Dapper British Boys with Cocktails

Here’s a video I took at a lounge that we went to after Zarah’s Going Away dinner that I just want to share with you all.

Let me just say, the very fact that I am friends with these wonderful boys makes me the happiest girl in the world.

I realize it is rather hard to hear a lot of this so here is a transcript:
The back-story: The musical theatre kids have various running inside jokes and one-liners, one of which is “Stop it!” which was contrived by one of the musical theatre girls, Katie Brennan. This then evolved into “Stawp et” then “Stoop Awt” and at Zarah’s going away dinner Adam realized it sounded like “Schtoop Art”.

Adam: Let us discuss in this symposium the “Art of Schtoop”
David: SCHTOOP ART
Adam: Which in itself, emanated from…
David: “Stop it.”
Adam: Which was most recently said by [Katie] Brennan as…
David: “Stawp et.”
Adam: Now... Chambers, what do you have to add to this discussion?
David: Schtoop Art! Art of Schtoop? Schtoop Ar—
Tommy: Balls.
David: Balls it is.

And then it all goes downhill from there and I lose all comprehension of what they’re saying until they start teasing me about my apparent habit of biting my lip. Has anyone else noticed that I do this?

Final Days with Zarah

An American friend that I made here, Zarah, was only in Birmingham for a term.

After our assessments for our practical classes, we started packing up and finished up our papers for our Theatre Lab class.

On Thursday, her dad came into Birmingham and we all went out to dinner with the closer friends she made here.

Oh yeah and David shaved for the occasion!



The next day, after handing in our Theatre Lab papers, we finished packing up and headed for London. Zarah and her dad had reserved a room at the Hotel Russel. The people I was hoping to stay with weren’t around, so Zarah and her dad snuck me into their room.
It was an incredibly posh hotel.



So this whole term it’s been Zarah and my goal to see “Othello” in London which starred Ewan McGregor as Iago and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the title role. I mean, we HAD to!
After getting settled in our rooms, Zarah and her dad took a walk to the Donmar Warehouse where it was being put on. The performances were sold out but on the day of a performance they sell 30 tickets; 20 standing and 10 seated. At the box office, Zarah asked when people started lining up for these tickets. The guy said about 4 in the morning. So naturally that meant that WE had to get there at 3.
Oh and we did. 3:30 actually, but still!
After about three hours of sleep we got our asses out of bed and headed for the theatre.
So there we were huddled together at the doors of the theatre. True theatregoers.





The next person in line didn’t arrive until 4:30. From there it gradually started building up.

We got our tickets, went back to the hotel and went straight to sleep. I got two hours in, but it seemed like more.

When we got up we decided to visit the British Museum where we met up with our friend Reece who was in town.



Adam said he was going to be in town as well for a birthday celebration, and along with him he brought the most pleasant surprise: Tommy!
So the two of them came to our hotel for a brief visit. Shortly afterwards Reece had to leave us.

I then (pretty much) followed Zarah and her dad to a dinner with some family friends that lived in London…at a very VERY posh restaurant; the kind that adds the grated cheese to your pasta, the truffles to your ravioli, or the lemon juice to your cutlet right in front of you.
I ordered one of the plainest things on the menu.

From there we took a taxi to the Donmar.

It was a very intimate theatre…and America Ferrera was in the audience. (!)

I totally forgot that Iago was in the very first scene. And the moment Ewan came on Zarah and I groped for each others hands immediately. It was like “Oh my god! He’s RIGHT THERE!”
It was almost surreal.
And then Chiwetel came on! One treat after another!

All in all, I wasn’t all that impressed by Ewan. He was wonderful to look at but I found myself looking for brilliant Iago moments that just weren’t there. I felt like he wasn’t relishing enough in his malicious plotting in all his asides. Let’s just say his Iago was an excellent actor and incredibly secretive- if it weren’t for his asides, the audience would also be calling him “honest Iago”. Plus I think I was pretty distracted by the fact that I was watching Ewan McGregor.

