All the world's a stage...

And all the men and women merely players. ~ William Shakespeare

On Monday morning our Shakespeare class went to see the... GLOBE! It was SO cool. I was excited beforehand, but I wasn't prepared for how awed I would be when I got in there. We met up with our tour guide at the box office and she gave us some background information about the Globe. Then she lead us into the theatre from the ground floor. Once in there, I just looked up at the stage, at the steep levels of seats, at the ceiling (which isn't there), at the dark, rich marble-looking decorations (I'm not sure if they were actual marble or not) and large pillars and spun around slowly to take it all in. It's beautiful. And perfect. It's also very intimate--quite small really. But it's so awe-inspiring. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but (because of how long I've been performing/reading Shakespeare and because of how often I've imagined this theatre) my breath was almost taken away by the experience. Anne (my roomie), Jamie (a girl on the program), and I couldn't stop smiling and exclaiming about how amazing it was that we were there. There was work being done to the stage in preparation for the next show, Romeo and Juliet, which we're going to see! XD

Seating at the Globe (notice the sunlight coming in, because there's no roof!).

Me and the stage of the GLOBE!

We sat on the second level of seats to talk about Shakespeare; we talked a lot about his use of words (sounds, imagery, etc). Then we went to a workshop room and did some acting stuff. It was really fun (I haven't done any of that in so long!). We did some games and exercises. (I picked up some fun ones to bring home.) First, we did some basic warm ups (involving "stop," "go," "jump," and "clap"). Then we did an exercise with the opening fight from Romeo & Juliet, which involved a duel to the death. My team (the Montagues) won. :) We also worked on one of Juliet's monologues (focusing on sounds). We did some really cool stuff with it (like a creepy tunnel and a cool round with all the lines).

The rest of my day was alright. I had an interesting Novel class (we finished up with Conrad's The Secret Agent), went to the store, had a nice dinner, and worked on things in my room. It was fairly warm out and it's getting very pretty outside. There are tons of flowers! It was a pretty nice Monday. :)

A flowerbed we passed after we left the Globe. (It looks like Easter/Spring.) So pretty.