Tues Jan 20
Today we had a short class because it was Americans get in for free day at Madame Tussauds!! Madame Tussauds is a wax museum that’s been around for ages a pre-World war kind of thing. And inside are all of these unbelievably life like wax figures that everyone comes to see and take pictures with. They have celebrities like actors and athletes and political figures, presidents, kings, queens, singers, and famous people from back in the day, Einstein, Van Goh, Shakespeare, and many more. It was free for Americans because they released the Obama wax statue today!! Huzzah! So we all brought our passports and went down there really early as soon as it opened. And we got in for free!! When I went to get my ticket I went up to the guy and was like…”so apparently I get in for free today?” And he goes “…apparently you do” and he smiled and gave me my ticket! Yay for being an American! So we got in and we all went up the elevator together and right when you get out of the elevator there is a huge wall in front of you with fake paparazzi people on it and there were all these flashes going off. It was really cool. The first room you walk into is like a big party there are all these celebrities and actors dressed up like they were going to the Oscars or something. I saw Daniel Radcliff (Harry potter)…and I’m about the same height as him haha. I also took a picture with Patrick Stewart for my dad. (Trekie) I saw Samuel Jackson, Leonardo Decaprio, Morgan Freeman, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts, and plenty more. In the next room there were more celebrities including, Harrison ford, Robin Williams, Jim Carey, THE HULK!!!, Tinkerbelle, Steven Spielberg, whoopee Goldberg, and again too many to name. In the next room there were athletes and British royalty and a bunch of random people. We took pictures with the queen, Henry the 8th, Shakespeare and tons more. We even saw Prince William (sighhh) (*faints*). Then continuing on we saw famous singers and performers such as Beyonce, Brittney Spears, Justin Timberlake, The Beatles!! and plenty more famous faces. Then there he was; standing with a huge grin on his face in the oval office, Barack Obama. We had to wait in this huge line to get a picture with him. As we waited we walked by Ghandi, Ronald Regan, JFK, Martin Luther King, and former president George W. Bush who happened to have a confused look on his face…poor Bush. And then I looked up and out of the corner of my eye I spotted that creepy little mustache…that evil face…Madame Tussauds even had the wax figure of Hitler. As I was staring at him…in amazement and pure disgust I saw women go up to him and take a picture with him…SMIELING! I felt sick. My whole group thought it would be appropriate to take a picture with him giving him the finger…but we decided he wasn’t worth our time. So I asked why he was there and my friend said that they made his figure in 1933 before anyone knew he was capable of such evil things. There were stories of people going to the museums and ripping of his arms, throwing red paint on him, and sticking pins in his heart. So eventually they put him in a glass case…but surprisingly he was out if the case. I had half a mind to go punch him. Another strange thing was that there was a blitz during one of the world wars and a bomb hit Madame Tussauds and a lot of the wax figures and molds were destroyed…except that Hitler’s figure was untouched. And one more freaky thing about the statue was that supposedly Hitler’s hair started to grow and the staff had to give him a hair cut…talk about freaky. Well enough about Hitler. Back to OBAMA!!! Yay!!
So we finally got to get a picture with Obama. It was great. He really looked like him…it was kind of scary. I know that was a little anti-climactic but oh well. So after we saw Obama there was the scary haunted house part of the museum…that Jmike and Krystina opted out of because they were scared…BOOO LAMEEEE. But I went…even though I was terrified. I went in with Dave and Tara. I told them we had to scream at the top of our lungs at soon as we walked through it because it would make it less scary if we made it a joke. So we did exactly that….or at least I did…Tara was actually screaming. Haha I just screamed and screamed and screamed like I was freaking out but I was just kidding around. And it annoyed one of the scary guys so he came up to me really close to my face and said in his British accent “OH SHUTT UPPP” and I continued on screaming and screaming until we were done…and it was awesomely funny. After we got out of scary land we went into one of the coolest rooms ever!! THE JAMES BOND ROOM! There were only two wax figures there Dame Judy Dench (M. In James Bond) and Daniel Craig (James Bond). They even had the motor cycle from one of the new Bond movies. IT was great! Then to wrap things up there was a movie at the end that everyone watched about celebrities and aliens…it was weird. And then it was almost over and we only saw a few scattered figures like Marylyn Monroe, complete with her dress blowing, and Mr. T and a few others. It was great and I was so glad we went it was so much fun.
