Well, here I am, sitting at a picnic table I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be sitting at without buying anything, but it's right by the river and I can hear the music from the festival down the bank. So I'm staying, writing my post cards, blogging, and munching on the mixed dried fruit I bought at the Italian market stall. How come I always manage to find dried fruit?
Yep. I'm on my own. You know, it's not frightening at all. I guess I've never really had a problem being on my own or navigating cities or anything. But still. I'm getting along fine as far as eating and doing things goes, but being away from parental supervision is kind of different from being ON YOUR OWN. I'm having tons of fun, but it would be nice, in the future, to have someone with me just to with about what to do, where to go - and so, you know, I could talk to someone sometimes and I wouldn't look weird sitting by myself at a picnic table surrounded by families. But mostly it would be great so someone else could appreciate the things that happen - the coincidental, the accidental, the mistakes, the successes - with me.
Like, you know, the fact that I chose the three most perfect days to be in Statford of the whole entire year.
Seriously, I randomly happen to be here during the World Shakespeare Festival, the River Festival (sort of like Stratford's Jazz Fest), AND the passing through of the Olympic Torch! How the heck did that happen?
So today, I got here into town, looked at the River Festival, where countless men and women in some sort of traditional dress broke out accordions and started dancing, like, EVERYWHERE. And there's so many excellent food stalls and craft stalls. And there's music! And a miniature boat club! It's all quite adorable.
After that I went to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which sits right on the river, to attend the talk with the cast of Julius Caesar, which I will be seeing tonight. It was absolutely fascinating, especially from an actor's point of view, although I was the youngest one there by about fifty years. But still, the actors discussed some of their rehearsal questions and issues and it was all very literary and philosophical. It's an all-black cast, and they chose to set the play in Africa in the time of Nelson Mandela. They went through several monologues, including Cassius' and Brutus' famous speeches, and the scene between Caesar and his wife, each time repeating them in different styles to show the many layers they could have emphasized in different ways. In rehearsal, they had done a fascinating thing - go through the script line by line with someone other than the actor reading his part, and after each line, everyone except the actor discusses what the line means. Overall, it was an incredible little program, and I am so glad I did it. :)
Then I spent some more time walking around and eventually wound up at Shakespeare's grave in the Holy Trjnity Church. It was cool, I guess, though the most interesting part was the little statue his friends installed there after his death, which is supposed to be a good likeness and looks basically like the bald, mustachioed guy we all know and love. The funny thing (to me) was that the church (which is still a functioning congregation) has all these interpretations of Shakespeare's use of the Bible and Christian themes/images/values and how he was such a true believer. This made me laugh, not because it may not be true (how am I supposed to know that?) but because of the long discussions we had in Seeley's class about the doubts and speculation that Hamlet has about God and religion throughout the play. I personally don't think Hamlet (which is the example they used) is good proof that Shakespeare was a by-the-book Christian. The other thing that made me laugh was the description of Will's marriage to Anne Hathaway. They didn't shy away from the fact that she was three months pregnant when they hurriedly got married, but they followed that up with "The Shakespeare's remained a loving and faithful couple throughout their lives." I laughed aloud at that, mostly because it's complete BS. After Will moved to London , he hardly saw Anne at all, and there's lots of evidence that he had a lover or two in London. I mean, even if there wasn't evidence that their marriage didn't last, where is the evidence that it did? The answer: it doesn't exist.
So yeah, the church was cute, but their optimism was a little silly. But still. They had a lot of artifacts and information that I was glad to see, like the graves of the entire Shakespeare family, Will's baptism and death records, and the pool he was baptized in.
So then I came back down to the center of town, looked at the Festival some more, and got my lunch at the grocery store (my days of restaurant meals are over). Now I'm waiting for the play to start, but as I have a good five hours I might just go see Shakespeare's house.
Much, much later:
My god, there isn't enough colorful language to describe how exhausted I am right now. I have had a most ridiculously full day - quite possibly the fullest day I've ever had, certainly on this trip, and that's saying something.
After I left you before, I walked to the Shakespeare birthplace (after getting lost several times) and bought a ticket. The whole exhibit was pretty interesting, full of history and neat little presentations, like the one about Shakespeare's First Folio, which his friends published after his death, and is pretty much the only reason we remember his plays. Also, it's the most valuable book in the world. So that was cool. After that came the actual house, which was pretty much just a reeeeeally old house filled with reproduction furniture. It was interesting after seeing all the fancy houses and palaces in Europe to see a workman's house, complete with staff dressed in period clothing (who were quite knowledgeable!) and a couple of actors dramatizing various speeches and scenes in the garden. I also loved that they had the original windows, which are covered in graffiti dating back to the early 1800s, on display.
After that...uh...it's kind of a blur, really. I probably walked around looking for a bookstore I had found when I was lost, ate dinner at a baguette place, and wandered, waiting for the play. So we'll just skip to that.
They had this exhibit to look at while waiting for the house to open, called Of All the People in All the World. It was basically various statistics about humanity represented by 60 million grains of rice - one for each person living in the UK. It was fascinating. When you walk in, you are asked to take a grain of rice, I guess to make you feel insignificant as you see the gigantic piles laying around, all labeled "People who attended the official Dr Who convention" or "Number killed in Afghanistan by US soldiers" and stuff. The most striking thing to me was that the two largest piles, about equal in size, were "Millionaires in the world in 2011" and "Refugees in the world in 2011". Hm. Pretty enlightening. I've put some of them below so you can see.
Anyway, then the show. I was on the Upper Circle, the third tier above the stage. As soon as I sat down, I discovered why my ticket was so cheap: a structural bar ran right down the middle of my view of the stage. -_- But I managed to look around it, which is good, because the show was amazing! I'm not a big fan of Julius Caesar, or resetting Shakespeare plays to weird random time periods, but this really worked - like one of the actors had said this morning, " How could it have ever been set anywhere else?" It was very powerful, and of course the actors were amazing. There's just something about modern African culture, something about the ceremony and the colorful way of speaking, that really resonates with Ancient Rome. Add in the live African band playing on the stage, and it was flawless.
It was already pretty late when the play let out, about 9:30, but (idiotically) the bus didn't leave until 11:30. I thought about getting a taxi, but it looked like something was going on over at the River Festival and it wasn't dark yet, so I crossed the river to join in the locals' festivities.
A band was playing, the Texan Peacocks, who were most decidedly not Texan. They were, however, some sort of cover band, because they played lots of killers and some other well-known rock songs. People noshed and danced, and I joined in because it was fun. Of course everyone was drunk. After that there was a flotilla of boats that paraded down the river, all covered in Christmas lights and flashing. Some were quite spectacular. One, however, was adorable - instead of putting Christmas lights on their canoe, someone put a little tent on top with a light in it and sat making shadow puppets for the crowd. :) After that there were mildly pathetic but cute fireworks, and then I sat in McDobalds for a while waiting for the bus, trying to hide from the people who were cleaning up because I hadn't bought anything.
Then I finally got home after riding many miles with a bus full of drunk middle-aged people, and fell into bed. Now it's tomorrow, but I'm pretending it's still yesterday for the sake of this post.
PS - Sorry my pictures are crap. It takes so long and I'm sick of my pho e camera and Instagram. Uuuuuggh. -_-
PPS - ohmygoddavidtennantisabadass
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