Week 6: Back in London

The program was back in high-gear following the mid-term break. Students had a busy week of excursions, starting with Richard II starring Kevin Spacey in a powerful performance at the Old Vic Theatre on Tuesday night. The range of emotions that Spacey brought to the character of Richard was extraordinary, and the modern-dress production brilliantly invoked our media-saturated politics by staging big speeches--for instance, John of Gaunt's peroration on "This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle"--before the camera and then recycling them as video sound bites. Click here for a student review of the play.




The following morning, we met at Shakespeare's Globe for a tour and workshop on Richard II, which the Globe produced in period costume two years ago. We got a backstage look at the facility and learned about the quirks of performance here, with pigeons, rain, or helicopters sometimes impacting the show. It is a pliable, richly interactive space for actors and audience. Our guide, Trevor, took us to a rehearsal room where we sat in a circle and discussed modern vs. classical performance of Shakespeare. We read John of Gaunt's speech aloud in relay, line by line, then phrase by phrase, to test its rhythms.

Wednesday afternoon: The Arts class visited the London Central Mosque, where a guide explained to them various tenets of Islam.

Thursday am: St. Paul's Cathedral. Surveying the tomb of Admiral Lord Nelson, slain at the battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago, students were surprised to see a full-dress Nelson impersonator walking in the cathedral.

Thursday afternoon: the Maritime London class met at the Museum in Docklands for a look at the culture and changes that marine commerce brought to London during the age of sail. Two outstanding exhibits: a spectacular magnification of the Rheinbeck Panorama, which depicts a richly textured urban expanse and an unruly press of vessels gathered to unlade at the Pool of London c1800, when the Docklands were being built to manage the traffic; and models of the old London Bridge, in medieval and early modern versions. We also enjoyed a lively open-air presentation on pirates and privateers from two of our students.

More photos:
In-house lecture at the Globe
Students take the stage and ham it up
Docklands Pirate princesses
A pub break in the "Sailortown" exhibit at Docklands Museum

Next week

Mid-Term Break

It's hard to believe we've passed the halfway mark...Tempus fugit! Over the week long mid-term break, students scattered across Europe (and one even made it home to Oregon). Their destinations included:

Greece: Athens, Mykonos, Crete, Patmos, Rhodes, Santorini, Corfu, Paxos, Antipaxos, Parga
Turkey: Dalaman, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Marmaris, Dalyan, Kusadasi
Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan
France: Paris, Marseille, Montpellier
Spain: Barcelona, Granada, Seville
Ireland: Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Killarney, Cork
Scotland: Edinburgh, Glasgow
Germany: Hamburg, Munich
Hungary: Budapest
Czech Republic: Prague

My wife Nancy and I celebrated our 9th anniversary in Rome, then rented a tiny car and toured Umbria, Tuscany, Liguria and Lombardy. In Chiavari, I was delighted to reconnect with an old friend. Otto Teja was an exchange student at my high school in San Diego in 1965.

Photo of the Day

Florence, Italy

A chance enounter outside the Galleria dell'Accademia: I ran into two pairs of NCSA students travelling through Italy during the mid-term break.

Everyone seemed in good spirits, despite the 2 hour queue
to see Michelangelo's David. -->

We look forward to reconvening in London on the 24th.

Week 4 Recap

Week four, the overnight trip to Stratford-upon-Avon dominated the calendar. On Tuesday, the students took a pub break at two historic taverns, the Jerusalem (1720) and Ye Olde Mitre (1546), the latter mentioned by the poet and playwright Ben Jonson. Thursday Morning we met at Marylebone Station to catch the train for Stratford. Upon arrival, the group split up—half checking into Chadwyns Bed & Breakfast, the rest into the nearby Green Haven. Once settled, we walked into the old town, past many beautiful Tudor and pre-Tudor buildings, including the grammar school where Shakespeare had his early education, to visit the birthplace on Henley Street. This house has been a site of literary pilgrimage since the 18th century. Writers and luminaries including John Keats, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Thomas Hardy have paid their respects here—some, like Sir Walter Scott and the great 19th century actress, Ellen Terry, leaving their signatures etched in the window panes of the birth room. Our next stop was Nash’s House, adjacent to the former site of New Place, the distinguished home purchased by Shakespeare in 1597, where he died in 1616. Only the gardens of New Place survive, and the students enjoyed wandering through them.