With Chiwetel, there was never a moment where I thought, “Oh my god that’s the guy from Love Actually and American Gangster.” He completely embodied the role of Othello and his performance was amazing.

Afterwards, we all waited in the lobby for Ewan. He was the only one of the stars of the cast to come down…and he came down literally minutes after the performance. Zarah and I were all prepped with the other’s camera. Zarah’s picture with him was first and he was about to leave when I begged him for one more. I’m pretty sure no words came out, I look back on it I think it was just me saying something that sounded like “Just one more?”



What a night, what a night. A perfect conclusion to my England adventures with Zarah.

Aladdin Pantomime

9th of December:

Christmas Pantomime: a form of theatrical spectacle common in England during the Christmas season, generally adapted from a fairy tale and including stock character types who perform songs and dances, tell jokes, etc.

This year there was an Aladdin pantomime being professionally done in London, so the directors of the WatchThis production bought the script, made a few tweaks of their own and cast it.

My darling Zarah played Jasmine!

Like a proud mum I took pictures and videos.

Here are a few pix.

Jasmine was a rather weepy character and her lady in waiting, Jizmine, was in love with her. Made for quite the rendition of "A Whole New World".

Adam played Father Christmas...and here I managed to catch him at a moment where he came onstage too early. The mistakes often happen in the 48 hour productions...it's what makes them so funny.

My friend Jen played a rather random character that would occasionally come onstage and offer some random information about...something. Like Pilates.
Her name was Martin. The Cow. "My mother was a cow. My father: a female goat. Hence the name, Martin, the Cow."


Anyways, Zarah and I were glad to be introduced to this English Christmas tradition. We're thinking of bringing it to the states.

"Oleanna" Day 4: Closing Night and Cast Party

8th of December

For our final performance, David and I both felt really good.

We mainly hung out together in my dressing room, going over bits and keeping each other sane.

And we thought it would be cool to do a tour around the theatre:

The music you hear is from “Greatest Love Hits” (or something of that nature): basically the only CD we found in the light booth.

This was the night we sold out…and it was by far our best performance.

Like I anticipated, David and I were in tears during the bow. Backstage we opened up a bottle of champagne…which then spurted on my face when I took a sip cuz we didn’t have any glasses. You know it’s a good night when you have tears and champagne on your face.

There wasn’t a lot of time to bask in the celebration cuz we had to move out all the props and set immediately.

But people responded very well: they said they were captivated and the debates over which character was in the right continued- which is exactly what we wanted. People who I didn’t even know came up to me and told me how much they liked it which was really nice.

Cast party at David’s was cast-plus-friends party (cuz one with just the four of us would be more of a gathering).

I met and chatted with more people who saw the play. Everything was hunky dory until David announced that he was off to bed. This opened the flood gates for me. It had finally sunk in that the party and therefore the play was completely over. Poor James consoled me and just when I was about to get a hold of myself I’d start crying again. Basically: I was a mess.

The next day David participated in the 48 hour pantomime that WatchThis put on so he had something to distract him from the show-closing blues. I finally got distracted with the practical assessment exams that came up on Monday as well as the two papers I had to write by the end of the week.

Seeing the pantomime was a good distraction as well. David made quite the transition from (as his friend Steph put it) “the sublime to the utter ridiculous”.

More on this in a later blog.

"Oleanna" Day 3: Middle Night

7th of December
This time, we drove.

When we got there I noticed that I didn't feel particularly nervous and that worried me a bit. But we got there pretty early and relaxed in the Green Room taking in a light dinner.

We then decided to get some photos and videos in.
I wish I could show you footage from an actual performance, but no one actually recorded any of it. This was the most I could muster and it's unfortunately without any serious energy.

