Tag: plays

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Now The Hard Part Starts!

Yesterday I completed reading Jane Eyre and started on the course material. There is a lot to work through and it will pretty much have me reading the book all over again. It also has me fearing that I am going to struggle with the essays now.

My two previous results had lulled me into some moderate level of confidence which plummeted over the course of yesterday afternoon as I began to work through the course book and see how much I have to write in discussing the context and plot, etc, of Jane Eyre itself. Let alone what is to come with writing out a 600 word essay on both it AND Twelfth Night.

I slept well despite my misgivings, but a new dawn has brought renewed waves of misgivings. The doubt and concern continues into thinking about Creative Writing. I feel as though I need to be moderately good at English Literature and understand how I need to be able to deconstruct novels to potentially make my own writing good…and that scares me because I don’t feel as though I am not that good with close-reading and the skill of studying and analysing text.

I don’t want to spend the next three weeks feeling uneasy but I am not sure how to abate it and how to quell this attack of the modicum of self-confidence I had gained from my enjoyment of the past few weeks of study and from my assignment results so far in module A112.

I guess I need to just …. Breathe and take it a day at a time…

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Twelfth Night And Struck Down By Lurgy

All week I was right back to studying big time. I had done so well! I got right back into it from New Year’s Day and even before that I started to read the set book of Twelfth Night. By Thursday I had worked through two weeks of study. I gave myself the day off on Friday and I was hoping to get out of the house but we’ve been having problems with our boiler and a guy was going to be coming to repair it so I decided to just stay home. As the day progressed, I progressed more into cold symptoms. Twelfth Night, eh! Lol

Yesterday I was feeling absolutely crap! I just stayed in bed all day. Today I am still heavy with cold but I feel better and although I am isolating myself in my room (I don’t want my OH to get a cold as the last time I had one – in November – she got it too and it took her about 8 weeks to get over the thing! I don’t want to subject her to that again), I have been up and about and out of bed and I even had my bedroom windows open for a couple of hours to get air in and rid the room of germs.

I’m not behind by any means, but I didn’t want the study I had so diligently done to then be swallowed up by me getting ill!

I really enjoyed the study. I actually liked Twelfth Night and it is the first time I have studied Shakespeare like that and I FINALLY got to appreciate what a clever sod he is with his use of language. Reading along to the play while listening to a BBC Radio 3 adaptation of it really helped me to get to grips with the dialogue. We were also given short clips of a theatre production to watch and that helped with interpreting the characters.

Yesterday, despite being full of lurgy and in bed, I watched a production performed at the Globe Theatre in 2012. This production starred Johnny Flynn (of the universally panned David Bowie biopic, Stardust) and Samuel Barnett as Voila/Cesario and Sebastian, respectively, Stephen Fry as Malvolio and Mark Rylance as Olivia. I actually found myself not that taken with Stephen Fry’s Malvolio – I didn’t think he played it with enough emotion to draw in the empathy that the character is deserving of from the audience. Mark Rylance’s Olivia was great and he gave her comedic overtones which was great. I could watch Samuel Barnett all day and wish he had been playing Voila/Cesario instead of Sebastian as he didn’t have as much stage time as the role of the brother offers. Johnny Flynn seemed wooden to me. I kept thinking that if his performance here was anything to go by, no wonder the Bowie biopic got panned! (It was as much for its ludicrous script and the refusal of the Bowie estate to allow any of his music to be used in the film as anything else that sealed its fate.) I sadly came away from having watched it more wishing that I hadn’t. Rylance, Barnett’s and the actor playing Feste were the people that saved it. The actor playing Maria was quite good too. He played her with a particularly conniving nature.

Samuel Barnett as Sebastian, Mark Rylance as Olivia and Johnny Flynn as Viola in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night directed by Tim Carroll at the Apollo Theatre in London. (Photo by robbie jack/Corbis via Getty Images)

I’m still on target to get through reading Jane Eyre in good time. I had set myself a reasonably doable target of two weeks to read it, in tandem with studying the course material as I go. Actually, I am allowing for some days in which I won’t be able to read any of the book at all (too many tutorials in one day, and a gig in Edinbugh in about 10 days time) – so I have over 2 weeks from tomorrow ro get it read and there being two weeks left until the next assignment is due.

I’ve been drinking a lot of water today and trying to get myself feeling better to shake this cold off nice and early. I’m sure I’ll feel even better tomorrow and should at least start reading Jane Eyre even if I actually don’t start back up with study until Tuesday.

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Have I Found My Gaga?

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Maybe it’s because I’m creeping into middle age (I’ll be 40 later this year) but I am suddenly finding myself more and more engrossed in what I’m finding to listen to on the radio. In particular Radio 4 (and no…not just Test Match Special!).

I’ve had the feeling in my head for several weeks now that I’d like to listen to more radio. Spurred on by some appearances David Tennant has made recently in a couple of radio plays, I’m finding myself listening to more and more radio plays.

I listened to one last week which was a “tongue in cheek” look at the behind the scenes making of the film Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price. It was great timing as I’d only just, a few weeks previous, watched Witchfinder General for the first time, so I was at least armed with the knowledge of the film to begin with.

And only yesterday I listened to another play with Bill Nighy in it. If ever there was a voice made for radio plays…

It’s not only the plays I’m interested in. Last night I listened to The Now Show (with Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis), a satirical look at the week in news. There are several other comedies on Radio 4 I’d like to get into as well.

But now, it is confession time. I was scared to ask Em to get this for me because she has an aversion to anything that appears even REMOTELY middle class. I thought I might be in for the chop even for asking (I was going to try and keep it secret, but I like getting the radio stuff to listen to on my iPod in bed in the evening). So it was with some trepidation I asked her if she could get me The Archers omnibus! I know! I even amazed myself!

So I listened to it last night. And I have to say, despite some of it being a little hammy, I liked it. OMG, help me, I’m middle class!!!! lol

I really hope I’m NOT middle class for liking The Archers. It might not even last (my liking it). But it did hook me in. It’s a bit of escapism. I see it almost like a look into how “the other half live” because it is a little posh.

I’m already asking myself really involving plot-based questions like: How will Helen go getting pregnant? How long will Jude and Pips relationship last? What’s going to happen to Tom and Brenda’s relationship, as she sounds like she’s ready to leave Ambridge?

ZOMG! lol

I think Em is going to divorce me when she sees this!