Shakespeare. 'Nough Said

I am a theatre major. And as such I have a specific canon I study from in school, from which part of my soul has become attached to. As one can guess the famous William Shakespeare is at the top of this prestigious list. And for those who don't know, he is from England. And most of his works were performed at a famous theater in London called The Globe. And WE went there!!!!! I'm not sure I've ever been that excited in my life. Everyone at the centre thought I was on something I was so giddy on our way there. But once it was all done, many people said that was their favorite thing we've done so far, because it was so informative and our guide made the information so interesting. Theatre is amazing!

So the Globe is a big white roundish building with brown wood trim and it has a thatched roof. It's an open air theater with three tiers for seating, and a big area in the middle to stand and watch the performance. And really rich people use to sit on the balcony on the stage. Three sides of the stage are surrounded by spectators. It doesn't look like it, but back then they would fit about 2000 people in this small theater. Incredible!!! We sat in the stands on the first tier for awhile and our guide talked about performing there and the history of the building and a little bit about Shakespeare. And they said they have to get special permission to have a thatched roof on the building, because it's actually illegal to have a thatched roof in London. I did not know this. As you can image, it's a major fire hazard and London has not had the best of luck with fires. But in the interest of the preservation of history the Globe is allowed to have one. So the entire building looks like how it would have back in the good old days.

After checking the actual theater out and taking pictures we descended into this lecture room in the building next door. There we had more discussion from our guide. Here he talked a lot more about actually performing and I learned so much about how and what Shakespeare wrote that it made me want to go and study every play he's ever written! But some of the fascinating things were about the actors. Each play would only be performed like twice, so every few days the actors were putting on a new show that they had only just received the script for. And the entire cast only had one day to rehearse. A morning in fact. They would show up around 9 or 10, because that's early for a theatre person, rehearse, break for lunch, more rehearse, show at 2. Everyday. And for a show that's three hours long, many of them with fight scenes that need to be rehearsed over and over again, it meant that you could perform a show you just learned and have large chunks of it you've never rehearsed before! And even better, no one in the cast was given the full script, for copyright purposes believe it or not. So each actor was only given their "role," which was literally on a rolled up scroll. And on it would be the last three words of your cue and then your lines. So you memorized what you said but had no idea what you were supposed to be doing while you said it, and had no idea what was actually going on!!! Talk about improvisation. I thought it was fascinating!!!

After that experience my day was pretty much complete. My week was complete... But I just loved it more than anything else we had done so far because Shakespeare is something I have studied for years. But I learned more about him, his work, and the times in which he was writing in those two hours than I have my entire life! I got so excited and motivated about performing and reading Shakespeare. I feel like I can be a much better theatre practitioner now that I've been there and actually seen where he worked and the conditions he was writing for. There are so many double meanings in the words of his plays it's incredible. I love Shakespeare!! If you ever go to London, make the Globe Theater one of your stops! It's worth it!!!