Classes

SOoo

I just finished my 2nd week of classes and it's been interesting.

Culture and Performance: Not my first choice of a class but it turns out to be pretty interesting. The main question of the first class was what is culture and can you have a personal culture? (the eventual question to the second being a no). This past week we looked at sports and how audiences/spectators react. It's a heavily based discussion class which makes it really interesting because its not just a lecture... Next week is Indigenous Australian Theatre which should be interesting out of sheer randomness.

Elements of Theatre History-Irish Theatre: The first day was okay. The teacher I think knows a lot but doesn't know how to teach it. He asks questions about the reading and stuff like that but he mumbles alot and he's not captivating in anyway that you can follow his train of thought or tell what is important and whats just an anecdote about the author. Hopefully it will improve or I may go crazy. It should get more interesting because we're looking at the revolutionary period between 1890 and 1926 so their should hopefully be some more compelling discussions.

That covers Monday and Tuesday. Their my only really heavy academic classes and their not even that heavy.

London Theatre: This class isn't until 4 o'clock on Wed. which is nice because then I have all day to explore or catch up on work. The class itself is cool since all we do is spend an hour discussing what we saw last week and then go see a show that night. First week we saw Brief Encounter which was aaamazing in every aspect. It's based on a movie which is based on a play so I highly recommend the show or the movie. This week was a show called Mine that was about this successful couple who couldn't have a baby so they were fostering a baby whose mother was an alcoholic/drug addict/ prostitute who was going into rehab and then left and essentially lost rights to the baby but the foster mother had issues wth her mother and started questioning who really has rights to this baby. It had good aspects of it but it wasn't overwhelmingly good.

Shakespeare's London: It's crazy. The professor's a little whacky. Some of the quotes from this class so far include:
(While discussing Ptolemy's view of the universe) "And we'll call this one the Super Bowl and play Baseball in it once a year"

"Five is the magic number; does anybody have a banana in the room?"

We're starting with Two Gentlemen of Verona and then looking at Richard II, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet and Jew of Malta (not shakespeare) we're also taking trips to stratford upon avon and such. It's a fun class.

So far my friends and I have booked a trip to Scotland for next weekend and soon to be booked should be Spain and Italy for reading week (beginning of November) and Dublin and tons of other stuff.

Thats been about it so far.

This afternoon I think I'm going into central to walk around but who knows...