After we got done with M.Ts. the group reconvened for some lunch and then we went to The Globe theatre on the other side of the Thames. The Globe is a theatre based on the original one built in Shakespeare time. It’s a big circular building like a short cylinder. And it has no roof in the middle and can hold 900 people or something like that, with 400 seated and 500 standing or some crazy number. There’s a big arena area in the middle where people can by standing tickets and there are 3 levels of seats. The stage is pretty tall with a balcony included and a trap door. And back in shake pares time there were no ways of lighting the stage so they would perform in the day time where the audience was clearly visible. Which I think is kind of scary. But in the modern one there are obviously ways to light the stage so they can perform in the day or night. The coolest part of our tour of the globe was that we got to go on the stage! It’s kind of the Mecca of theatre students. To be on the Globe stage was an amazing experience. We spent a while on the stage and then we went to this meeting room and had a talk with one of the globe directors and he talked about how hard it was to be an actor in Shakespeare time. You just got a script with only your lines on it and you had to memorize it in a few days and perform it right away. And you only got the last three words of the sentence before you. So he gave everyone sheets of paper that had that type of “script” on it and he had us read part of the script and we saw how hard it was. The actors don’t even know what the whole play is about so It must have been hard to really understand your role….craziness. We spend a while at the Globe so by the time we got back to the flat it was time to eat dinner so we got some dinner and all gathered around MPs TV and we watched the inauguration. It was a really awesome moment to have the whole group huddled around this really small British TV and watching history happen. It was great. I put my camera on top of the TV and took picture while we were watching. It’s cool because the view is from the TV looking out at us. And then I put on some red white and blue and we headed back again to the national theatre and saw the best show I saw on the whole trip. August Osage County, hands down, was the best show that we saw. It was my favorite out of all of the shows. It even topped Don John and Wicked. I was so moved by the play. I didn’t even know what I was moved to I just know that it really spoke to me. It is a dark comedy about an American family that is the epitome of dysfunction. The play explores and unfolds problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, incest, suicide, pedophilia, and serious mental health issues. The acting was phenomenal. You could really tell that the energy was high and that the actors were deep in to these characters. I could tell that this is what they loved to do. It was interesting to think about the show and the actors and how intense the show is and I wondered, along with most of the group, how the cast did this show night after night after night. Its such an intense story, full of heart ache, sorrow, and raw, broken relationships. There were plenty of times that I felt like crying during the show because it was so sad to see the realities that this family faced. The set added to the intrigue of the show. Besides being captivated with the story line and being guided along by the wonderful acting, the set made it all the more believable. On stage before us was a 3 story country house cut in half. It was like looking at a giant doll house. I felt that the set had more power to our group because we were able to explore it when we visited and toured the national theatre earlier in the trip. We saw firsthand, up-close how much detail was in the set. Some of the actors had to be on stage for lengthy periods of time even though they weren’t speaking so they had to really feel like they were in an actual kitchen or dining room or really watching TV. The set just blew me away; the attention to detail was incredible and made it believable. We talked about in class how the play was grounded in realism and real emotions but the set had aspects of surrealism. There were no walls or ceilings to part of it so the audience had to imagine that the actors were peaking around a door or listening behind a wall to a conversation or imagine that the rooms were separate so some conversations were private. Even though there was the aspect of surrealism I still bought into that there were walls there and the rooms were separate. It was all very real to me. It was my favorite show. I still get chills just thinking about it.
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