For the second and third acts I'm in black, but as I was ready in my costume for Act I we just went through these intense bits with my less serious apparel:




and end of the play...I apologize for the quality of the acting, we weren't entirely warmed up nor in "the zone":



And here are some pictures we took of us around the set. Again I apologize for our lack of seriousness in some of these photos.
It was a really intense and serious performance, I swear.








And Blakey wanted some action shots of him directing us:






I had another blog of me and David but I couldn't load it onto photobucket cuz it was over 3 minutes. Those of you on facebook can watch it here.

Those of you without facebook, basically David and I talk about how we felt there was a bit of energy lacking and even though James and Flo felt it went better than night #1, we knew that we could do better and we were just disappointed we couldn't perform our potential that night...especially with Tommy Chambers in the audience.
People reacted very well, but we still couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed.

After the performance we took in some drinks at James' old work, Pitcher and Piano, with his sisters and brothers in law. One of them was just chatty McChatterson with David and me and noticed how I seemed quite shy in real life. Good to know I guess- that I'm not a feminist bitch in real life.
That's another thing- those three nights were probably the only time it was (more than) okay to have people come up to me and say "Oh my god, I hate(d) you."

Oh and we had a whole class of kids from Wales who came to see the show. They had been studying Oleanna for their A-levels, and quite frankly I could tell they knew the play very well cuz I could just feel their anticipation of every crucial moment.
There was talk of a possible Q&A afterwards but it never happened. Shame. I was quite looking forward to one.
But one student did send a message to Article 19 about the show and David forwarded it to me:

Hello! I'd like to send my thanks and praise to the theatre group 'Article 19' who performed 'Oleanna' at TheOldJointStock last night. It was amazing! The cast and their support crew/techies were simply incredible. I don't have the slightest clue about acting but the way the play was performed was truly superb - I could even see the *characters'* thoughts whilst they said nothing!

That's all really. Just felt I should let you know how much I enjoyed being there last night (only my second visit to B'ham!), and that the play will really help me in my studies (English lang/lit A-level) for which I am looking at Mamet's Oleanna. So, again, many thanks indeed!

P.S. I apologise if this was the wrong place for this sort of feedback!

Best regards and have a lovely Christmas, Eila T. [Student, Gorseinon College, South Wales]

"Oleanna" Day 2: Opening Night

6th of December
Since parking proved such a hassle the day before for our get in, we thought we'd take the bus.



We soon realized it was not the best idea in the world



I might have mentioned before that David and I were promised our own dressing rooms. As if we weren't spoiled enough, James and Flo made us trailer stars.




I like how they're Stars of David. 'So obvious our director's Jewish.

We didn't manage to sell out, but it was a good crowd nonetheless. The reactions we got were great and Adam loved it so much he decided to come again for closing.

"Oleanna" Day 1: Drech and Tess

Sorry I have not updated in a long long while. Rehearsals really built up.
But for our week of Oleanna, David and I decided to make video logs documenting our four wonderful days in the Old Joint Stock Theatre.

5th of December ~ "Get in" and Dress and Tech (aka drech and tess)
So we had reserved a van weeks in advance for our "get in" to the theatre, but on the morning of our move into the theatre, our van was taken on a little joy ride to London by the guy who booked our van. So that didn't go quite as smoothly as we hoped. We ended up loading a massive desk and filing cabinet into a taxi van, books into James' tiny car, and a shelf and two chairs on a bus.

We survived, however.
It was my first time inside the theatre/pub and it was gorgeous.



Here's a look at the inside of the pub:


After setting up most of everything, David and I were instructed to relax a bit before we ran our dress and tech rehearsals (now lovingly called "drech and tess" due to a little slip of the tongue by Mr. Mouriquand.)
In the pub we studied our rough patches of lines over lunch...

...and made our first video log.


James then joined us for lunch:


David and I weren't entirely pleased with the rehearsal, but James and Flo assured us that it was fine and completely performable, and in the end we just had to keep reminding ourselves that a rough dress rehearsal (or preview for that matter) makes for a great opening night.