A Midwinter's Experiment

Way back in the fall, one of our professors made an off-handed comment about matching actor energies with character energies, and used an example of casting one of us in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

As many of you may know, I love the hypothetical casting game. Plays, Disney characters, animals, doesn't matter. Give me a group of people and roles to cast them in and I will have a blast.

Therefore, I stopped paying attention to the lecture (Sorry Peppy) and proceeded to cast our cohort in the roles of Midsummer. It worked out amazingly well. So well in fact, that I started brewing an idea of how we could actually put on this show, as a bit of an experiment.

Long story short, I got all 11 others on bored, secured space for us to rehearse over winter break, and we created our own version of the show.

A bit different from your usual Midsummer...

Oberon (me) and Titania (Rowan)

We wanted to use the well-known text and ensemble nature of the show to put into practice things we'd been learning so far in our program.

We cut about half the text, keeping only what was necessary, and focusing on how we could tell the story physically.

First example of a pretty major cut to the script: Egeus. He's gone. Well, not really. He takes the form of a letter:

Lysander (Robbie), Hermia (Nicole), and Demetrius (Jared) with letter

We were divided more-or-less into three groups, Lover, Fairies, Mechanicals (players). Each group focused on a particular movement vocabulary as a starting point for staging.

The lovers used a combination of stage combat (fight directed by Rowan):

Demetrius and Lysander

and contact improvisation...

Helena (Chloe) and Demetrius

The lovers also took a really realistic, youthful and raw approach to the characters.

And there was lots of fighting. It was awesome.

Lysander and Demetrius

Everyone got involved:

Hermia tries to fly!!

The Fairies took an acrobatic approach:

Puck (Mickey) and Oberon

Also, since there are only 12 of us, the fairies became four actors: Oberon, Titania, Puck, and Fairy/Peaseblossom/Cobweb/Moth/Mustardseed/allrolledintooneschizophrenicfairy.

Puck and Fairy (Sophie)

There was a lot of climbing on each other and upside-down stuff

Titania and Oberon

lots of climbing...

Puck and Oberon

*Are you looking closely? Some of these photos were taken at our dress rehearsal, and some during our performance, so costumes and tattoos change a bit :-P

We also condensed the mechanicals from 6 people to 4. They started their work from a slapstick approach:

Quince (Scotty), Flute (Taylan), Bottom (Francesca), Starveling (Renia)

Notice, an actual slapstick.

Flute and Quince

We really wanted to (and had to) keep design elements simple, so we got creative with costume accents and props

Bottom [as ass] and Starveling

The mechanicals were ridiculous. And hilarious!

Flute and Bottom, with Starveling behind

Some of the most exciting parts were when character from different worlds (and thus, different movement vocabularies) interacted. This lead to bizarre fusions like acrobatic-combat or acrobatic-slapstick:

Bottom [as ass] and Titania, one of my favorite photos!

Since we put the whole show together in about 2 weeks, it wasn't perfect, but it was a really great experiment, and I think we were all pretty pleased with what we came up with :)

If you're interested in watching the whole show, you can! It's all online, thanks to G. Ben Fred's cinematic skills.

Speaking of skills, a big thanks to Katie Dingle for taking all of these photos!

Wow, this suddenly became a closing night speech. I should wrap up. I will leave you with one last photo of Lysander and Demetrius. But mainly Lysander:

It Snowed Here :)

Since it is now just about springtime, I figured I should probably make a post about winter... at some point...

IT SNOWED HERE!! (i put that in all caps in case you didn't read the title of this post. you're welcome) Apparently snow isn't terribly common here, though also not terribly rare (wow, that sentence tells you a lot...) but it was exciting nonetheless.

It was also beautiful. This is what I saw out my window when I woke up:

I allowed myself plenty of extra time on my walk to school (yes, we still had class), since I would have to brave the hill up to the villa, aaaaand because i was bringing my camera, which meant a few distractions and detours were in order...

See the statue in distance in that photo? It's this guy:

and his lion. naturally.

Duomo in snow!!

Duomo from a distance, lookin all pretty and stuff...

Everything was so white and grey that this house seemed like a beacon

Aqueducts are cool in any season

Chloe and Sophie had gotten to school early and build snowmen! This one is Chloe's:

Growing up in L.A., Sophie had never even seen snow before. She made a Sophie-sized snowman :-P

Look at that. just look. at that. woah.

Looking out the other side of the villa you can see the farmhouse, where I lived last semester, which also looks beautiful in snow

I love how all of the white snow turns blue as it gets darker:

aaaaand of course, a sunset :)

The Holidays Continue...with Family!

MY FAMILY CAME TO ITALY FOR CHRISTMAS!

Well, not ACTUAL Christmas, but we've established in previous years that we can have our traditional Christmas festivities on days other than the 25th. This year, we proved we could keep traditions alive even on another continent!

We stayed in the Farmhouse (my home of last semester) for a week, spanning our late Christmas (Dec 27), my birthday, and new years. It was was perfect.

