London
I just (well, yesterday evening) came back from a 5 day trip to London. It was extremely spontaneous - I found out Tuesday that I was flying there on Sunday. Our English Department offers a theatre trip to London every spring, organized by my boss/thesis supervisor. This year the date was a bit unfortunate, in the middle of spring break, so he didn't manage to fill all twenty available places, and offered the three remaining ones (for free! they would have cost 300 Euros!) to his TAs/research assistants. I'd never say no to a cheap trip to London, so I went. Luckily I also knew many of the other people who went - the two girls I shared a room with at the hotel are good friends of mine, and there were the other TAs and some of my former tutorial students, so I had good company throughout and it was great fun.
On Sunday, after a terribly early flight and a terrible train ride to London from Stansted airport, I went over to Erin and Katy's place for a quick visit and a late breakfast and met some other fandom people and watched the penultimate episode of Blake's 7. Then I went to the hotel, met up with the other people, and we went on a walking tour of the city that ended in a visit to a pub - I've already forgotten what it was called, but it wasn't that great because it was full of drunk Russian rugby fans (of all things - I didn't even know there *were* Russian rugby fans!).
On Monday I went to the British library with my boss to get a reader's pass and then met up with one of my friends to visit the National Portrait Gallery (which is surprisingly interesting for a collection that consists entirely of portraits) and in the evening we went to the Bush Theatre to see We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury. This is a very recent play, and it started what turned out to be a common theme of all four plays that we saw. German history: it's a gift that keeps on giving. Namibia used to be a German colony. Germany wasn't nearly as successful at colonialism as England, Spain, Portugal or France, and as a consequence, its colonial history is usually forgotten and overshadowed by the two World Wars, but it is in fact every bit as bloody and horrible as the rest of it. In Namibia, the Germans first cooperated with the Herero and considered this tribe a model of perfection - and when the Herero stopped being colonial poster children at the beginning of the 20th century, the the Germans brutally killed most of the Herero by stealing all their cattle and driving them into the desert. In the play, which is about a rehearsal of a play (the eponymous "presentation" about the Herero) by some young black and white actors, one of the actor characters called the genocide of the Herero a "rehearsal of the holocaust". I'm not sure you can say that, because both genocides were singular events in history, but at the same time it is a connection you can't help but see once you learn more about it.
The play itself is excellent, because it plays with the conventions of theatre, and brilliantly tears down the fourth wall - not just between actors and audience, but between the play and the play within the play. The ending is deeply unsettling because after a brutal culmination of violence it ends with about five minutes of silence and the audience is left unsure if this is really it, which I thought was very well done.
Then on Tuesday we saw War Horse and amazingly, we had seats in the first row - I could touch the stage! This play is an exceptional visual spectacle, so this total immersion was magical. The horses, if you haven't seen them, are fully mechanical props moved by several actors/puppet players and it's incredible, but they look and move exactly like real horses but at the same time they look like these steampunky wooden automatons - I have never seen anything like it. War Horse, of course, is a play about WWI, so again there were evil Germans, but also a "one good German" type character (it is a ridiculously sentimal play, but I admit I did have tears in my eyes at some point - I mean, horses! my inner ten year old was spell-bound). After the show, some of us joked that there was a theme emerging, but we thought that was it, since the other two plays had nothing to do with Germany... but we were wrong.
On Wednesday, we saw The Weir by Conor McPherson. This play is more Irish than Ireland. It's a one-acter set in an Irish Pub. The stage was set up, rather hyperrealistically, as said pub, and the characters were all terribly Irish, and the whole play is about them drinking whiskey and beer and telling ghost and fairy stories - it was rather dire, to be honest, especially if you don't like realism very much, but we couldn't help but laugh. Now and then, the pub goers brought up "the Germans" - meaning all the tourists who come in the summer and cursing them for ruining their pub.
