Built to Roam

Once again I find myself with a long gap between this post and my last. As such, please imagine the following interstitial narrative being delivered by Westbrook Van Voorhis:

When we last left our (anti-)heroine Repocket Pingree the first, B. Cumberbatch was about to give his penultimate evening performance as Hamlet. (Two sentence review: Yes. Cumberbatch is every bit as mesmerising a performer as one could wish, and being ten feet away from the opening action of the show is a feeling our Repocket will surely never forget.) Over the following two weeks, she completed and submitted her final MA thesis paper on Western Bunraku Puppetry, and only a few days after that, spent the weekend in Leicester, performing in the world's quickest theatre festival.

At which point, in rapid succession, she moved out of her London digs, flew home to the Bay in time for the Memorial Service of her beloved Grandma Virginia, and spent a wonderful winter holiday jam-packed with family, friends, theatergoing, auditions, and looking after an awesome dog named Maggie, at which point she temporarily moved to Italy.

No freaking way.

Right. So. Now is probably as good a time as any to explain that I've managed to extend my studies abroad to include three months training with a program called ATELIER in Tuscany. It's an opportunity for which I must, once again, thank my trusty Circus Boys, for pointing me firmly in the direction of Matteo Destro, an expert movement theatre maker, teacher, and director, who is also a master mask maker. Because I am, perhaps, the luckiest girl ever to live, the timing worked out such that I was invited to join the inaugural class of the Mask Movement Theatre program in San Miniato Alto and the dates fell in exactly the right place to enable my attendance. I'll go into more detail about the program itself and why it is rad beyond belief in future posts, but for now let me briefly break down the current awesomeness that is my life.

1) Location location location.

This is the Palazzo Ceccherelli. A legit 15th Century palace. Also, my front door.

I have a studio apartment in a palace, guys. Whose life is this, anyway?

Pay no attention, it's only the view from the balcony. Holy S#%&balls.

The stairwell is full of beautiful old screens, one even had a bird for Mama. (Hi Mom!)

Also, the neighborhood is pretty okay:

Random window. I have no idea.

So, yeah. Magical setting? Check. 

2) My comrades. 

There are ten students: from the U.S. myself (CA), Paige (CO), Joe, Brian, Rachel (NY, via Chicago, IL), Frieda (CA, via France), Beth from Australia, Richard from England, Andreas from Sweden, and Piotr from Poland. I already cannot imagine my life without each member of our new ensemble, and I'm consistently confounded by everyone's talent and intelligence, moved by everyone's generosity, and reduced to tears by their sheer hilariousness. 

In which Joe attempts to find homes for the orphans at the laundromat...

There's also so much I can learn from this group outside of our actual classes, easiest example being that some form of music jamming happens virtually every night. The following video is of an impromptu song we recorded two nights ago for Paige's dad's birthday. Left to right is Richard, Brian (in the back), Piotr (in a blanket, our heating issues have since been resolved, huzzah), myself, and Paige. Shout out to Beth, who can operate a camera amazingly steadily and silently given that she was totally cracking up...

Not a flawless rendition, by any stretch, but I think the heart comes through. I'm excited to see where we can take future musical collaborations.

 3) The faculty.

Our "pedagogic knights" (Beth's joke, may only be funny to us), are Matteo Destro, Paola Coletto, Ned Brauer, and Alay Arzelus Makazaga all of whom studied with École International Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq when Lecoq himself was still teaching. Their extreme expertise, clarity of purpose, and unflinching candour are matched with remarkable kindness and wry humor at all times.

Like I was saying, lucky.

Matteo and Paula wearing each others glasses at lunch. These guys are wildly formidable badasses, people, and they are this cute ALL THE TIME. Killing me with win.

4) The work.

Our mornings are spent learning techniques of physical theatre, and developing our skills playing masks. This week was Neutral Masks, next week we'll add playing Larval Masks. No photos of the work itself yet, but hopefully soon. Suffice it to say the work is humbling, inspiring, and extraordinary.

Our afternoons are mostly spent in the Atelier with Matteo, learning the art and craft of Maskmaking. We began last week studying the evolution of simple shapes...

Don't ask me what they are evolving into, it's a mystery.

 And simple faces...

My first little dudes in clay.

 And now we're casting each others faces to make our first full masks starting next week. Shabam.

Richard, mid-facecasting. The plaster makes each person's unique facial structure apparent. Love.