We weren't able to get a christmas tree, so Emma made one out of felt and ribbons and packed it in her suitcase! It fit perfectly in the window, and once we added the lights I bought in France and the presents Airport Security didn't decide to unwrap, it was (yet another) lovely little (makeshift) tree!

I was too wrapped up in Christmas to take photos. Sorry! Same with my birthday. We can rely on Emma and Chris for those I think. (side note, i just typed "Emma and Christ." It really was nice of Christ to take photos of us while we celebrated his birthday...)

Moving on! On New Year's Eve we spent the day in Florence! (I didn't bring my camera so the rest are ipod photos) Emma and made a distinct effort to see the sunset from the Ponte Vecchio:

Before it got too dark we headed up the Piazzale Michelangelo to see the view from up there. (Are you remembering these spots from earlier blog posts???)

We thought that view looked like Africa a little.

Here's the city as the sun is setting:

And after the sun has set:

Emma, Chris, Tate, and I spent the night in the city, getting to ring in the new year at public parties that were happening in EVERY piazza in Florence! We made lots of friends from lots of different places and drank until our frozen hands didn't bother us any more!

Here is a really cool building outside of which we began our evening:

Alas, no photos from the New Years festivities.

HOWEVER, on January 2, we headed to Rome to do a bit of sight-seeing there. Em and i wandered through Trastevere and down by the bank of the river. She gets credit for pointing out this sight - where 3 bridges are visible simultaneously:

As we have learned, lots of Italian cities like to put up Christmas lights along major streets. Rome's are by FAR the best. Via Corso, the biggest central street in the city, was draped with a never-ending river of green, white, and red (conveniently both festive and nationalistic!)

Seriously, it went on forever:

And thus concludes my oxford-comma-filled post, and the saga that was my holiday season! Happy 2012!!

French Christmas

For the first time I can remember, I spent Christmas without my family. But being with great friends in a chateau in France ain't a bad alternative! The six of us had a delicious pot-luck style dinner on Christmas eve:

(Taylan get's credit for the roaring fire in the stove in the background of that photo. It was actually so hot we had to open the windows a bit.)

I made a green bean and carrot casserole, which I had never made, but it turned out pretty good! We had pasta, lox and cheese, and lots of other delicious things :)

Self-timer group shot!

I was pretty bummed that we didn't have a Christmas tree so I bought a couple strings of lights and got creative with a laundry-drying rack and a fire log! Nicole made a great star for the top out of clothespins and a game piece she found.


It turned out wonderfully and sitting by it in the dark was the perfect way to end a lovely Christmas Eve.

The next morning we slept innnnnnn (due to luggage and wallet limitations, we didn't have any gifts to open so we didn't have to wake up early and race to the tree). And even though we were still full from our huge dinner the night before, we had a mission. And that mision was French Toast!

Nicole and Ryan took the reigns on cooking the French Toast and scrambled eggs:

We used a LOT of eggs...

While they cooked, the kids (Taylan and Sophie) played in the living room:

Yes, there IS a swing hanging in the living room. We're not quite sure why, but we certainly enjoyed it!

When breakfast was ready and mimosas were poured, we were pretty proud of yet another beautiful meal...

...which we dominated:

And in case you were wondering, Santa did pay us a visit on Christmas Morning. He was on our syrup bottle!

Little known fact: Santa wears plaid.

Merry Christmas!

We Play Outside!

When you have beautiful friends at a beautiful chateau with beautiful weather, you have to wander and play outside!

Oh yeah, and a beautiful cat, who really wanted out attention. It's name was Tamasham. or Tamaram. Or Tapioca. we couldn't remember.

There was a lot to explore. Ryan likes to climb on things:

Nicole and Sophie spent quite a bit of time playing with Tullula.

I like climbing things too. So does Tumbleweed. Nicole got a great action shot of both of us:

Trailertrash climbed higher than me, just to show off:

Ryan joined us in the tree, swinging around and such:

While the girls found a stage-like platform (yes, this is on the grounds of the chateau), and naturally, Contact Improv happend...


Wandering around some paths leading from the chateau up the hills I came across some cool plants:

There was even a bamboo forest!

and wildlife! Look! A beaver was here!!

I took one walk when it was still cold out in the morning, and found some cool frosted dew:

and some pretty stellar christmas decorations:

One day we went to a small town nearby, found a park/playground with the BEST CLIMBING TREE EVER. First of all, it is giant. Second, there are branches low to the ground. Third, there are so many branches you can just keeeep climbing. Ryan and I literally climbed almost to the top. probably to about where the branch in the foreground of the photo is pointing. We had to stop though, because there was a giant bee's nest, probably about 2 feet in diameter, hanging about 10 feet above us at the top of the tree. It was awesome.

That was an ipod photo, by the way. So is the next one, which I took after we'd left Malerarauges and were on our way back to Marseille. We had to pull off the highway to pee in a ditch, but we had this great view while we peed!

Preeeetty.

Also pretty was the cat, Television. So here is another photo of her:

And with that last photo of Tipsy Kitty (our favorite name for her), I end this post. Thanks for reading!