A play and Kew Gardens

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On Wednesday I went to a play called "Tell Them That I am Young and Beautiful" in the Arcola Theatre. This place was really interesting to find and was in a part of London that I was not familiar with at all but was an adventure nevertheless. The theatre has two stages and the one that I was in is supposedly much bigger than the other. The audience is seated on wooden benches that have padded seating in an L-shape around the wood floored stage and the benches only go about four rows up. The actors are so close to you and there aren't many props or much stage decoration to help with the setting. This play had several different stories that were about greed, hospitality, sacrifice, love, knowledge, truth, and freedom. The stories were constantly changing so it would have been hard to constantly be changing sets and props. There was one particular actress that was really funny and her name was Kathryn Hunter. She has a really raspy voice and is so short that with the intimate setting of the theatre you can't help but laugh and cheer along with her in the different roles that she takes on. One of the things that surprised me though is because there was such an intimate setting between the actors and the audience is that the actors would often touch or include the audience in the play. During one story one audience member was to be milked by the actor as if he was a cow and another time a sip of wine was taken by a woman in the audience and kissed on the cheek. I'm just glad it wasn't me but the older lady was amused by it. Overall, it was a very amusing play and something I enjoyed very much.

On Friday the seventh there was a small group of students that went to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and it was spectacular! Something I would never have expected from a public garden area. There were plenty of outdoor gardens, greenhouses, conservatories, 17th century Kew Palace, Queen Charlottes cottage, and a small Japanese house. This was one of my most favorite attractions I have seen since I've been in London. There was a tree called a Wollemi Pine. Now usually you wouldn't think that a pine tree is all that spectacular but this is the oldest known fossil which is 90 million years old and was around when the dinosaurs were! It was found in Australia and only the few people that stumbled upon it in a forest know the actual location of them but they brought a tree back to reproduce and it's displayed in a cage in the Kew Garden. It was discovered in 1994 and is one of the worlds rarest trees. I also saw the worlds largest potted plant, the largest indoor plant, a lily house, a beautiful orchid display in the Princess of Wales greenhouse, and in one of the conservatories there was a mini aquarium exhibit of water life plants and had really pretty fish in it too. There was a conservatory with palm trees in it that were huge. What was great about these houses was they had beautiful winding white iron staircases that led you to a floor above that circled around the top of the greenhouse. These plants were so tall that they were touching the top of the Crystal Palace! The lily pad house was so beautiful to see a pond in the middle and lily pads and different types of lilies right in the middle of October. Something precious I never expected. To have experienced a the worlds most famous gardens that are 250 years old was breath taking and something that won't be forgotten.

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