Natalie De Luna

UCLA students before the performance of The Winter's Tale: Maggie, Natalie and Christina.

I felt like I was seeing two different plays. The first act was intensely dramatic (zoom to me with a serious, shocked look on my face). Then, it moved to light-hearted, at one point vulgar, and hilarious (zoom to me smiling and giggling like a child). Ethan Hawke gave an amazingly witty performance as the rogue and also added some acoustic jams on his guitar accompanied by a violin. All in all it was an entertaining, moving production! CHEERS!

Click to enlarge. Tempting fate on the lion in front of the National Gallery. Back: Meg, Skandia, Christina. Middle: me. Front: Maggie, Nikki.

After the fall, left to right: Christina, me, Nikki. See how tall that lion is?

Naturally, us girls took a picture with the lion in front of the National Gallery.

Note to travelers wanting to climb this lion: DANGEROUS, I fell flat-footed and now have a bruised heel.

Wednesday, we had a lovely British actor, Ben Crystal (see the video), come in and give a presentation on the sonnets. What a British actor at that, every word he spoke was like a performance! But, less about his beautiful self, more about the content.

He gave us a passionate portrayal of Shakespeare's sonnets, which were written to be spoken, as the majority of Elizabethans during the time were illiterate. Crystal strongly dislikes the Penguin modern editions of the sonnets, where they grammatically correct, eschewing the artistic freedom that Shakes takes. Crystal reminded us to keep in mind the brilliance of Shakes where every punctuation, every caesura, every capitalization is there for a reason. Every imperfect iambic pentameter line is meant to show the character's distraught brokenness.

He had us each perform the sonnets, many people took the creative notch up a bit as they turned the sonnets into a funky rap, or brought it down to a mellow tone, with doubled voices emphasizing capitalized letters and the melancholy of Sonnet 29. Ben Crystal's presentation was well done, ultimately making me appreciate good ol' Shakes that much more!

Read the text of Sonnet 29.

Being a groundling (standing section at the Globe Theatre) isn't as fun as it seems when it's pouring rain against your plastic poncho. Although I confess, the players were so great, I found myself laughing hysterically, caught up in the conversations of the play, completely (well, for the most part) forgetting that I was standing in a puddle of rain. Luckily, for the second act we switched sections and the groundlings became as I cleverly like to call it, "seaters." During the multiple marriage scene, everyone from the heroine Rosalind to court jester Touchstone broke out in dance, which was more than amusing. I found myself clapping along, thinking, "What's a little soaked shoes for a great performance in a such a historic theatre?"