Still, the last play was the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Stephen Ward, and it had nothing to do with Germany. It's about a British political scandal in the 1960s, the Profumo affair - the war minister, Profumo, had an extramarital affair with a young girl, Christine Keeler, who also slept with a Russian spy. To cover up this affair, the conservative government at the time picked Stephen Ward, a successful osteopath, as the scapegoat and put him on trial for procuring and "immoral earnings" because Christine Keeler lived with him - false accusations, even though Ward led a wild life. The government faked some evidence, Ward was convicted and vilified by the press, and in the end committed suicide. This is a weird plot for a musical, but I thought it did work quite well - I hate sentimental musicals, or musicals that are only about the audiovisual spectacle, but Stephen Ward was more like a normal play with some singing and a rather black-and-white morality (the conservatives were all evil bastards and Ward the innocent victim), plus it passed the Bechdel test with flying colors. Critically, the musical was a flop (Webber's composing was uninspired and unoriginal) and it failed at the box office, too, but I was charmed by the leading man's performance - Stephen Ward came across as charming, graceful, slightly diabolic but at the same time strangely innocent and of course tragic, and his singing was lovely. However, our whole group pretty much face-palmed as soon as the show began: the very first scene begins with the curtain lifting to reveal Ward standing amidst some Madame Tussaud-style wax figures of historical villains - the acid bath killer, Jack the Ripper, Stalin... and wax figure Hitler. That was the only reference to Germany, but it was on the nose enough to leave a lasting impression.
Aside from theatre, we did the usual touristy stuff - various museums, a bit of shopping, Camden Market, pubs, food from all over the world... Two things that did stand out were our tour of the new BBC buildings near Oxford Circus. Compared to the old BBC, they were amazingly modern, and the tour had some fun interactive bits. Among other things, we could stage a radio play, which was really interesting. And the other cool thing was Westminster Abbey - my boss gave us this tip, so three of us went there in the afternoon on Wednesday and attended the Ash Wednesday Evensong service. Anglican services are really lovely, and of course the choir in Westminster is amazing. It was inspiring enough that although I didn't take part in communion and didn't go up front to be signed with ashes for lent (I'm not baptized, so I can't), I did go and get a blessing - it can't hurt, and it was a fascinating experience to take part in this sort of communal ritual in a foreign country.
To sum up, it was a lovely trip, all the more wonderful for being so unexpected :)
On Sunday, after a terribly early flight and a terrible train ride to London from Stansted airport, I went over to Erin and Katy's place for a quick visit and a late breakfast and met some other fandom people and watched the penultimate episode of Blake's 7. Then I went to the hotel, met up with the other people, and we went on a walking tour of the city that ended in a visit to a pub - I've already forgotten what it was called, but it wasn't that great because it was full of drunk Russian rugby fans (of all things - I didn't even know there *were* Russian rugby fans!).
On Monday I went to the British library with my boss to get a reader's pass and then met up with one of my friends to visit the National Portrait Gallery (which is surprisingly interesting for a collection that consists entirely of portraits) and in the evening we went to the Bush Theatre to see We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury. This is a very recent play, and it started what turned out to be a common theme of all four plays that we saw. German history: it's a gift that keeps on giving. Namibia used to be a German colony. Germany wasn't nearly as successful at colonialism as England, Spain, Portugal or France, and as a consequence, its colonial history is usually forgotten and overshadowed by the two World Wars, but it is in fact every bit as bloody and horrible as the rest of it. In Namibia, the Germans first cooperated with the Herero and considered this tribe a model of perfection - and when the Herero stopped being colonial poster children at the beginning of the 20th century, the the Germans brutally killed most of the Herero by stealing all their cattle and driving them into the desert. In the play, which is about a rehearsal of a play (the eponymous "presentation" about the Herero) by some young black and white actors, one of the actor characters called the genocide of the Herero a "rehearsal of the holocaust". I'm not sure you can say that, because both genocides were singular events in history, but at the same time it is a connection you can't help but see once you learn more about it.
