First Blog of the 2010 Semester....July

Well here is the beginning of the 2010 London Blog. This semester we have 18 student from Saint Mary's University studying in London for the Fall Semester. We will be performing the play, God's Country by Steven Dietz at Tara Studio in Earlsfield October 19 -23. Fly over and catch the show!

I have been in London for almost two weeks getting things ready for the semester. I have rented the student flats, auditioned two British actors for the play, set up daytrips, and purchased tickets for a number of the plays we will be seeing.

The Globe Theatre is where we will be seeing The Merry Wives of Winsor and Henry IV, Part 1. At the National Theatre (Pictured above) we will be seeing Hamlet.

In the West End I have purchased a number of tickets. We will see War Horse another National Theatre production at The New London Theatre. This is a production we have gone to the past two years. I am really excited that it is still playing.

I heard that it is getting ready to go to Broadway! The West End musical we will see for Theatre in London class is Billy Elliot . For the Page to Stage class I booked Arthur Miller's All My Sons starring David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker. Also for the Page to Stage class I booked tickets for Deathtrap with Jonathan Groff from Spring Awakening and Glee.

Also purchased tickets for the Sondheim musical, Passion at the Donmar Warehouse and Athol Fugard, the South African playwright's play, Train Driver at the Hamstead Theatre. Fugard will also be directing this production. The last play I booked is a new play, entitled Tribes at the Royal Court Theatre. The rest of the shows we will see I will book after the semester begins. There are always new shows coming into London.

In addition to going to the theatre I have booked two theatre tours. The first is a theatrical tour of the Drury Lane Theatre, the oldest theatre in London. This has been a very popular tour with our students in the past. I also booked a private backstage tour of the National Theatre with Tim Blazdell a friend and Associate Designer at the National. We did this fantastic tour two years ago. I am really excited that we got to book it early.

The daytrips that I will book this week are to Cambridge, Blenheim Palace, Bath, and Canterbury. Our long weekend in Scotland will be booked during the semester.

While here for the three weeks I have auditioned two British actors to be part of our play, God's Country. One is a student who studied at Saint Mary's this past year, Laurence Greiner and the other is Shane Nippard. We welcome them to the cast! I have also been making arrangements to take our show to Dublin, Ireland at the end of the London semester and just before we do the two-week acting program at The Gaiety School of Acting.

While in London I managed to see the Broadway production of Hair, Sondheim's Assassins, La Bete, with one of my favorite actors, Mark Rylance, David Hyde-Pierce from Fraiser, and Joanna Lumley of the Ab Fab TV series. I plan on seeing Enron and Wolfboy, the lighting design is by my dear friend Mike Robertson who is also my landlord!

Well that is all for now. Weather here in London has been terrific! Subscribe to the blog if you haven't done so already and you will be notified everytime I post something new. I usually do a blog a week once the semester begins! Enjoy the rest of the summer!