London

Delights 

The first sight that met him when he peered in through the window was the most horrific thing he would ever see in his life:

Her face was turned toward him, but there was no life. Her nose had been cut off, as well as her eyelids and eyebrows. The skin of her cheeks and chin had been shaven clean off, and her throat cut so deeply only a few strands connected her head to the rest of her body. Her breasts had been removed with circle incisions, one put beside her head and the other by one of her feet. 

Her abdomen had been cut and splayed open from her genitals to her breastbone. All the intestine had been taken out and dumped on the table next to the bead. The skin on the inside of her thighs had been cut off, the femur bone visible in one place.

Barely human anymore, she resembled something one may find on a butcher’s workbench. 

That was the description of the murdered Mary Jane Kelly, given by the guide at the end of our tour. Mary Jane was the last murder assumed and credited to have been Jack the Rippers last, and by far most gruesome, murder.

***

We got on the half-ten train from Southend to London to see the third year combat and physical theatre’s show cases. A showing created solely for the purpose of showing off the students in the third year, where agents come to look for possible new stars. 

When this was over, we all went to a pub to celebrate a show case well done (and heavens were the third year combats’ show case done well!). But while some went home after a while, and others stayed to get smashed and subsequently terribly hung-over the next day, me and four others did something else.  

The last two weeks before Easter we have priority in devised. While with the Shakespeare priority, where we get a taste of making a show with a director, devised is to give us a try at creating a show entirely on our own from the bottom up. Our theme is The Themes, but apart from this we make everything. My class has been divided in three groups for this, and in my group we have decided to focus on the Jack the Ripper murders. And so, since we were in London, we thought hey, why not? and went on a Jack the Ripper tour. It cost ten pounds a ticket, began at 7.30, lasted over two hours (that we were not prepared for) and we weren’t back in Southend until close to 23.30. It was a bittersweet experience. Fun (the guide was amazing), but exhausting (walking around London’s streets at night for over two hours…) 

And that is what happened Thursday, the 27^th of February. 

Heater

And Hot Water...

You don’t value it at half eleven at night, after a long school day, until you’ve been without it for two days. Because the house’s boiler broke. Again.

Double Fireball Whiskey

And Apple Juice, 

At Spoons. That is how we are celebrating, praising the fact we’re finally done, and drinking our sorrows away (I joke). Really, it hasn’t been all bad, it truly hasn’t. Plenty fun has been had, and to perform the show itself was fun – as acting before an audience always is. 

What am I talking about? Nothing other than the Shakespeare project every 2^nd year has in their second term. Let me elaborate: 

Last week we had our Shakespeare priority week, which means a whole week of doing Shakespeare from 09.00 - 18.10 every day. Prior to this we have also had six hours of Shakespeare every Wednesday and Friday this term, building up to the show we just finished tonight. 

What happens is that we get a director, and for us, the school hired in someone from the outside whom has been working with us all term. We were divided in three groups, handed each our plays, and the director chose a few scenes from the plays for us to do. These were in the end put together to form a one hour and twenty minute show. My group had the play As You Like It, and I played Celia.

Now, it didn’t start going downhill until priority week – until then, it was really quite exciting. Our first “proper” show, a sort of taster for what we’re doing in third year. However, our director fell extremely ill and was gone the Friday before the priority week, and then was absent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Four days in which we were left completely to our own devices. The school had no time or resources to call in someone else, or give us a teacher to work with us instead – and since a director’s work is kind of personal, it is hard for someone else to step in. 

This was extremely frustrating. Of course, you can’t foretell when anyone is going to be ill and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it, so really, we understand it was all just a really unfortunate turn of events. …really unfortunate. As a result, our showing, which were supposed to be Thursday night, Friday daytime and Friday night of Priority week got pushed to this Thursday night and tonight. 

We understand, we do, unfortunate turn of events, and all that. But going back to normal lessons this week, having no proper dress rehearsal and then suddenly doing our show was… well… by the time we showed it we were just tired of it all and all the excitement about this project had left us. It didn’t help that there was a 3^rd year show in the theatre at the exact same time, so our showing on Thursday only had 7 spectators… two of which left halfway through to see the 3^rd year show… 

Well. What else can be said? Unfortunate turn of events. 

 

(Tonight we had a bigger audience though, and it was a lot of fun to perform it, and the initial process was exciting but… yeah… )