Oh hi.

Anyone remember me? No. That's ok. In fact, maybe that's good. It's been a while, but I keep writing blog posts in my head. Funny because they always come out really well when I'm walking down the street or on a bus or plane or train (which I seem to have been doing a lot of lately) but when I sit down to write they're pretty shit. But that's ok. I still want to write. I guess it has something to do with what a wise Brit told me not too long ago. In a BADA masterclass, Kelly (I'm too old to play Goneril but am still a bomb actress) Hunter said: you have to stay creative. This business [acting] can drain you and it's so important that you stay creative, no matter what you do: whether you write, or paint, or sew, stay creative for yourself. And that's what I want to do.

By the way I totally did not pick up all this Britishisms living overseas. I've just been watching too much Skins since I got home. Do you ever find that when you've been reading/watching or whatever something a lot you starting talking, writing and even thinking in their style. Like after reading Shakespeare I start to think in Shakespeare language. And sometimes even in verse after Moliere. Just me? Ok.

Anyway, I've been a lot of places these past few months:

London


Rome


Florence


Venice


Paris


Cambridge


Bruges


Brussels


Ghent


Amsterdam


Antwerp


New York City

Ithaca

Evanston

Chicago


(Eyjafjallajoekull caused an unfortunate bypass of Madrid, Barcelona, and Copenhagen)

And seen a shit-ton of theater (some amazing and some not so):
Twelfth Night
Nation
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (with James Earl Jones)
Licking Wounds
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor
The Misanthrope (with Keira Knightley)
The Caretaker
Waiting for Godot (with Sir Ian Mckellen)
Red
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal
The Habit of Art
Jerusalem (with Mark Rylance)
Dunsinane
A Midsummer Night's Dream (with Dame Judi Dench)
Money
King Lear (with Greg Hicks)
Taming of the Flu (at Second City)

{I could expound open these for ages but I kept a journal for that in London and it's late and the list is long. Therefore I will refrain}

But, anyway, I think I've spent a lot of my time, especially since term ended, running away. Yeah, I learned a lot over there, about acting and about myself, and I'm happy to say that I am more confidant and comfortable with who I am, or at least moving in that direction, and I don't know if that would have happened without going abroad, but, since April 15th, I've been facing something terrifying looming ahead of me: an empty summer. I have never in my life had an empty, unplanned summer. There was always summer camp, or internships, or at least a steady babysitting job and some classes all set up for me to do before school was even out. Sure, I would get a little vacation time, but there was always something waiting on the other side. Granted, unlike my many recently graduated friends, I do have school -- one final year -- waiting for me at the end of August, but I have four, now three, empty months of summer in between. Sure in some ways I used the last month productively, but it was always with a clause of going away for the weekend which somehow prevented me from planning anything permenant. I've been away 3 out of 4 weekends so far and am gone this next weekend too. Then I have jury duty... and then, what? I suppose in many ways my summer is filling up as it goes. I have thus far managed a few auditions (which nothing came of of course) and bartending school among plenty of fun times with friends. But to look at my calander and see it almost completely empty beginning in mid-June is frightening. Perhaps because it is giving me a glipse of what things may look like next summer, when it is all for real. Because, if I don't actually find a job or something useful to do with myself this summer, it's not such a big deal afterall. If I don't next summer... then what? I suppose it is good that I am having this realization now. Getting a practice run for the real world. But it still scares me.

Point being, or at least one of them, that one of the ways I want to fill this great void is with creativity. Because I have a need to make things. I have a need to make blank spaces full. On my calander, on a page or computer screen, whatever. Even if it's crap, it's crap that I made. I have these need to feel like when the day is done, I've left something behind. And the only way to do that is to create.

Aside, when you're busy being scared about voids and other things of that matter it sometimes helps to have two new kittens to curl up with and make you feel comfortable and unconditionally loved.

{Darwin and Orwell}

And that's a fact.

So here's to a summer of creativity, kittens, and maybe a few more episodes of Skins every now and then.

Cheers.
Freddie

Quite a lot of stuff

Sort of disappeared again there for a while (sorry mom. haha.). I was working on a post a couple of days ago but then my computer decided to get cranky and scare me by pretending to crash and when I got it back in working order I had lost my blogging motivation. Do not worry though, all is well with it now, and I am still love love loving it here. (With the exception of my bed perhaps. You can feel all the springs poking you when you lie or sit on it. It's excellent.)

