Tell me about an adventure you've been on

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London, By Myself!

In 1985 I joined a summer theatre workshop in London at The International Shakespeare Globe Centre - but your Dad did not join me. So the adventure was navigating a different country on my own! Thank goodness we had traveled throughout Europe the summer before.

Sam Wanamaker began fundraising to build a replica of the original Globe Theatre in the 1970s and by the time we were in graduate school in the mid-'80s, a London summer workshop was offered to students from around the US and the instructor was one of my professors at USC. It was exciting to apply for the program and even more so to participate and perform on the South Bank of the Thames only a few hundred feet from the site of Shakespeare's theatre! 

I learned to navigate the Underground with daily trips from Islington to the South Bank, as well as visiting as many places as possible during our down time. I remember seeing plays 3 or 4 times a week and drinking at pubs with my new friends, but visiting on my own

• Hampstead Heath to see Gainsburough's Blue Boy and Pinkie hanging in the Museum,
• Kensington and Hyde Park,
• Covent Gardens - where I bought the Winnie-the-Pooh teapot,
• the Crystal Palace, and
• the Victoria and Albert Museum to see an exhibit of Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh illustrations. (hmmm, there's a theme here)

I also traveled to Oxford with my housing host, Jude, who terrified me with her driving! Oxford was lovely, but I did not drive with her again...  Her townhouse was three stories with a tiny backyard where she cut the grass with scissors because it was so small.  My room was on the third floor and the water closet and bath were in different rooms. Since cell phones were not a thing, I spoke with your Dad only once a week, but we wrote letters everyday. I also learned to NEVER wash a tea-drinker's tea pot.

At the end of the workshop, we performed Twelfth Night at The Cockpit Theatre*, a small black box, workshop space in a building on the site of what was originally the Bear Gardens (used for baiting bears in the 16th century). I played Feste, the Fool, which was a huge challenge since it required being on stage most of the play and lots of physical humor.

* This space was not the same as The Cockpit Theatre located in Marylebone.