Shakespeare in London

I have so much to write about! First of all, things in London have calmed down considerably since Tuesday night - the news link on the BBC webpage has changed its name from "London riots" to "England riots" and, most tellingly, has moved down from the top featured link to the third link on the page, below news about England's test cricket match against India. Instead of seeing pictures of people smashing windows and setting things on fire, the news is showing "broom armies" of locals cleaning up. It's heartening to see the local response, especially after all the anger (of the rioters, of the people against the rioters, of the people against the police, etc...) that was so evident earlier. Around where I am, in central London, the only signs of what's been going on is an increased police presence, especially in tube and train stations, so everything feels quite safe.

I apologize for not having written at all yet about my Shakespeare class! We had our last class today, which was quite bittersweet. Luckily this course was in the same classroom as my previous course, the 8th floor room with an amazing view. I was sad to sit in class today knowing that was the last time I could listen to a lecture while looking at Tower Bridge or the Eye. This sessions class has been great fun. The first week we focused on Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus as an introduction to the context and setting for plays in the early modern time.

We went to see a production of Dr. Faustus at Shakespeare's Globe on a Wednesday afternoon and then were lucky enough to get a presentation from one of the scholars who works at the Globe as a researcher to help the director and cast understand the play. I wasn't a huge fan of Marlowe's text - though it was the quickest read of all the plays we read, I found it somewhat archaic - but I really enjoyed the production at the Globe. We had tickets in the yard, which are only £5, but that means you're standing for the entirety of the play. Despite my aching feet, I liked being so close to the stage (even if you're at the back of the yard, you can be within 15 feet of the actors depending on the stage set-up) and I thought the production was exciting and well-constructed. That first week we also took a quick trip to the National Portrait Gallery, to look at portraits for many early modern figures including Shakespeare, Tudor royalty, and other contemporary figures.

The second week we read Much Ado About Nothing, spending class time talking about gender in Shakespeare's plays and re-writing our own endings to the play. We had tickets to see a production of Much Ado in Shoreditch at the end of the week, but there's currently a production in London of Much Ado starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate (two of the stars of the tv show "Dr. Who") at Wyndhams Theatre that I had read about, so I decided to try to get tickets for that. I asked at the theatre and was told to come to the box office at 10am, at which point I could pick up a ticket for the lottery at 10:30am. Every day they draw lottery tickets to give away 20 premium seats for £10 each. They told me that they normally have about 40-50 people vying for the 20 tickets, so I wasn't too hopeful about my chances, but I headed down a Friday morning to give it a shot. I picked up my lottery ticket (then headed to Laduree for a delicious morning macaroon so if I didn't get my ticket the morning wouldn't be a complete bust), and when I went back at 10:30 my number was called! I got to see the production that evening, sitting in the third row on the aisle. I was very pleased with the play - David Tennant was hilarious as Benedick, and the 80s themed production was very fun! During the costume party, characters dressed up as Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, and Mario; later scenes, especially Claudio and Hero's "stag and hen" parties, reminded me strongly of the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo + Juliet. Overall, I found it an enjoyable and entertaining production. And thank goodness I went to see that show, since the production we went to go see for class (at the Courtyard Theatre in Shoreditch) was absolutely awful! The theatre was probably 90 degrees, which didn't help anything, and all the actors seemed to be under 25, which gave the production the feeling of a high school play. Benedick and Beatrice weren't a compelling couple in this production, and Claudio was almost abusive toward Hero. Most unfortunately, the setting was extremely dark and murky - completely opposite the tone of the play! Though the 3+ hour production was not my favorite, it reinforced for me just how much I liked the other production I had seen and reminded me how important performance is in how we appreciate Shakespeare's plays.

This past week we've spent looking at Richard III. Though quite long (it took me twice as long to read as I had expected), I liked the play, and I loved to production we saw. We were lucky enough to get tickets to Richard III at The Old Vic, a theatre just down the road from our apartments. I've wanted to see this show since I heard about it six weeks ago and after hearing several friends talking about how much they liked it and reading so many phenomenal reviews, I was so glad to finally be able to go! This production was directed by Sam Mendes and starred Kevin Spacey (the first time the two have worked together since they both won Oscars for American Beauty), and I thought it was a superb performance. Kevin Spacey was eerily creepy yet incredibly compelling, and the staging was quite inventive. Mendes did a great job of integrating the audience into the production, making us all feel a bit complicit in the tyrant's rise to power. Probably my favorite show I've seen in London! We also took a class trip to the Tower of London earlier in the week due to that location's prominence in Richard III as the site of the murders of Clarence and the

young princes. I haven't been to the Tower since I was little, and it was great to roam around

and imagine the play's characters imprisoned in those rooms. We also visited the Crown Jewels (which I found somewhat anti-climactic - hundreds of people in an incredibly long queue all funneling onto a moving walkway to be herded past the most valuable crowns), watched the beefeaters, and looked at lots of ornate old armor in the museum in the White Tower.

