Monday, January 7, 2013

Shakespeare Walking Tour and the Globe


January 7, 2013

Hello!  My name is Caitie Vaughan and I am a senior Psychology major, Biology and ASL minor, at CSS.  I decided to come on this trip because I have never had the opportunity to travel overseas and I thought coming to London would be a fun way to start.  Also, my sister and my mom are on the trip so sharing this experience with them has been awesome!

We had a pretty jam packed day today.  We started out by meeting back up with Eleanor Jackson, the lovely guide from our bus tour about a week ago.  


Eleanor took us on a two hour Shakespeare walking tour where we saw many sites pertaining to Shakespeare’s life in London, including:  the only building he ever owned (a pub with an upstairs apartment), the original site of The Rose Theatre, the original site of The Globe Theatre, and the reconstructed Globe Theatre.  After our walking tour we sadly parted ways with Eleanor, but we will see her again in a few days when we tour the Victoria and Albert Museum!

After the walking tour we had a break for lunch where we all ate at a market called The Borough.   The market had many vendors selling fresh food; I had a pork sandwich from a pig being roasted on a spit right at the vendor’s booth! 


After lunch we headed back to the reconstruction of the Globe to take a tour and participate in an acting workshop.  Our guide/teacher was named Mary and she was great!  She started out by taking us backstage so that we could "come into the theatre for the first time from an actor’s point of view."  When we walked onto the stage we were greeted by the literature half of our group; they were sitting in the stands as part of their tour.  They then got to see us do a little bit of acting for them!  


We spent some more time on the stage and then proceeded to the stands to see the Globe from the audience’s point of view.  This concluded our tour and we walked a couple blocks to the rehearsal rooms for the theatre to have our workshop.


I enjoyed the workshop because Mary had us do activities that caused us to act in a way that would have been similar the way Shakespeare’s troupe acted.  In Shakespeare’s time the actors were not given a full script to study and rehearse for weeks before the production; they were given only their lines and had to learn them and be ready to perform sometimes in only a day’s time.  First, Mary had us memorize a short line, form a circle, and then take turns saying our line as soon as someone said theirs to us.  This created a really spontaneous environment where we did not have a chance to think before we acted.  Next, we did the same thing except we used a short scene from Romeo and Juliet.  I think the energy created in this atmosphere was great because we all appeared to act more naturally.

After the workshop, we had free time for the rest of the night so we split into smaller groups to have supper and enjoy another night in London!

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