Anyway, since I last wrote, I saw:
A. Cat on a hot tin roof

Which was freakin' fabulous. Such a stellar cast. Later that week we had a master class (question and answer session) with Phylicia Rashad (Yes, Momma Cosby!) and Joe Mydell (who I'm pretty sure was as impressed with Phylicia as the rest of us). That woman is a profit. Seriously. She is so full of wisdom. She should be a motivational speaker or something. You know... in her spare time when she's not busy acting on The West End or Broadway or TV...

"Life is like a classroom, and each of us makes our own lesson plan --
make yours a good one"

Legit.

B. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

A really cool Tom Stoppard play with a full orchestra on stage. Brilliantly executed. It was in the same theater that Nation was but this time we were in the front row! Yay day seats!

C. The Misanthrope

With none other than Ms. Kiera Knightly who I am sad to report was terrible. Kiera, I suppose it's not your fault they made you do an American accent (why oh why oh why???) which certainly did not aid in your performance, but you really should stick to film. Also, you should eat something. How about some of what I made for dinner tonight? It was really good. Especially the sweet potato. My flatmate was so impressed she had me take a picture. I did not object.

{homemade/improvised vegetarian chili (sort of.) - I was forced to attempt my own because I swear all chili in this country is con carne - with greek yog, guac, cheddar cheese, a baked sweet potato and nan (yes I do mix my ethnicities. So what? London knows how to do Indian food)}

Next time I should really make my own guac too. The waitrose (excellent supermarket which is conveniently about 10 feet from my door... though it's further than the nearest pub and betting parlor! haha) guac was ok but one thing London does not know how to do is Mexican food. They think tortilla chips and Doritos are the same thing. Legit. I don't think regular tortilla chips exist here. If you get nachos at a pub they are made with Doritos. And like, artificial cheese sauce. A lot of my friends think these are good. They are not.

Anyway, back to The Misanthrope. I think my dramatic criticism teacher (The fabulous Christopher Cook - wish I had class with this man more than once a week!) said it best: "The show literally sank under the weight of it's own conceptual cleverness." Yep. Pretty much. A shame really. It had so much potential to be good: a witty, modernized, self-referential script, a cool set and costumes, some talented actors, a big celebrity name. But alas: fail.

We also attempted to see Jerusalem this weekend, which is a new play and has gotten nothing but stellar reviews, but the guy on the phone lied to my roomie about what time we needed to get there to get day tickets so we shall have to try again soon. Day seats, btw, are usually 10GBP and can only be gotten on the day of the show. Kind of London's version of Broadway lottos and student rush. I do however have tickets to go see Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellan next weekend! (How often do you get to see a show in which one of the actors has been knighted?) Makes me kind of not sad to have missed the Roundabout version with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin. (Ok, so that would have been pretty cool too, but still).

Anyway, after that ticket fail we ended up getting fish and chips at a huge and crazy looking pub with a tree inside (ok not a real one... at least, I don't think so).

We then explored London's Chinatown for all of 5 minutes. Sorry London, New York has you hardcore beat on this one too. I love you, but your Chinatown sucks. Two of my friends then got solicited by some Swedish twins. Seriously, Europeans are so much more forward than Americans. On Thursday night I got drinks with two of my fellow Cornellians who are also in London and one of them got stopped on the street by a Londoner who told her she was just "too cute to pass by without saying something." We asked him for a recommendation of somewhere to get dinner and he told us to follow a street to an alleyway and then knock on a manhole cover and say "fi-fie-foe-fum" to get let in to a secret locale. We promptly parted ways and ended up at a creperie a few blocks away. haha.

Wow... this post is getting long... guess that's what I get (or you get?) for the long wait.

Anyway, in an effort to keep including a little fashion on this blog, and also in an effort (which I begun yesterday) to take pictures of people while I am here and not just buildings/things, here's what my friend Kate and I looked before going out last night. We're... uh... mirroring each other because we are cool theater people and because we matched. Completely unintentionally.

{Topshop versus Primark. The battle.}
(my dress from Topshop, Kate's from Primark)

Primark is this super huge, super cheap, crazy clothing store which seems like it's full of amazing things, but shopping there is a serious battle ('cause it is HOT and CROWDED) and nothing seems to fit/look right on me so all of my trips there have thus far been fails. There are some boots I'm thinking about going back for but they weren't actually that cheap so I have a feeling I could do better. Some of my friends have had great success there though..

Oh I also forgot to mention that I stopped by the British Museum last weekend after a welcome meeting at the Cornell-Brown-Penn UK Centre. I'll have to go back though since I didn't realize they closed early on Saturdays and ended up with only about an hour there. I did, however, see the Rosetta Stone, as well as The Enlightenment room, which was really kick-ass.

