Jacobean Drama and women in bras...

I never think of what is going on in my life as strange until I try to tell someone about it. This week, however, is classic. After the escapades I wrote about on the 18th, I tried to stay near to home and write. I did a lot of thinking on Friday, but not much writing. That evening I went to a play at the Barbican called "The Changeling" which was first performed in 1634. It is Jacobean drama and similar in language style at least to Shakespeare. This was not a play that I had read, but I had heard a lot about the company who were putting the play on - Cheek by Jowl.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=3662
It was one of the most impressive stagings I have seen. The set was minimal, the costuming was simple but the lighting was incredibly effective and the acting was superb. It was a great piece of theatre. But the play itself is NASTY. Not the sort of thing you want to go to for fun. It is not cheerful, although there are moments of humour. Love, sex, betrayal, violence...people do come out of this one very well. The commentary on a women's virtue is also interesting. Under the guise of Christianity and purity, virginity is really just another way to validate men. Of course none of this is surprising...but the entirety of the way the play was performed was stunning. The images they created are vivid and impossible to forget. The tempo of the play was also impressive as this is a very wordy play, but the action drove ahead with a speed that was unrelenting. There was no chance to get bored. Really wonderful, horrifying stuff.

Saturday morning I went to a workshop that took place at church on Nuno felting. This is a textile technique where you take merino wool, place it in any way you choose on muslin, wet it all down with soap and water and rub it until the wool adheres to the muslin. There are more details involved than that, but the basic idea is very simple. There were about 14 women and we all came away with scarves. The woman leading the event suggested I put mine in the wash on gentle to finish it, but forgot to mention that it would shrink...luckily it is still wearable, but not quite as long as I thought it would be. I went with a simple pattern - cream wool on cream muslin with pieces of fabric that I cut out laid under the top layer of wool. I'll get a picture up if I can borrow a camera. It was fun and adictive! It is so nice to spend two hours doing something and come out with a finished product. And the range of beautiful textiles that people created were really impressive.


http://www.jmh.company.org.uk/pages/out-&-about-page/opera_house/opera_house.html
Saturday night I went to the ballet at the Royal Opera House. They were celebrating Dame Ninette de Valois who started the Royal Ballet and was responsible for the National Ballet of Canada, among others. So Canada sent over a new piece to be performed here. The male dancer in that piece was the brother of my roomate in fourth year university in Canada. I never met him, as he was always travelling or performing. Alex (the former roomate) lives in Paris right now, so she came over to see him and some other friends dropped in as well. It was a really interesting evening and I wore my new scarf...I managed to not tell everyone that I had made it that morning -- in fact, I didn't tell anyone! But it was fun to be able to wear it immediately.

On the way home, I opted to take the bus from Trafalgar Sq instead of taking the tube. I managed to pick the bus that crossed the route for the Playtex Moonwalk for Breast Cancer... mostly women walking 26.2 miles through London overnight while wearing decorated bras... Needless to say it took an extra half hour to get home and I got to see a wild variety of bras!
http://www.walkthewalk.org/

Today I wrote and corrected student work. Some of my students have such great ideas, and even when they don't understand the implications of some of what they write it is still exciting to see the links they do make. Others...I am going to have to report for plagiarism. Ouch. That is the downside, although at least with plagiarism I do not have to comment on the quality of the writing, whereas with bad writing I have to find a way to be encouraging!

For the moments when I relax my brain, I have been reading P.G. Wodehouse's books on Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. They are very funny and so different from what I am doing right now that they are a great diversion! I feel a chapter calling me now...