The Globe

I WENT TO THE GLOBE THEATER AND SAW MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING! AHHHHH!

The Globe! Redesigned by an American,  Sam Wanamaker

Ok, so this was a top reason I applied for this trip. I love Shakespeare. I don't care who knows it. We read the play, Prof. Clare Kinney lectured on it, and then we saw it come to life in the space that people from Shakespeare's time would have seen it. I was nerding out. I don't know that you could have had Sangria in those days but I went with it. What I realized is that a lot of drama use spotlights and sounds to focus your attention to a certain action on the stage, but because the lights were up and there were no microphones, the actors had to work that much harder. The coolest thing was that it started to rain during the play and Dogberry, the comical dunce who leads the Citizens' Watch, actually reacted to the rain and stayed under the pavilion. I don't know...cool moment.

Other cool facts, the guy who played Geoffrey on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" was playing Leonato. Yeah, he was there. Also, the woman who played Mrs. Simpson, the American divorcee in "The King's Speech", was playing Beatrice.

I was told John Cleese paid extra to have Michael Palin's name spelled wrong.  Both of Monty Python

Then after the play, we got to go to this cool "Theater Talk" session where three of the actors answered questions from a small audience. The guy who plays Claudio shared that one time a group of school girls yelled out to him "It's not true!" when he was told Hero was with another man. The actor said he had to try hard not to laugh. Really cool audience interaction that you don't get anywhere else. Except the Blackfriar theater in Staunton. Who wants to go with me to plays in the fall? It's an hour away from Cville, tops.

Tomorrow I'm going to Cambridge. We're going to King's Cross Station where there's a place to take pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4. Oh yeah