It was also really cool to be at the museum at closing. It made me feel like I was in "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler."

Ok, I think I'm pretty close to having covered all the important stuff. There has also been a lot of going out dancing (to clubs and pubs) and a pinkberry imitator called Snog. Good name, fro-yo not as good as pinkberry.


Oh yeah, and then there are my classes. I'm currently working on some Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet of course) in Shakespeare and Cecily from The Importance of Being Earnest in High Comedy. My teachers are totally full of wisdom too. Not only does Ian, the dean of BADA and my Shakespeare teacher, love my floral docs (haha), but he comes up with gems like "life is understood backwards but lived forwards" during class. Um... what? Amazing. My high comedy teacher, Madeleine, is also probably one of the most fabulous, crazy, flirtatious, and intelligent people I have ever met. I have learned so much from her already!

Ok. I've spent far too much time writing this. I should go memorize lines and read some Mother Courage. Oh Brecht. I must confess I don't really get you. You are pretty cool though. More involving than Chekov at least ;)

However, just in case this wasn't enough for you, some of my friends here are doing a hilarious mocumentary about their time in London/at BADA. They posted their Pilot and First Episode today and so far it is great. They're calling it "Real Life London."

Pilot:


Episode 1:


My friend from Cornell, X, who's studying at UCL has also posted a vlog, in which he discusses London's fail at Mexican food (salsa) and the creepy hollow spot in his wall:


I'm feeling like maybe I need to get up on this video thing too.

Alright, that is really all for now,

Cheers!
Freddie

P.S. Sorry for a lack of blog reading/comment responding. Maybe I will bring my computer to school tomorrow and do some of that during the long break we have in the middle of the day. I also kind of want (need) to do work, and want to read my book and go in to Camden Town again... so we shall have to see ;) haha

The Tate was Great.

Some of my favorites:

The Balka installation

Therrin: table and four chairs:


Parker: 30 pieces of Silver:


Kiefer's artist room:


Natural History Part 1 (Mushrooms) by Twombly:


The Entire City by Ernst:


Therrin's Red Room:


The Photography of Robert Frank

And SO much more!

Cheers!
Freddie

Hit the ground running

Wow. Talk about jumping right in. This week has been crazy, but I am having an absolute blast! My classes are everything I could ask for, the days are long and exhausting, and the people are simply wonderful. My schedule looks like this:

Mondays:
Voice 9-10:30, All-school meeting 1:30-1:45, High Comedy 4:15-6:15
and every other week a 30 minute private tutorial (for monologue work and such) in one of those long breaks.

Tuesdays:
Voice 9-10:30, Movement 10:45-11:45, Stage Fighting 12:30-3:15, Theatre History 3:30-5:30

Wednesdays:
Movement 10:30-11:30, Shakespeare (acting) 11:45-1:45, Modern Physical Theatre 2:15-4:00, High Comedy 4:15-6:15

Thursdays:
Dramatic criticism 9-11, High Comedy 11:15-1:15, Modern Physical 2:30-4:15, Shakespeare 4:30-6:30

Fridays:
Shakespeare 10:45-12:45, and then sometimes a Master Class in the afternoon

So, as you can see- we've really got it packed in there. And I'm already doing a whole lot of scene work (which translates to homework) which is also great! And once a week (at least- we can see more on our own if we want of course) we rush straight to the theater from school. This week it was Twelfth Night on Tuesday and next week it's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Monday -- I'm so excited!

Twelfth Night was good, but it was no Shakes in the Park. Especially the music. The music from the production in the park was so much better.

Anyway, in addition to our packed schedule, it's about a 40 minute walk to school and then another 40 minutes home at night. However, the walk is really quite nice (especially now that the ground is thawing--temps are up to the 40s Fahrenheit, it's practically spring! haha) and I thought I'd give you a little tour of the journey.