5) The reason I won't talk about again, but that's a big deal for me right now: Value for $. The ATELIER tuition price is less than one seventh of my MA tuition but is more than half the total taught hours of the same MA program (that's not taking into account that ATELIER has a stronger instructor/student ratio at almost all times and is better organized). My studio apartment in a palace costs much less than my super rent-controlled bedroom in Berkeley, and is one third the price of my room in zone 2 in London (all credit to Matteo as our amazing housing advocate, he is a miracle worker in more ways than one). Basically, theatre friends, this is the program you've been looking for. Come next year if you possibly can.

So, that's me. So SO freaking grateful to be here right now. Many thanks to my beloved Circus Boys, Peter and David, what an absurd bonus result to come of knowing people who are really already awesome enough. Incidentally, their brilliant original mask and circus show BOOM! (directed by Matteo Destro) plays Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley TONIGHT! If you are in the Bay Area and can make it happen you won't be sorry. Circus Boys rule.

That's all I have time for right this minute, but there will be more whenever I can tear myself away from all this learning. Ciao for now!

I feel strangely vindicated

I was about twenty feet from Tom Stoppard, when he was asked why, as Britains greatest living playwright, he waited nine years to write and premier his most recent play. His answer was long, smart, hilarious, and charming, and in the end he said "I didn't wait. I procrastinated." 

He was wearing burgundy and cream striped socks, he fessed up to procrastinating, and he wrote Arcadia. 

I'm done.

No, really, I'm not done. I'm on the bus now, en route to see Theatre de la Ville-Paris' touring production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. T'will be me first time seeing Pirandello staged, and a free ticket to boot. Le score.

Of course, I've only just left the Stoppard talk at the National, where I had a front-row-dead-center seat listening to Tom-motherloving-Stoppard, plus the endlessly delightful company of Alona Bach, with whom I shared a delicious post-talk Punschrulle and a pretty decent Plentille. Just sayin': the Frenchies will definitely have to pull out all the stops if they want to snag the "highlight of my evening" title. 

But, I mean, word on the street is they are badasses, so who knows.

Go Frenchies go.

Oy

Well, good thing I didn't get too carried away. FA's Othello was visually stunning, full of exciting choreographic moments, and, as soon as they started talking, it was like :-(

Boring.

Granted, I am an unabashed Shakespeare nerd, so my bar is high and all, but when  people are speaking Shakespeare's text and I find myself longing for them to stop talking and go back to dancing, there may be a problem.

Still, a really exciting night of Shakespeare-inspired dance, with the unexpectedly GLORIOUS boon of running into the lovely director M. Graham Smith. He's on a brief hiatus from teaching in Barcelona and will return home to SF in February. We had a delightful drink trading stories and then took the tube together most of the way home. Serendipity never ceases to amaze me. 

Flash forward to this morning, Niall (my flatmate) made crazy Mexican-Benedict-Burrito-Bizarre Deliciousness and ran off to the football game (the one with the round ball) and I'm off to the Clapton library to whip my research paper into shape. I'm armed with a latte and a bear hat. Necessity of Co-Bodily Presence here I come. Watch out.

Not pictured: Swedish marzipan roll.
...
It's serious homework, people. Desperate times and all that.

Differences

I'm sitting in the Lyric Hammersmith, waiting for the show to start. Frantic Assembly's adaptation of Othello. For all you San Franciscans, the Lyric is like an intimate version of ACT. Still pretty epic tho. Check it:

The word on the street is that most of the show takes place on that billiard table. No joke.

Yes yes my photos are awful. but you get what I'm driving at.

So here's the thing:

It's a sold out house, packed with HS and College kids. On Friday night. 

They are abuzz with anticipation. 

To see Othello.

Sexy Othello. But still.

I got the absolute last seat available in the orchestra and spent £30, the most I've spent yet on a ticket here, but still less than half what I would spend to see a comparable cast, with comparable production values, in a comparable venue in the Bay Area.

I think London may know a thing or two we don't.

Here we go. Let's see how they do...

Fire at will

You may remember me saying that I have decided to do all of the things. In the case of the past three weeks doing "all the things" has meant not writing blog posts.

Sorry about that.

So let me try, as quickly as possible, to catch you up on all the things.

For starters, of course, I have been taking many classes, from many really cool cats: Niamh Dowling (Movement, Alexander Technique), Bea Pemberton (Neutral Mask, Mime, Physical Games), Rebecca Pollack & Luis Campos (Theatrical Research & Writing), Irina Brown (Narrative Structures & Script Analysis), Gabriel Gawin (I dunno, cool ensemble theatre movement shit. Probably my fave, if I'm honest).

I spent a weekend in Bristol, with my classmate Charlotte, in order to see a Kneehigh show, and you know, be a tourist in Bristol, cause it's cool. 

