largest fly space that I have ever seen. It is so big that it can hold a double decker bus above the stage along with other drops. Then we went to the space where we had seen Afterlife the night before. The national theatre works in rep so Afterlife was not happening that night so we saw a different set on stage. What was even cooler was to see the set from Afterlife in storage. And this set was HUGE! Of course my favorite space was the small black box. The floor rises and falls so you can set up up like a proscenium with stadium seats or you can flatten the whole floor to have an arena theatre. The lady that ran the tour was efficient and extremely knowledgeable on the theatre spaces. We had some free time so Adam, Brooks, David, Mike and I went to Camden Market. It is a huge market and when you first get there you see all the freaks. Fun to see. We walked around a bit and then it started raining. After awhile we made our way back to the National Theatre for our workshop. This was a good workshop as well. The instructor was extremely personable and interesting. He communicated extremely well with the students. The students enjoyed the workshop as well. It was based on creating character based upon a real life person. The exercises were fun and useful- things we can bring back to the classroom and further explore. We had some more free time after the workshop and then we were meeting the students at the Globe to see King Lear. Some students went shopping, others went to eat, Adam and I went with a few students back to the hotel to clean up. We had planned on getting dinner but we ran out of time. We headed to the Globe and awaited the students arrival. Adam got hungry so him and Stephanie had a hot dog- the first and only hot dog of the trip. After everyone arrived we took our seats. The energy in that theatre in undescribale. The actors were moving through the space with instruments, playing music, getting everyone hyped up. Seeing a show at the Globe was definetly the best part of being in London. I wish we would have had better seats. Our view was completly obstructed so there was a lot of the play that we didn't actually see. But what we did see of it was phenomanal. The play was almost 4 hours long- no cuts- and the students were with it the whole time. There were times that they asked questions about what was going on but they were able to follow along and enjoy it. After the show Adam, Stephanie and I found a pub that was still serving food. We had some nasty bar food and took the rest back for the students and Anthony who arrived earlier that day but who skipped the show to sleep and get on a new schedule. It's our last night in London. Adam and I went back and packed. I was not upset at all about leaving the London hotel. The rooms were so small that we really couldn't be in the room at the same time. The shower had no pressure- smelled like pee- and only had hot water occasionally. I was looking forward to staying at the dorms in Scotland and just to get to Scotland! Onward! Oh- There are only 2 pictures from this day. We coulndn't take pictures of our activities today.

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