A decent way to spend a dinner hour...
In my dinner house I have been to a tour of Leeds Grand Theatre! Heritage Open Days are next month but they've put some paid tours on in the run up to that. It was fascinating, especially as it's a Victorian theatre and the whole thing's a proper rabbit warren. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert came to visit the opening of the Town Hall in the 1850s and Prince Albert apparently asked where the nearest theatre was. Leeds didn't have a 'proper' one so they built it after that in order to raise the standards of Leeds. The stairs are really wide as the ladies wore massive dresses and people could show off the way up and down - the same reason that there are boxes, to show off. The proles used to sit in the stalls and the corridors up to the seating area are sloped. The corridor used to be tiled too so that they could easily be washed down after all the dirty people had left, the water running done the sloped hall and out on to the streets. The theatre itself is meant to look like a Faberge egg. I was disappointed to learn the chandelier at the very top of the roof comes down. Apparently, when the guy does tours with kids he gets so wonderful suggestions on how to clean it. Via jet pack and tight rope walker are especially good.
After that we went backstage to see the dressing rooms (not inside them though). There's a seat in the corridor for dressers and the less important actors have to sit upstairs. There's also a Victorian fire door which has a wire that melts when there's a fire, shutting the door. This goes with the sprinkler system which runs through the theatre, one of the first in Europe. Then we went on-stage! The whole of the stalls and the stage is raked and you don't realise how high up the whole thing goes until you go out to the back and find out that you're a whole floor up. Until a lift was built in 2007 men had to pull up the props boxes by hand! Mad. Then we went upstairs to the stage control place (fly?) which was nicely decoarted, including Claire Sweeny's knickers! At one time the theatre used to employ 20 sailors to raise the stage backdrops. The reason it's meant to be unlucky to whistle in the theatre is that that's how the sailors used to communicate so if you whistle you might get somebody to do something that you didn't want. Now it's done by two men. One to operate the computer and one as a 'spotter' who makes sure everything's ok. Problems have arisen with ballet dancers getting attached to the set as it's being lifted up...
The other bit we saw was where the old sets used to be painted. They don't do it any more as it's a receiving theatre only (it doesn't create its own performances). I'll put pictures on Facebook tonight. The one other thing of interest is the building exterior itself. The creators travelled all over and so got influences from Spain, France and Italy while also putting (much later on) a Pan head above the actor's entrance as Pan was the Greek God of theatre critics! All good stuff.
Yesterday I was trained on cataloguing at Bradford Uni Peace Library. It was a headache during my MSc and it's still a headache now. It's so difficult but I think that I got there in the end. I'm only doing journals at the moment. I assume I'll be able to do books at some point too. Hopefully soon! I'm hungry for more experience!
The only other things of note to mention is that we watched Educating Rita last night. It's a brilliant film and I found some of it quite moving for some reason. It was very interesting from a Literature graduate point of view and I thought that studying literature in such depth was useless as well. Ha. 'Go outside, make love...' - very true. Julie Walters and Michael Caine are so good in it and I'm glad that their resolutions were so not obvious. They weren't cut and dry.
Oh, I must mention finishing my book. It was Giles Brandryth's 'Oscar Wilde and The Ring Of Death'. Yes, I'm aware that that sentence makes no sense! But it was very well written and really interesting, especially if you know about Oscar himself. I've read up on his family afterwards His poor wife died after falling down the stairs at home. One of his children died in the First World War and the other became a translator for the BBC. Oscar Wilde has one descendant left living though, who writes biographies of him. Something which I find quite nice considering that after Oscar was jailed Constance attempted to completely cut him off from his children, even changing their surnames.
