The best summers of my youth were spent at French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, a summer camp in the Catskills where I "studied" theatre extensively. From ages twelve to nineteen, French Woods was home. I learned many, many valuable lessons there, lessons that I should really remember now that I'm studying theatre for real. Turns out, drama school and drama camp are a lot alike.

1. Theatre people can be pretentious, but they're wonderful.
2. Don't date actors.
3. Don't date musicians.
4. Don't be the subject of gossip if you can at all avoid it.
5. Do your homework. It's embarrassing when you don't have your reading done.
6. Belting showtunes at midnight will only earn you popularity points with a certain subset of the population.
7. Stage left is your left. Stage right is your right. Audience left is your right. Audience right is your left.
8. Vagina Monologues
9. You're in close quarters with those around you- you live together, you work together, you hang out together. Provided they don't suck (and few of them do, 'cause theatre people  are inherently awesome), you'll fall in love with your new friends very quickly. Keeping those relationships once you go home will be a challenge, but it is possible. Work hard, make it happen.
10. If the theatre gods don't give you what you want, make an opportunity for yourself.

Last year, when I was putting together my Central application, I went back and re-read my senior work project, to see if I could use it as a writing sample at my interview. I concluded that nobody should ever read that thing ever again. This week, I have a meeting with a potential PhD advisor, so I've been pouring over the Journal of Religion and Theatre archive (you know what's a great idea? Reading academic articles about esoteric plays and religion while sitting in a dark room at five o'clock in the morning after you've been drinking for ten hours straight. I highly recommend it), hoping to come up with an idea of what to talk about in said meeting. It occurred to me that I should probably take a look at my own stuff again, since I did spend close to a year of my life researching and writing that paper. I found it (thank you, Gmail Archive), and at about halfway through the paper, I think I might've judged myself a bit too harshly a year ago. It isn't perfect. Far from it, in fact, but for an undergrad who started from square one (My Adviser: "what do you know about the Protestant Reformation?" Me: Martin Luther nailed some stuff to a door."), it's a relatively impressive document. At least, I come off sounding kind of... smart.

I realize that sounds a little silly. I am smart. I know I'm smart. And now I sound pompous. Oh well. From time to time, it's nice to have a reminder. Two weeks ago, I had to turn in my first Central assignments. Writing them was exceptionally frustrating; even after having read a couple of previous papers, I felt like I had no idea what was expected of me. I stress out when it comes to assignments anyhow, so I was a total wreck. We don't expect to get those papers back for at least another month, and when I do get them turned back to me, I don't think my grades will be what I'd like. I didn't get a great grade on my Senior Work, but I wrote it. Forty-three pages in total discussing various bibles, theatre history, staging techniques, religious practices, and late-Medieval politics. Well done, twenty-three year0ld Amy, well done.

Hi Mom,
I'm halfway through THE EMPTY SPACE and Peter Brook has already discussed New York's theatrical hangups as resulting from the attention paid to finance in Broadway theatre. That's only gotten worse in the fifty or so years since he wrote. The art is suffering for the cost. It isn't dying necessarily, it's just sort of... languishing.  Things seem to be healthier here in London, even with crazy, crazy, crazy budget cuts.
Brook also speaks about The Living Theatre. I remember encountering them for the first time in undergrad. Company members truly lived their art- when The Living Theatre was booted out of their home on the LES, the company up and moved to Europe, living as gypsies all around the world. They didn't get their new New York space until 2006. Of course Julian Beck and Judith Malina (you know who they are- he was the guy from POLTERGEIST and she's Grandmama Addams in the movies) were superhippies, but am I missing something? Did I miss out on that part of theatre? The part that makes you want to be a crazy hippie? Am I too driven by the bottom line?

Urgh.
Amy

My top two favorite stage musicals of all time are Camelot and Pippin. Please don't attack me- I'm not saying they're the best musicals ever written, just that they're my favorites. Camelot has one of the most beautiful scores in the musical theatre canon, but the book is incredibly flawed. Pippin, with a different kind of awesome score, is very dated. Nevertheless, I love them. I've loved Pippin since childhood; I'd rent the videocassette over and over again from our local Blockbuster. In hindsight, it probably wasn't a good thing that a seven year-old girl was obsessed with an anachronistic hypersexual musical that ends in an aborted suicide attempt, but what can I say, I was a weird kid.