Though this class involved many more assignments than my Multicultural Literature course (one 2000-word essay for the first session vs. two 1500-word essays, a 2000-word presentation journal, and a 10-minute presentation for this course), I've actually really liked the work we've had to do! My first essay was a close reading of a scene in Much Ado and my second essay focused on the women in Richard III; my presentation this morning was on Shakespeare's sonnets (did you know that most of the sonnets, including "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", are written to a young man?). I find that writing about Shakespeare helps me engage with the text in a way I might not otherwise necessarily achieve. It's been recommended to me that I should post some of the work I do while I'm here, so perhaps I'll include a post with my close reading essay (I know I got a good mark on that one - everything else was just due today so I don't yet know how I did!).

I can't believe I'm leaving London in just a few days! It doesn't feel at all like I've been here a full six weeks. Life will be so different not walking across Waterloo Bridge every morning (check out the street view on Google Maps of Waterloo Bridge: look carefully and on one side of the bridge you'll see the Eye and Big Ben, look the other way to find St. Paul's - this was my walk to and from class every day!). I'm heading to New York on Sunday to apply in person at the UK Embassy for a different type of student visa - since my summer school course at King's and my year of studies at UCL were over four weeks apart, I've had huge nightmares with figuring out my visa situation. Cross your fingers for me next week in NYC and let's hope the UK Border Agency will let me back in the country. Because everything with visas has to be as difficult as possible, I can't come straight back to the UK from New York (I won't be allowed to re-enter the UK until at least August 26), so I'm planning on traveling around Europe for a while and after a few weeks returning to the UK and hopefully visiting some places outside of London. UCL starts up on September 26, but I'll definitely be back in London by September 16th to do my orientation through UCL and the company that's facilitating my study abroad (an American company called API). I am so glad that I'm coming back to London so soon and that I don't have to cram everything I want to do into my last few days here!

Still here!

I'm still here! I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while, and I figured I'd better post at least a little something now given the rioting and unrest in London. I don't know how much coverage the riots are getting internationally, but here it's pretty big news. Everything in central London around where I am has been perfectly fine but it's bizarre to me to see footage of cars burning and police in riot gear in places that I've visited so recently. I visited Brixton with my last class a few weeks ago, and I was just in Hackney a few days ago to watch bike polo (yes, bike polo), and neither place felt dangerous or unsafe when I was there. We talked for a few hours about the 1981 Brixton riots in my Multicultural Literature course last session and I wish we could discuss what's happening now in that class! I'm shocked by how many different locations keep appearing in the news. It seems to have spiraled so far away from the original peaceful protest in Tottenham a few nights ago to acts of random looting and violence. Hopefully things will start to resolve themselves soon. More to come (on hopefully happier topics!) soon.

Pub Quizzes and Afternoon Tea

I am so sad that my first three weeks in London are almost up! I received my timetable and reading list for my Shakespeare course today and though I'm extremely excited about starting that on Monday, I'm sad that all my new international friends are dispersing to all their home countries - we've had so many great discussions (in class and out) and fun nights out together. A few of the girls especially I've become quite close with, so hopefully I'll be able to visit them when I'm traveling in the time between when King's Summer School ends and UCL begins (Amsterdam and Vienna are now top of my list!). It's also going to be quite hard to switch from our fantastic classroom to a normal room - I'm completely spoiled with being able to see Tower Bridge and Big Ben for five hours of class each day. It turned out that this Multicultural London Literature course was pretty much the best course I could have asked for to start my time in London. We got to travel around the city to places I probably never would have visited by myself (Docklands, Brixton, the British Library) and trace the history of the city over the course of more than four centuries. At least I'm really excited about my next class (which includes trips to the National Portrait Gallery + Tower of London and three plays) so I'll be able to jump right in to something new.