One last thing. Must mention the horrendous time we've been having at work. Yes, it's Debbie fun again. She'd had a meeting set to find out the verdict of her sacking/not sacking. I was on my own here on Tuesday so she was loitering enough as it was, telling me about her 'imminent' move to Orkney rather than just doing her work. Then yesterday when the meeting was due she was hanging around our side of the office saying how 'no-one likes to be made to feel useless at work', generally looking for sympathy. I can't give sympathy to her because the sickness record isn't because of her mental illness, it's stems from laziness so I don't bend at all. So later in the afternoon she sat at our block and started crying, saying how she was worried about losing her job. I couldn't take it any more so I'm ashamed to say that I ran off (but so did Eleanor!) and Louise was left to deal with it. I bought Louise a KitKat after because I felt guilty. I'm not paid for this! Anyway, she's back to normal today. She's even diagnosed herself with a new medical condition so she must be alright. When will it end?!
After that we went backstage to see the dressing rooms (not inside them though). There's a seat in the corridor for dressers and the less important actors have to sit upstairs. There's also a Victorian fire door which has a wire that melts when there's a fire, shutting the door. This goes with the sprinkler system which runs through the theatre, one of the first in Europe. Then we went on-stage! The whole of the stalls and the stage is raked and you don't realise how high up the whole thing goes until you go out to the back and find out that you're a whole floor up. Until a lift was built in 2007 men had to pull up the props boxes by hand! Mad. Then we went upstairs to the stage control place (fly?) which was nicely decoarted, including Claire Sweeny's knickers! At one time the theatre used to employ 20 sailors to raise the stage backdrops. The reason it's meant to be unlucky to whistle in the theatre is that that's how the sailors used to communicate so if you whistle you might get somebody to do something that you didn't want. Now it's done by two men. One to operate the computer and one as a 'spotter' who makes sure everything's ok. Problems have arisen with ballet dancers getting attached to the set as it's being lifted up...
The other bit we saw was where the old sets used to be painted. They don't do it any more as it's a receiving theatre only (it doesn't create its own performances). I'll put pictures on Facebook tonight. The one other thing of interest is the building exterior itself. The creators travelled all over and so got influences from Spain, France and Italy while also putting (much later on) a Pan head above the actor's entrance as Pan was the Greek God of theatre critics! All good stuff.
Yesterday I was trained on cataloguing at Bradford Uni Peace Library. It was a headache during my MSc and it's still a headache now. It's so difficult but I think that I got there in the end. I'm only doing journals at the moment. I assume I'll be able to do books at some point too. Hopefully soon! I'm hungry for more experience!
The only other things of note to mention is that we watched Educating Rita last night. It's a brilliant film and I found some of it quite moving for some reason. It was very interesting from a Literature graduate point of view and I thought that studying literature in such depth was useless as well. Ha. 'Go outside, make love...' - very true. Julie Walters and Michael Caine are so good in it and I'm glad that their resolutions were so not obvious. They weren't cut and dry.
Oh, I must mention finishing my book. It was Giles Brandryth's 'Oscar Wilde and The Ring Of Death'. Yes, I'm aware that that sentence makes no sense! But it was very well written and really interesting, especially if you know about Oscar himself. I've read up on his family afterwards His poor wife died after falling down the stairs at home. One of his children died in the First World War and the other became a translator for the BBC. Oscar Wilde has one descendant left living though, who writes biographies of him. Something which I find quite nice considering that after Oscar was jailed Constance attempted to completely cut him off from his children, even changing their surnames.
One last thing. Must mention the horrendous time we've been having at work. Yes, it's Debbie fun again. She'd had a meeting set to find out the verdict of her sacking/not sacking. I was on my own here on Tuesday so she was loitering enough as it was, telling me about her 'imminent' move to Orkney rather than just doing her work. Then yesterday when the meeting was due she was hanging around our side of the office saying how 'no-one likes to be made to feel useless at work', generally looking for sympathy. I can't give sympathy to her because the sickness record isn't because of her mental illness, it's stems from laziness so I don't bend at all. So later in the afternoon she sat at our block and started crying, saying how she was worried about losing her job. I couldn't take it any more so I'm ashamed to say that I ran off (but so did Eleanor!) and Louise was left to deal with it. I bought Louise a KitKat after because I felt guilty. I'm not paid for this! Anyway, she's back to normal today. She's even diagnosed herself with a new medical condition so she must be alright. When will it end?!