When I found out there was a new production of PIPPIN opening at the Menier Chocolate Factory, I jumped at the chance to see it. This evening's performance was the second preview. No doubt things will tighten up during the production, and flubbed lines and lyrics will be straightened out. The production attempts to tackle the problem of the dated-ness of the show, and very nearly succeeds. 

The audience entered the auditorium through a hallway decked out like a proud geek's bedroom. Posters for TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE, HALO, and SERENITY paper the walls. As you turn the corner, we saw the geek in question, playing some sort of MMORPG as an electronic version of Ode To Joy played over and over again (at the interval, that had changed to the Super Mario Brothers theme song). He wore a headset microphone, so it was clear that he's in the show, though the idea that he might be our protagonist never occurred to me (it probably should have). Once inside the theatre itself, I imagined that I was sitting inside a computer. Lasers traced right angles on the gray backdrop, track lights flickered, and somewhere, R2D2 was talking to himself. I was struck by the size of the theatre. The Menier has produced some of the most acclaimed musical revivals of the last decade and they can't possibly seat more than 150 people.

This is a Pippin for our generation.  This production breaks with convention, eschewing the play-within-a-play metaphor for a video-game-within-a-show theme.  An antisocial gamer, the first thing our Pippin says when he's pulled through a vortex into the bizarre world of the show is "it could be more Tron." He comments upon the state of arts funding (a really big deal in the British theatrical community), and sexual abuse in the Church.  He's generally disaffected, though when he becomes galvanized, he predictably morphs into a Barack Obama-style Hope Poster. His isolation is never more apparent than in "With You," which begins with Pippin flirting with chorus girls via an internet dating service, then shows the sort of sex ads that pop up when you're illegally streaming last week's How I Met Your Mother. A live woman doesn't appear onstage until halfway through the number, and, much as happens when you meet people from the internet in real life, things go horribly awry and leave our hero hanging in midair, trying to get the dancers to just go away (if I had a nickle for every internet date I've gone on that made me want to climb a tree until he went away...). This is a Pippin who was raised to believe that he was an exceptional individual, typical of my generation. When his life stagnated, he retreated into his sci-fi fantasies, preferring to Tweet his thoughts then actually speaking to people who might tell him he's just a regular guy.

They lose the metaphor a bit when Catherine is revealed. A nameless but obvious presence in the first act (she is the dancer who attracts Pippin's attention in "With You") her introduction and dialogue is still rooted firmly in the show-within-a-show framework. Berthe also fails to find her place in this conception. She appears as a doddering old lady, dressed in a a skirt and coat and pushing a grandma-cart.  She's not depicted as a dowager queen, and might actually have been Pippin's IRL grandmother.  Her scene is underdirected, and she doesn't fit into the world of the rest of the show. There were missed opportunities there. She should have been treated as someone who has been through the existential crises Pippin is encountering (that's why he goes to her in the first place), perhaps even as someone who was involved in the same story thirty years ago.

Most productions of Pippin, perhaps because of my beloved videotaped version, hold to Fosse-style choreography. This production was no exception. It was beautifully done, lots of very attractive young dancers in bowlers pelvic thrusting all over the place, but it seemed an odd choice. The  problem of our kind of mediatized culture (okay, one of the problems) is that we don't have the opportunity for real human contact- Fosse's choreography belongs to a time when free love was the word of the day.

In a cool bit of stagecraft, the grey set turned out to be not solid wall, but made up of fabric strips, allowing for exits and entrances at any point of the theatre. It also acted as a projection surface, allowing the players to exit and have an animated or live-feed image of themselves fly, dance, immolate themselves, or just interact as if they were at home on their own computers, talking to each other on Skype. There is a considerable amount of interaction between the "live" actors and the animated or filmed versions. They converse, battle, and even make love. Every inch of space was utilized- anywhere there wasn't an audience member was performance space.

