Baldwin, Fairy Queen, Inkling Pub, and Grand Maester Pycelle

So ends Day 6 of my Oxford adventure and Day 3 of classes/tutorials! And there is SO MUCH to tell!

Soooo first, my group! Following Saturday's placement auditions, our teachers set to work for hours  determining which students would be working on which plays and with which teachers. On Sunday afternoon, I learned that I was put into the Baldwin group that was to work on "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Twelfth Night," and Carol Churchill plays. I was pretty happy (especially about Carol Churchill's controversial, modern plays!), but what made me most excited was that 7 of the 15 people in my group were people I had hung out with on Saturday! What were the chances?! We were all so excited and together welcomed the other 8 students into our friend group.

Sunday afternoon was also our first masterclass. Pippa Nixon, a young British actress, who has worked many times with the Royal Shakespeare Company, led a class on Audition Techniques. As actors, she said, if we don't make it to fame and fortune but manage to become working actors, we will spend 2/3 of our lives in auditions and only 1/3 in rehearsals/productions. She was honest, entertaining, encouraging, inspiring, and very knowledgable!  Ms. Nixon began our work here with BADA on a high note!

Sunday night we had a formal drink party and three course dinner in the Harry Potter-like dining hall! We all dressed up, had Pimms (a famous, beloved fruity British drink; I even had a few sips) and then had a beautiful, candlelit dinner! Below are some pics from the evening with my new friend.

Me and Libby <3

Niru, my next door neighbor!

Libby, me, and Sarah

Bright and early Monday morning we began classes. We have a Shakespeare acting class, a Physical Theatre class, a Voice class, and Modern acting class, each 1 hour and 45 minutes. My favorite class so far is definitely Physical Theatre! We play a lot of the same games I played in my Physical Theatre classes at Richmond but with little changes. It's crazy how these simply, fun theatre games exist on both sides of the big pond! 

On Tuesday, we were assigned roles in our Shakespeare class. My audition the previous day had not gone over so well. My teacher, an extremely qualified but VERY scary man, did not agree with my interpretation of my Joan of Arc monologue. Needless to say, I was very nervous to hear about casting even though I knew we would all get at least one pretty strong role to work on. I was given the roles of Hippolyta in Act I Scene I and Titania in Act II Scenes I and II of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I am feeling pretty good about it!! Titania is the fairy queen and a very strong woman with very long, poetic monologues which I am very excited to work on!

Tuesday night I went to some pubs with my friends. We eventually ended up at the Eagle and Child, a pub where the Inklings, a group of writers including Tolkien and CS Lewis, used to meet to discuss their literary ideas. It was such a neat pub!

                                           

The Eagle and Child

Me and my friend Sarah who told me about this pub

On Wednesdays at BADA, we take a break from our usual 4 classes a day schedule and take time for private tutorials and for masterclasses. Today, I met with my Modern Acting teacher, Zoe Waites, and discussed how to go about choosing modern monologues for auditions. I also met with my voice teacher, John Tucker. In our voice classes, we are focusing specifically on vocal techniques for acting, but today in my private tutorial, I got to work with him on singing technique. I only had 20 minutes with him, but the exercises he had me do were so fantastic!! 

Lastly, we had a masterclass today with Julian Glover who plays Grand Maester Pycelle in Game of Thrones and has made a huge name for himself in theatre, film, and television. What an honor it was to be in such an accomplished actor's presence! All 90 students met up with him behind Addison's Walk in a large field surrounded by trees and one very curious tree sculpture (pic below). Such a beautiful, inspiring space to work in! We focused on Act III Scene II of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," a HUGE crowd scene in which Brutus first convinces the people that him and his friends had to kill Caesar for the good of Rome; but then, by the scene's end, Mark Antony manages to completely reverse the crowd's opinion of the assassination, leaving the Romans to go murder the conspirators. Julian Glover talked about how remarkable this scene is and of the genius Shakespeare 

was in writing it, and he then randomly gave out roles/lines and we ultimately did the entire scene there in the grassy field. As the crowd, we yelled in protest, then cried over Caesar's body, then rallied in mutiny against the conspirators. 90 of us actors bringing this crowd scene to life in a natural, not theatrical, space. It felt so real! It was such an incredible experience with such an incredible actor as the director! 

The field where we had the masterclass

Wow, just now realizing how long this post is. Did not I intend to post such thorough updates like this but hey, I shouldn't have expected anything less from myself! Haha!

Well that's all for now! More to come soon! :)