After breaking for dinner, we reassembled at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for the evening performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a vivid and colorful production of one of the most popular comedies in the canon. Click here for excerpts from student reviews of the play.


Friday morning after breakfast, we strolled along narrow lanes and through the fields that Shakespeare once traversed to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, a lovely thatched-roof house with great timbers and extensive gardens, where young William wooed Anne. Along with a maze and sculpture walk, the gardens hold many specimens of trees mentioned by Shakespeare, each with a plaque quoting the apt verse, i.e. “Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers bow'd.” After the walk back into town, we paid our respects at Holy Trinity Church on the bank of the Avon, where Shakespeare, Anne, and their daughter, Susannah are all buried before the high altar. Unlike the much trafficked birthplace, this sanctuary held a deeply moving serenity. Many of the students took the occasion to write entries in their journals here. Afterwards, we strolled along the Avon and stopped at the Guild Chapel. During the remaining free time, a few of us took a short river cruise before boarding the train back to London.

More photos:

Outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre
On Henley Street
Students' self-portrait
New Place gardens: 1...2
Shakespeare's grave and monument
Martin Upham, site director and tour guide extraordinaire

Coming up in Week 5

Shot of the Day

Group photo op at Shakespeare's Birthplace. Lots of images from the excursion to Stratford-upon-Avon to post in the week 4 recap....stay tuned.

Shots of the Day

There's a signpost up ahead.

Your next stop...

...the drink.

Week 3 in Review

Monday night we joined an enthusiastic crowd at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for one of the final stagings of an unforgettable show, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Reconceived by director Kathryn Hunter, with two actors playing old and young Pericles, the genial Patrice Naiambana playing Gower as an African tale-teller, a small, versatile band whose sounds ranged from Afro-Caribbean to Eastern Mediterranean, and an acrobatic cast that swung from ropes to perform shipwreck during the storm scenes, it was an engrossing, funny, and powerfully moving production. As groundlings, we stood in the midst of the action. Click here for exerpts of student reviews of the play.


Wednesday morning, having read excerpts from Sir Francis Drake’s voyage around the world (1577-1580), the Maritime London group met in Southwark at the Golden Hinde, a scale replica of Drake’s vessel. Built in the 1970s and filmed in Japan in Shogun, this ship has also circled the globe—presumably via the Panama Canal, not Cape Horn. In the ship’s relatively small size (102 feet in overall length, 20 feet at the beam, the gun-deck only some four feet tall), we were impressed by the grit and tenacity of Elizabethan mariners—not to mention their short stature! After a free-flowing tour, we held our class session in the Great Cabin, where the gentlemen and officers would have gathered for meals and pastimes.




Thursday morning, the entire group met Carol Machin, the former AHA London site-director now teaching the “British Art & Architecture” class, for a tour of Westminster Abbey. It has been the site of coronations since William the Conqueror’s in 1066, as well as many important funerals, including Princess Diana’s in 1997. The Abbey is crowded with the tombs and monuments of English monarchs and luminaries from Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I to Sir Laurence Olivier and Dame Peggy Ashcroft. This year marks the 1000th anniversary of the birth of Edward the Confessor, the Abbey’s founder, enshrined just behind the high altar.

More photos from week 3:

Globe Theatre, following Pericles
Golden Hinde: 1...2...3...4

Shot of the Day

High noon in Westminster. A minute later, we asked a bobby stationed beneath the tower for the time... he actually checked his watch, then laughed, "You got me!"