I haven't been posting often because we've been doing so many things it's been hard to have time to sit and write it all down! Last Friday was an afternoon of firsts - the first time I had traditional afternoon English tea, the first time riding on the London Eye, and first time seeing someone actually slip on a banana peel (like chipmunks, which I had never seen until I went to school in Michigan, I thought that might be something one could only ever see in a cartoon). The banana peel was hilarious, the Eye exhilarating (I'm a little afraid of heights to I had to sit down in the middle of the capsule when we were on the very top - but the views were incredible), and the tea was absolutely scrumptious (thanks Donna!). Turns out 'clotted cream', which to me sounded like a horrible combination between cottage cheese and whipped cream, is a delicious topping for freshly baked scones and one of my new favorite food combinations.

Monday evening was another first - most of the girls in our class got together at a pub around the corner (the White Hart) and participated in their weekly pub quiz! We placed 7th (out of 7, shockingly) but enjoyed ourselves immensely nonetheless. The pub quiz host, a delightfully kooky lady named 'Bunnie', took pity on us and gave us some extra prizes at the end, including a bicycle horn and some small lightsaber-like contraptions that turned out to be 'bubble swords' (we only knew their name because, as we were blowing bubbles at passing taxis on the street outside the pub, disgruntled pub quiz participants who did not receive the same prizes walked by and exclaimed "Aw, how come WE didn't get bubble swords!"). With questions like "How many feet high is a regulation football (soccer) goal?" (8) and "What product is advertised by the tagline 'Reassuringly Expensive'?" (Stella Artois), we didn't feel too bad about our last place showing. Tomorrow evening is the King's Summer School Session 1 wrap-up event, another pub quiz at their student bar (The Waterfront, which overlooks the Thames). Given our vast amounts of practice regarding pub quizzes, I am hopeful for "Team Dorian's" chances tomorrow evening. Wish us luck!

Exploring

I have now been in London for 1 week, and what a week! On Wednesday, our class (which consists of about 13 students, all girls - I guess no "blokes", as our professor calls them, were interested in Multicultural London Literature) went to the Museum of London at the Docklands to look at the "London, Sugar and Slavery" exhibit. It was a fairly small museum but quite interesting , and included an "immersive" area called Sailortown that recreates what the streets would have looked like back when the docks were working and a section where members of the community responded with writing or art to the slavery exhibit. Thursday we took another trip to the Museum of London in Barbican, where we got a tour by one of the curators. The Museum of London in Barbican was absolutely fantastic, and as we didn't have any time to wander around by ourselves I can't wait to go back and spend some more time there. We visited the three galleries of modern London (1666-today) which are very interactive and tactile. I definitely want to check out those exhibits more as well as the galleries of earlier historical periods and the museum's current exhibition on London street photography. Our guide is also involved with curating the Dickens exhibit that will open in December, so I'm planning on visiting again in the winter when that opens. Being able to speak with one of the curators was a great experience - hearing him talk about why the exhibits were set up the way they were, what goes in to choosing what to display, and what kind of responses they get from visitors was a really different way of thinking about a trip to a museum!

Friday we didn't have any class, so I met up with a few of the girls from my course (two American girls, a girl from Austria, and two Dutch girls) to visit Westminster Abbey. It turned out to be incredibly crowded so we decided to come back another day and instead wandered down to Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Chinatown (where you can buy lychee, rambutan and even durian!). Yesterday we visited Notting Hill, where the market on Portobello Road was absolutely thronged with tourists. We walked around for quite a while and then made our way down to Kensington Gardens, which was a lovely bit of greenery after all the city walking we've been doing! We had some ice cream on the grass by Round Pond and napped in the sunshine - after the weather the past week I understand why all the Londoners go outside at even the slightest hint of sun. We spent the evening in Camden where we found a great little burger restaurant called Hache that was absolutely delicious.

Today we visited the Spitalfields market and the nearby Sunday Up Market (off of Brick Lane), which is a lovely little collection of shops and market stalls, especially after the crowds and obvious touristy feeling of Portobello Road yesterday. There was a great collection of food stalls from around the world: Ethiopian food, Spanish tapas, sushi, Indian curries, vats of paella, a stall selling oysters, and plenty of sweets. I'm definitely going to go back to buy both clothes and food - there was a really interesting vibe to the place and the food looked delectable.

Off to read now - we have to turn in a paper next Monday for our class on one of the texts on our primary reading list, so I'm trying to finish Heart of Darkness and Small Island so I can decide what to start writing about.

Photos

In addition to the photos I'm putting up on this blog, I'm putting up more photos on this Picasa site:

Roger M. Jones Journal

Enjoy!

