Friday, April 30, 2010

Richie finally made it to London!

Hooray! The men's flat is now complete because Richie finally got here!! We want him to move into our room, but we can't leave Hugh by himself so it's cool.

Anyways we are gonna go to see "bash:latter-day plays" tomorrow night so Heidi, Andrea, Richie and I went to go buy tickets up at the theater in Camden borough. We had to do 3 tube transfers to get there and it was like 2 blocks off the beaten path. It's called the "Theatro Technis" and it essentially looks like a converted house.
So we show up and can't find a box office so we ring the doorbell and a nice old man with a French accent calls down through the intercom and asks "What do you want?" It was totally a Monty Python moment and I was afraid he would taunt us :p So anyways we told him that we wanted 6 tickets for tomorrow night. He asked for our name and Heidi told him, but he didn't understand so he was like "Come inside. I'll come down." So we wander into this man's study/office/box office(?) and down comes this 5 foot tall, French senior citizen who looked remarkably like Sigmund Freud. Anyways, we told him how many we needed and had a pleasant yet short conversation and went on our way. It was a fun adventure.

We then embarked on another HUGE tube trip to the Rose Theater in Kingston. This required us to essentially cross all of London yet again and then getting on a bus on the edge of zone 2 that took us another 40 minutes into Kingston. It was SUCH a long trip on public transport.
We were all tired (esp Richie) and started to get a bit loopy by the time we arrived at the theater. The Rose is a GORGEOUS modern theater in the middle of this antiquated borough of southern London. It's a contemporary interpretation of the old Rose Theater of Shakespeare's time. We were all groundlings for this performance, but instead of having to stand we had to sit on the hard ground for 90 minutes.
We saw "11 & 12" by Peter Brook. It was a really cool production that has to do with religious and ethnic tolerance and questioning why human beings are violent towards each other because of these trivial, subjective things. It was a really powerful play, but unfortunately I couldn't enjoy it as much as I could because I was so incredibly uncomfortable on the floor. But it was truly a brilliant piece.

We finally got home after the show and after about 20 minutes in the flat the fire alarm went off!! No joke! We had to all evacuate, so I grabbed my keys and then remembered Richie was in the bath tub, so I made him get out and get dressed and come outside with us.
He was completely and utterly unpleased to say the least. So we puttered around for 20 minutes outside, in the rain, until one of the on duty managers showed up on a bicycle. Clearly the best way to save 35 American's from a house fire is by sending a teenage girl on a Schwinn.

Anyways, we made back inside safe and sound. Apparently there was a broken alarm on the 5th floor that set the whole building off. So all in all it was an eventful day! Tomorrow is a big day, so it's off to bed for me!

Over and out.

1 comment:

  1. your floor experience doesn't sound too bad actually...try spending 3 HOURS STANDING in the Globe for a so-so performance of Romeo and Juliet..."2 hours traffic of our stage my FOOT!" at least it was a good performance that you saw! love love

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