I stayed with my classmate Lowenna's mum, awesome lady.
Here we have Minxy, her awesome-but-dubious-of-visitors cat.

Had dinner next to an actual Banksy. No biggie.

Hello, Bristol Cathedral...

As always, Cathedrals contain some interesting things.
May I direct your attention to the inscription here?

Okay, I'll give you a closer look:

Yeesh. I'm exhausted just reading about it.

Yeah, and this is just a hinge on the fracking DOOR. Overacheivers.

St. Nicholas Market!

Awesome Market food. Awesome owl glare included at no charge.

Successful haggling for new bear hat = Sweet!

Obligatory Bristol Parrot Pic. Hi Mom.

Cagigal, this one's for you, obvi. Out front of random candy store. WTF?

And all that was just Bristol.

I've also seen buckets of Brit theatre, including Sheridan's The Rivals at The Arcola (I was two feet from Gemma Jones. I die.), The Dog, The Night, and The Knife at the Arcola (Snoozefest. Oh well.), Kneehigh's Dead Dog in a Suitcase at the Bristol Old Vic (Post apocalyptic electric violin puppet finale! Yes!), Belvoir's touring production of Wild Duck at the Barbican (Badass. Wow.), My Beautiful Black Dog and Am I Dead Yet in Bush Theatre's RADAR Fest (Am I Dead Yet was incredible), Our Town at the Almeida (with the ever-glorious Paul Cello, who also basically coerced me into seeing the last two hours of Interstellar at Screen on the Green. So swanky. Very fun.), Hunter and Johnny at Camden People's Theatre, Class Act by Harry Giles at Ovalhouse, Are You Lonesome Tonight? at Ovalhouse, and Engineer Theatre Collective's RUN at New Diorama Theatre. 

So yeah, I've seen some shows. Many of them were really awfully good, too.

I've also attended (so far) four full-day theatre conferences.

That's James Wheale on the left, explaining a dining-meets-installation-art-meets video-game experience in which you eat rare chocolates to gain magical powers.
Yes, James, I am listening...

Swankiest conference schwag thus far. It comes with fruit!

I've also (selflessly) explored several amazing weekly London Markets, but Broadway Market is one of the best I've seen so far, food-wise. I humbly submit for your consideration:

Scotch-Egg-apalooza. Nuff said.

Toffee Apple Kouign Amann. Chocolate croissant loaves. Shut UP.

Wait, what? Duck confit burger with blue cheese, truffle honey, homemade chutney and arugula on a brioche bun? 
Holy mother of Claude.

What? I had to.

Rockin' flowers at the Columbia Road Market, but the accents rock even harder.

Yet another side benefit of doing all the things? Seeing still more great street art. 

What else has happened that you should know? Well…

After weeks of pounding the pavement and the online housing ads, I finally found a place to live in Bethnal Green that I liked. Then I lived there for a month, and discovered I liked it less than I thought, so did some more searching and just moved to Lower Clapton. So, since the last time I posted on the blog I have moved twice. Pics and info on new place will come later. But so far its a keeper :-)

A few more tidbits for ya:

Guys. GUYS. This place is DANGEROUS. Believe me.

English cold is no joke. I mostly sleep in an actual fleece onesie these days. 

Sunday Roast, y'all. That's a proper yorkshire pudding on my beef there.






I also highly approve of how seriously many London cafes take their baked goods.



That's all I've got for now. More soon though, I promise. Really.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Begin Anywhere

I have decided to do all the things. 

That's all on that for now. A quick PSA, if you will.

Whilst, guys. I kid you not.

If you are reading this, you probably know that I am not currently in the U.S. (Yeah, I know. It happened kinda suddenly for me, too.) Anyway, it is not a drill: I have officially run away to London to get a Masters in Theatremaking with Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance. For the next year and a bit I will be living in the borough of Hackney in inner London, studying with an ensemble of eight fellow actor/performance-artist/theatre-dork-delights from various countries, and working full-time towards epic personal theatrical badassery. 

So far I've had only three days with my new ensemble family, and I'm already totally overwhelmed by how much we can teach each other, how many ways I want to grow, and how much discipline will be required of me to do so.

Which is why I've accepted a very generous invitation to see a concert in Bologna this weekend. I am writing this from the plane. All of the things.

By Sunday evening I'll be back in London, viewing yet more flatshares to let, and by Monday morning I'll be back in class, living the all yes, no waiting, all-life all-the-time show. 

I intend not to miss a thing. 

Let's see how I do.