First few days in London

I arrived in London on Sunday morning, bright and early. I was able to take the express train from the airport to Paddington Station, where I did not see any bears (though apparently there's a statue of Paddington Bear somewhere in the station - I'll have to go back and look for it!) I took a taxi cab (they're so much cooler here than American taxi cabs!) from Paddington to the Stamford Street apartments, where I'm staying during my courses at King's. Since I arrived about 9:30am and couldn't check in til after 2, I wandered towards the only thing I could identify from the street - the London Eye. I quickly found myself on the South Bank riverfront, with a gorgeous view of Big Ben. I spent the morning crisscrossing the Thames on several bridges and finding Trafalgar Square, St. Martin in the Fields (one of the few places I remember from visiting London when I was 8) and Villiers Street, where I got a taco for lunch (apparently tacos aren't the most popular food in London - the placemats had directions for how to correctly order and eat Mexican food!).

I was finally able to check in to my room after lunch, so I unpacked and got myself settled. Each set of 5 rooms shares a kitchen area with a microwave, stove and tea kettle (of course!), but unfortunately there are no pots or pans or cooking supplies! Our rooms have mini-fridges though, and there are a ton of places to get good little take-away meals plus quite a few supermarkets and pharmacies within walking distance.

Yesterday, I started my first course, Multicultural London Literature, after an introductory session and a tour of the King's Strand campus. I've been amazed by how great the location is - you can walk from campus to Fleet Street, Trafalgar Square, or Covent Garden within just a few minutes. And the view from our classroom, on the 8th floor of King's, is by far the best view I've ever had from a classroom - we look down directly on Somerset House (the building in the foreground of the photo) with the London Eye and Big Ben in the background! So far, the class has been really interesting. This week, we're looking at London as "the Imperial Metropolis," reading excerpts by Joseph Conrad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Olaudah Equiano, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens and examining their depictions of London from as early as 1787. Class consists of a lecture by our tutor, Dr. Dorian Hayes, every morning from 10-11, followed by class discussion of the lecture material until 12:30 or 1, lunch, then either a seminar from 2-4 (which involves close reading and discussion of the excerpts in our course reader) or a field trip. Tomorrow we go to the Museum in Docklands, Thursday to the Museum of London in Barbican, then next week the Black British and Caribbean collections at the British Library, the National Maritime museum in Greenwich, and finally the last week to the Black Cultural Archive in Kennington and Brixton.

It's been a whirlwind few days but I'm finally starting to settle in, despite the jetlag that keeps waking me up at 2am each morning, and I'm getting used to the idea that I'm living in London! I still get excited every time I see a double decker bus (I'm sure that will wear off soon - they are everywhere) or a telephone booth. There are all these little things to notice that just make me smile, like the fact that the break rooms (at least the ones on the 8th floor of King's) are called "tea points" or that my professor uses words like "chuffed". Though the first two days I was here were sunny and beautiful, it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week - but I guess that's all a part of the London experience. Until next time, cheers!

Off to London!

Hello!

I am Jessie Carr, the 2011-2012 recipient of the Roger M. Jones Fellowship. I graduated from UM this past April with my degree in biomedical engineering, and with this Fellowship I am off to London for the next year to study humanities! I am doing two separate programs: first 2 three-week sessions at King's College London over the summer (July 4 - August 12) and then the academic year (Sept 2011 - June 2012) at University College London (UCL). At King's I'll be focusing on English literature, taking "Multicultural London Literature" and "Shakespeare in London", while at UCL I'll be taking some classical studies courses ("Greek Myths" and "Greek Authors: Homer') and some literature-based (yet-to-be-determined) courses.

I am currently waiting for my flight (SFO to LHR!) to board. I should land in London Sunday morning at 7am London time, though I won't be able to get in to the dorm that I'm staying at until the afternoon. I'm hoping I'll be able to store my bags at the dorm and walk around London a bit to get a sense of things (and combat jetlag) before classes start on Monday, maybe try to get a mobile phone worked out, then unpack and set up my room a bit. Hopefully I'll get some sleep on the plane so I won't be completely exhausted by the time I get there!

My plan is to post about once a week, hopefully including some pictures (and possibly videos) of my adventures. I've really enjoyed reading past RMJ Fellows' blogs, and I'm excited to be finally writing one myself! Much more information to come...

P.S. Got some great views of the Golden Gate flying out of SFO this morning (yesterday morning? Can't keep the days straight right now). Thought I'd post one picture of home before I start with all the London pictures!