Twenty years on, I find I'm still as taken with Pippin as I was as a child, though now it's less about seeing Mayor Ben without his leopard makeup and more about relating to the protagonist's struggles to find himself. I moved all the way to London looking for my corner of the sky. I've yet to find it, but I am, as they say, on the right track.

A post-script:
As I was leaving the theatre this evening, I heard a family talking. At first, I clued into them because they were speaking in voices much like my own- there are a lot of Americans in London, sure, but it's always nice to hear a familiar accent. And then I heard them talking about the differences between this production and the last they saw, a couple of years ago at French Woods. I'm an ocean away from home and I'm still running into French Woodites at the theatre.

It's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged, not because I've had nothing to say, but because things just weren't going the way I wanted and putting up a complain-y blog post doesn't help anyone. Sometimes I make lists to force myself to see the good in a situation, so, without further ado, ten good things about being here:

1. My roommates. I really don't know how I got so lucky as to wind up with Phil, Jill, and Markoesa, but I'm thanking the stars. I'm learning so much from them (how to write a check in the UK, the geography of the Netherlands, how to make a cheesecake with a carrot cake cookie crust), and enjoying every moment we spend together. I'm often home before they are, and I will run out of my room to say hi to them, like a little girl excited that her daddy is home from work.
2. My coursemates. My course is made up of truly brilliant people. We all have different backgrounds and areas of interest, but I am really glad I get to go through this craziness with them. When we meet up, after class or to see a show, I listen to their conversations and wonder how it is that I'm smart enough to hang out with them. Also, they're really really nice and don't mind my going on about how British bacon isn't really bacon.
3. The internet. It works. After being without it for a month, I'm back online. Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet. It makes my life so much easier.
4. Museums. They're free here. Really. I've seen the Rosetta Stone. Twice. For free. The famous portraits of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, William Shakespeare? They're in the National Portrait Gallery. And it's free to stare at them for as long as you want, or until a bunch of children in matching school uniforms, with matching colored pencil sets and clipboards swarm around your favorite monarch, trying to make a sketch for a class project.
5. Tea. Nobody looks at me funny when I ask for tea here. I love tea.
6. Shopping. Yes, I know the exchange isn't in my favor, but it's still possible to get a bargain here if you know where to look. And I'm learning! I'm not spending money willy-nilly, but I came with very little, and much of what I had at left at home got swallowed up by Hurricane Irene. Add to that a washing machine that tends to chew clothes up rather than clean them and I really do need that new cardigan I bought for  £12. This should be a lesson for us all, Weather Emergency+Limited Baggage Allowence+Crazy Crazy Washer= New Clothes.
7. The NHS. It is no longer less expensive for me to miss a day of life because I'm sick than it would be to seek medical help. If I need a doctor, they'll see me and make me better. Thank you.
8. Food. Yeah, so, some English food isn't very good. But some American food sucks too. Eating out is expensive. But I can cook for not too much money. Fruit and vegetables are really cheap here, and you can find reasonably priced meat, fish, and poultry. So, how do I combat expensive, not-too-great English fare? By cooking for myself. It's good, it's relatively cheap, and I know what I'm putting into my body.
9. The gym. I've gotten myself a student membership at the gym near school. I'm only going twice a week so far, but I'm hoping to build that up. Two half-hour sessions a week, one of swimming and one of general cardio, is two more half-hour sessions a week than I was doing at home. 
10. Theatre. Right. That's why I'm here. To study theatre. The theatre is good here. The dramas tend to be better than the musicals, but of the three musicals I've seen since arriving in London, two were at very least entertaining, and the third had pretty dancing. There are great actors in this country. There are great actors at home, too, sure, but... there are great actors over here and even with governmental support for the arts dwindling, the people still patronize the theatre. The only show I've seen thusfar with empty seats in the orchestra (or, as they say here, stalls), has been Rock of Ages, a production which has been running for a while and I happened to attend a show at a weird time- 5:30pm on a Friday.