Well, it's Spring Break already.  This term I began a play, teamed up with two awesome writing partners to write two one-acts, created an installation piece, performed a lot, took a mask workshop, did a devising workshop with Complicite...the list goes on.  I'm very grateful.  And now: I'm packing up for a three-week back-packing trip through Central Europe!  I fly into Berlin, and then by trains and and couch-surfing will wind my way down to Croatia, where I'll meet up with a tour that's going through Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and into Turkey.  I couldn't be more excited.  Happy Spring Break everyone!  Don't do anything I wouldn't do...

Last Friday, I had the privilege to attend a Scene and Heard show.  Scene and Heard is a company that teaches playwriting to London children, and then stages those plays with professional actors, directors and designers.  One of my professors had directed one of the plays, and so several of my fellow MA's went.  And I must say, I haven't laughed that hard in so long.  The plays were on a variety of topics: friendship, doing the right thing, etc, but the characters were so imaginative.  There was a butcher's knife named Pointy Struggles who just wanted to cut wedding cake.  There was a monkey in love with two brothers: a fungal sneeze and a flu cough - and she couldn't decide which one to choose.  There was a traffic light terrified to turn red because the last time he did, he was hit by a double-decker bus.  Those of us on the playwrighting track hoped that maybe one day, we would be able to write characters as funny and creative as this group of 10 year olds.  It was inspiring.

I must start out by saying that I LOVE going to the National Theatre.  The location is gorgeous, and on a nice day, everybody is out on the Southbank, sitting in cafes, sitting at the river, wandering in and out of the various art spaces.  And I can walk there from where I live.  It's perfect.  Which is exactly what I did yesterday - walked down to the National to see their co-production with DV8 Physical Theatre, titled CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?  The show confronts our Western tendency to be as politically correct as possible, and postulates that perhaps we are actually limiting free speech and healthy debate in our rigid political correctness.  The text was verbatim, taken from interviews and news sources discussing the relationship between the West and Islam, but the performance was highly physical.  As a lover of using verbatim technique in political theatre, I was entranced as the actors/acrobats scaled walls, used each other as jungle gyms and hopped around while speaking these charged political statements.  It was fascinating to watch and I'm still thinking about it today.  Most verbatim theatre tends to be naturalistic, in order to "recreate the interview" exactly, so the lines between actor and real person are blurred.  This was not naturalistic at all, but just as powerful.

I joined British Equity!  It's very exciting, and I'm very honored.  In other news, I have bangs!  Or as they say here: I have a fringe!

Last night I trekked down to Wimbledon to check out Paper Birds Theatre Company's devised, physical, verbatim (three of my favorite words) theatre piece, THIRSTY.  The company had set up a "drunk" hotline a year ago, to research why we (particularly young women) love to drink so much.  It was a celebration as much as a cautionary tale, with live music, amazing physical story-telling, audience participation 

Last week I went to Wales for a day.  It was a fly-by-the-seat of my pants, fairly last minute day trip to Cardiff.  In the 8 hours that I spent there, I went to the castle (which was used as an air raid shelter during WWII), the waterfront, and several pubs/cafes.  It was a lovely, low-key adventure with the girls.