Pieces of Eight

The things I get to do! My character, for our Mike Leigh project, is in a band with some of the other characters and our task this week was to write and rehearse a Christmas song, complete with dance routine. Somehow I managed to write some lyrics and music in a few hours and then we spent an afternoon choreographing a little performance. It was so ridiculous and so fun that I could hardly believe it was course work. Later in the week we came together with a few other characters to write a script and we performed our song for them. I think at that point we all realised this isn’t just a comedy... it’s a carry on.

My first visit to the University of London’s Senate House Library was great, and I got some useful resources for my research project on the visual effects in Jurassic Park. Our visit was scheduled on the morning of a teachers strike for pensions, so we had to cross a picket line to get in. Research is easier in a library. It’s an environment that encourages exploration, and plundering a pile of big books is so much more satisfying than scrolling through text on a computer screen. It’s also an impressive building with an interesting history. Apparently Hitler liked the look of it for his prospective headquarters and it’s supposed to have been the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.


Our Voice teacher dropped a very exciting bombshell this week. He works at Shakespeare’s Globe – the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original theatre – and for next term we are going to learn a Shakespeare monologue and give it from that stage! Just now my goal isn’t necessarily Shakespeare, or even theatre, but even so the thought still sends a little tingle down my spine.

I’m a jammy dodger. I slept in this Friday – for the first time so far, so that’s quite impressive – and woke up at nine. It just so happened that this was the morning an outside director (and therefore potential employer) was coming in for some practise auditions. I hurriedly got up and sprinted in. Had this been a normal class there was no way I would have been admitted. Even if we’re ten seconds late for a class then we have to miss the whole thing. However, because he was seeing each person individually, and I was halfway down the list, I made it with half an hour to spare! Ironically in Movement later that morning we were exploring different levels of tension and the circumstances our tutor used was sleeping in and running late. I had some recent experience to help me with that one!

Markoesa, my Dutch flatmate, introduced me to her traditional Winter holiday ‘Sinterklaas’. Prior to the Sinterklaas celebration on the Fifth of December everyone writes a little list of gifts they would like. Similar to a secret Santa everyone gets someone else’s list but nobody knows who has who. For that person a gift is bought or made, a short rhyming poem is written, and a surprise of some sort is prepared. Then at the celebration everyone receives their gift, poem and surprise (from Sinterklaas), eats lots of traditional food, and then can try and guess whom it was actually from. Markoesa and I did it once with our two flatmates and then again with almost our whole class. It was very fun and a great reminder to me that I’m living with, and working with, some very wonderful people. I’m praying that this Christmas they might come to understand why we give gifts...