{We have the cutest houses on our street. I want the white house with the pink bike to be mine.}


{We pass by a lot of really really old looking things, like "The Montagu Mansions"}


{and some other "notable" landmarks like the Sherlock Holmes hotel and Madame Tussauds, haha}


{and then we enter the park. Everything is more regal here, I swear}


{However, the best things in the park are probably "Cow and Coffee Bean" and "The Honest Sausage." I've yet to actually visit either but that's gotta happen}


{Almost there! Note the melting snowmen. Also, doesn't it look like they're running away from school? ;) }


{BADA! We are here!}

P.S. I did visit Camden on Monday and I loved it. The cold weather helped me keep my hands in my pockets though and all I bought was a £10 cashmere sweater. I'll be back though, you know it. This Monday, however, I may have to use my long break (no tutorial this week either) to hit up Whole Foods. Seems silly I know, but it's so close to school I don't know if I can resist ;)

In other news: last night I saw a show called Nation--a super cool (though a tad cheesy) folktale come to life with the most amazing "special effects" created with people and screens and puppets. It was so visually stunning--followed by partying it up with BADA folk at one of our friendly neighborhood pubs: The Duke of York. They're so nice there!

And today: The Tate Modern. But that was so awesome it deserves a post of it's own.

Cheers!
Freddie

I still need my morning coffee but this is my cup of tea.

Well, I'm in London! I arrived at my flat around 10am Friday morning and was the first one here so I was able to snag the largest room for my roomie and I -- score! After a little unpacking, the girls from my flight and I (who happen to both be in the flat across the hall) wandered around a bit and found some food. My first meal in London: why, Indian food of course! When we returned my roommate had arrived (safe to say: she's a baller.) The rest of the day was filled with more unpacking and errands (like grocery shopping. No canned pumpkin=sad. Things like Cadbury light mousse (99p for a pack of four!)=happy) and ended with drinks at the Victory, the pub which is literally across the street from our flats before conking out at the extremely late hour of 10pm.

Saturday was another day for errands and exploring- I hit up Boots for toiletries and Orange for a cheapo phone, among others. One of the year-long students, who is the 5th member of our flat (lucky girl has the only single in the program!) also showed us a charming bookstore called Daunt's where I purchased a handy dandy, but not too obtrusive, London guidebook with foldout maps. We entertained the notion of going out again in the evening but with a 9:30 departure call for the morning, eventually decided against it.

This morning we were up and out (after I made my first English-style quick oats- with milk and cooked in the microwave- so fluffy and delicious!) right on time for a bus tour of London. Our guide was super cute and funny and we got a nice tour of the major sites, mostly from inside the warm bus, but we did get out for a few photo ops. I definitely have some places I want to go back too -- The Tate Modern and the Victoria & Albert Museum (we used photographs from their costume exhibits in my costume history class last semester!) anyone?

{marble arch, Buckingham palace, (the demon barber of...) fleet street,
St. Paul's: Mary Poppins... feed the birds!, requisite phone booth photo, Tower Bridge,
Tower of London , the London eye (must hit this up too!), Big Ben}

After the tour we went back to BADA for lunch and then had our orientation session. We found out our groups and classes and all that jazz. I can't believe we start tomorrow... I'm waking up bright and early (at 7am!) so we have time to find our way there. It's kind of a long walk to the school but walking really is the best way to get there. I have voice, my bi-weekly private acting tutorial, and High Comedy, as well as our weekly all school meeting which is held on Monday afternoons.

Anyway, no outfit photos yet. As you can see, the sky is appropriately grey even in the daytime (and it gets dark at like 4-4:30), and I have yet to breech the whole "I take pictures of myself" thing with my flatmates. haha. They are all really awesome though and we've done a lot of chatting and bonding thus far ;)

I have a feeling this blog is going to become more about chronicling my London adventures than capturing my style this semester, especially since I was so limited in what I brought with me :P. haha. However, some (or a lot) of my adventures are bound to be fashion related... I mean, you know me. I have some downtime between classes tomorrow (a lot of awkward shortish breaks actually because of the meeting and the tutorial) so I'm hoping I'll be able to hit up Camden for some exploring since BADA is right near there.

Cheerio!
Freddie

London Here I Come!

I have been accepted into The British American Drama Academy for the Spring 2010 semester. I am so excited! I'll be in London from early January to mid-April, so any suggestions of where to go/shop/eat/etc as well as for other places in Europe I should travel during my mid-term break and possibly after my semester ends as well are greatly appreciated! :)


{vintage red sweater, american apparel skirt, h&m jacket and tights,
steve madden flats, street fair scarf}

...at the time of this picture, I had not yet been informed of my acceptance. Hence the lack of ecstasy on my face ;)

Also... how the heck is a girl supposed to pack her clothes? I'm goning to be forced to be selective. This is going to be TOUGH!

If you need something to put a smile on your face too: here's this, it's great.


For now, back to the grind. Guess I still have to finish this semester in Ithaca, huh?

Regards,
Freddie