The play itself is excellent, because it plays with the conventions of theatre, and brilliantly tears down the fourth wall - not just between actors and audience, but between the play and the play within the play. The ending is deeply unsettling because after a brutal culmination of violence it ends with about five minutes of silence and the audience is left unsure if this is really it, which I thought was very well done.
Then on Tuesday we saw War Horse and amazingly, we had seats in the first row - I could touch the stage! This play is an exceptional visual spectacle, so this total immersion was magical. The horses, if you haven't seen them, are fully mechanical props moved by several actors/puppet players and it's incredible, but they look and move exactly like real horses but at the same time they look like these steampunky wooden automatons - I have never seen anything like it. War Horse, of course, is a play about WWI, so again there were evil Germans, but also a "one good German" type character (it is a ridiculously sentimal play, but I admit I did have tears in my eyes at some point - I mean, horses! my inner ten year old was spell-bound). After the show, some of us joked that there was a theme emerging, but we thought that was it, since the other two plays had nothing to do with Germany... but we were wrong.
On Wednesday, we saw The Weir by Conor McPherson. This play is more Irish than Ireland. It's a one-acter set in an Irish Pub. The stage was set up, rather hyperrealistically, as said pub, and the characters were all terribly Irish, and the whole play is about them drinking whiskey and beer and telling ghost and fairy stories - it was rather dire, to be honest, especially if you don't like realism very much, but we couldn't help but laugh. Now and then, the pub goers brought up "the Germans" - meaning all the tourists who come in the summer and cursing them for ruining their pub.
Still, the last play was the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Stephen Ward, and it had nothing to do with Germany. It's about a British political scandal in the 1960s, the Profumo affair - the war minister, Profumo, had an extramarital affair with a young girl, Christine Keeler, who also slept with a Russian spy. To cover up this affair, the conservative government at the time picked Stephen Ward, a successful osteopath, as the scapegoat and put him on trial for procuring and "immoral earnings" because Christine Keeler lived with him - false accusations, even though Ward led a wild life. The government faked some evidence, Ward was convicted and vilified by the press, and in the end committed suicide. This is a weird plot for a musical, but I thought it did work quite well - I hate sentimental musicals, or musicals that are only about the audiovisual spectacle, but Stephen Ward was more like a normal play with some singing and a rather black-and-white morality (the conservatives were all evil bastards and Ward the innocent victim), plus it passed the Bechdel test with flying colors. Critically, the musical was a flop (Webber's composing was uninspired and unoriginal) and it failed at the box office, too, but I was charmed by the leading man's performance - Stephen Ward came across as charming, graceful, slightly diabolic but at the same time strangely innocent and of course tragic, and his singing was lovely. However, our whole group pretty much face-palmed as soon as the show began: the very first scene begins with the curtain lifting to reveal Ward standing amidst some Madame Tussaud-style wax figures of historical villains - the acid bath killer, Jack the Ripper, Stalin... and wax figure Hitler. That was the only reference to Germany, but it was on the nose enough to leave a lasting impression.
Aside from theatre, we did the usual touristy stuff - various museums, a bit of shopping, Camden Market, pubs, food from all over the world... Two things that did stand out were our tour of the new BBC buildings near Oxford Circus. Compared to the old BBC, they were amazingly modern, and the tour had some fun interactive bits. Among other things, we could stage a radio play, which was really interesting. And the other cool thing was Westminster Abbey - my boss gave us this tip, so three of us went there in the afternoon on Wednesday and attended the Ash Wednesday Evensong service. Anglican services are really lovely, and of course the choir in Westminster is amazing. It was inspiring enough that although I didn't take part in communion and didn't go up front to be signed with ashes for lent (I'm not baptized, so I can't), I did go and get a blessing - it can't hurt, and it was a fascinating experience to take part in this sort of communal ritual in a foreign country.
To sum up, it was a lovely trip, all the more wonderful for being so unexpected :)