Bloggo Piccolo: Return to Stratford-Upon-Avon

I awoke about a half hour ago confused. It is 30 October, and the U.K. "fell back" while I was sleeping from BST (British Summer Time) to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). I am in the lovely Moss Cottage in Stratford-Upon-Avon, having arrived yesterday with six students. 

Moss Cottage

More of that anon. My confusion is due to the fact that the B&B provides an alarm clock in the room, one of the least of its many amenities, I am having breakfast here at 7:30 am -- the earliest possible time scheduled, as I have such happy memories of my breakfast here five weeks ago, when we were here on the official trip from the London Center. Knowing (or at least believing) that the alarm clock would need to be re-set, I turned my watch back an hour before I fell asleep so I'd be sure not to be late for my yummy colazione. When I awoke -- and by the way I slept very well in the comfy bed -- I reached for my watch and it read 5:44 am -- but so did the alarm clock! Had I only dreamt I'd set my watch to the correct time? Was the tiny alarm a "smart" clock? We have smart phones, in fact just about every piece of electronic equipment I own is smarter than I am, but a smart tiny alarm clock? I resorted to another smart device, my laptop, and it too read 5:44. I then turned to the mobile phone ICLC has kindly lent me for the year. It's nice to have it, but it's not nearly so smart as the other devices I've mentioned -- it had not been able to "fall back" and read 6:44. The confusion now mostly solved, I checked e-mail, wrote birthday messages to facebook friends and just to be dead certain, at 6 (or was it 7/) am turned on the BBC's "Breakfast" show -- sure enough 6 am!


You'll have learned from that long-ish paragraph that while I am very fast in my actions when I wake up, particularly, apparently, when confused, I am also more than slightly dopey when I rise. The more astute of you will also have noted that I tend to go on at quite some length describing with much ado pretty much nothing.


A full hour stands between me and breakfast! Ergo, time to blog.


The reason I awoke in Stratford-Upon-Avon and not in London is that during the official Ithaca College London Center (ICLC) trip to Stratford in late September I discovered that one of the plays required for the course I am teaching on performing arts and the French Revolution, Marat/Sade, (shortened from the one of the best charades titles I can imagine: The Persecution and Assassination of Marat  as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. I did that from memory, I promise. You don't have to believe me but have no way to prove otherwise, do you?) was being revived.

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) had undertaken the English language premiere of the play in 1964, very shortly after it was written by Peter Weiss, and after it was first produced in Germany. Peter Brook directed the tremendously innovative RSC production, which employed two seemingly incompatible modes of production, the Brechtian concept of "distancing" (or "alienation," in German Verfremdungseffekt) in brilliant juxtaposition with Artaud's techniques of his "theatre of cruelty," which does anything but "distance" an audience from what is going on on stage.


For those of you who didn't get that last bit, take my Theatre History class (second semester at least), or better my Contemporary Developments in Theatre class -- whoops! Sorry, I'm not teaching those any more! So read Brecht on Theatre and The Theatre and Its Double instead. My God I AM going on in this post. You called it Bloggo PICCOLO, Dottore Gianni, Bloggo PICCOLO!


One of the problems in dealing with theatre and the French Revolution is that while many plays have been written about it, or have made use of it, as does Marat/Sade, to comment on other issues, usually issues contemporaneous with the era the play's author lives in rather than those of the late eighteenth century, most are not very good! And those few that are good are, shall we say, not the most easily accessible?  A tad (or more than) esoteric? Difficult? And thus are not often produced.


So I became very excited when I saw that Marat/Sade was playing only about an hour and a half train ride away from London (albeit for a very brief run) and immediately investigated the possibility of a field trip. I was rewarded in the discovery that for college students there were a limited number of very good seats available for each performance for a mere £5 each. We were seated in rows G and H of the "stalls" or what we call the "orchestra" in the U.S., I next to my students, and my ticket cost £36, so you see, a very good deal for the young ones. I was even more delighted to find that I could obtain what is called a "day return," a much more concise British expression meaning "a round trip completed on the same day" as we in the U.S. would be forced to explain it, for the excellent rate of £12.50 each. Still better, there remained a very few seats available for the one performance it would be possible for us to see -- yesterday's matinee.


We snapped up the tickets, in a torturous process -- don't ever ask me about the RSC's box office policies -- but a process that ultimately paid off. I immediately bought the rail tickets, which also fluctuate ridiculously in price -- please don't ask either about the insane methods of acquiring National Rail tickets -- so the students, apart of course from food, drink and souvenirs, paid under £20 for the essentials of the trip.


Everyone was on time or early (I VERY early, but it doesn't do to miss the train when you are the group leader!) at Marylebone Station, London. The train ride was not the smoothest I've had in England. I've grown accustomed to departures so seamless you scarcely know you're moving, with a nearly noiseless journey from start to destination. This ride was more like  trains in the U.S. I've been on, a bit bumpy and noisy. But this one arrived on time, in fact a bit early early, at Stratford, having made only four stops before that, our final stop on the trip.


We made the easy trek into town and to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) where we obtained our tickets (an easy process for some, not so easy for others -- see my note above re RSC box office practice), then the students went off to stroll the town for two hours, in a lovely partly sunny autumn day, whilst I made off for my B&B to drop my bag.

Now, my faithful readers -- and I wonder how many of you ARE faithful to Dottore Gianni, hmmm? -- may recall that the last time I wrote about Stratford I said something to the effcct of, "every time I come to Stratford and think I've seen all there is to see I discover something new, or re-discover something I've already done that is more than worth doing more than once." 

I can never get too much of the banks of
The River Avon

True again this trip. Stratford is simply put a lovely town in Warwickshire, and I'm taking as much delight in it this visit as I did in the last, a mere five weeks ago. So, after I dropped my bags at the somewhat remote but completely delightful Moss Cottage, I was quite content to stroll the town, occasionally coming across something I remembered fondly, and at times too discovering something I'd never seen before.

Thus the time passed very quickly between arrival and Marat/Sade matinee. I'm not going to comment extensively on the production. I'll say only that I was put off from it by the critical commentary in London newspapers, and the stress that was placed on the number of people who walked out at eery performance. So the production had to win me over, in a way. And while I did not agree with all of the choices, it was one of those theatrical experiences that makes me realizee the power of theatre to be an articulate commentator on the times, our time. This play from the 1960s used the French Revolution to examine the post World War II 20th century. Peter Brook's production used the play to comment on the era, but also to re-define what was possible in producing theatre. Fifty years later director Anthony Neilson creates an intelligent and challenging production that uses the play to look at the early 21st century, particularly the new revolutions of the "Arab Spring," and the also  breaks from what now seem almost traditional notions of production that had been revolutionary in the 1960s. It was bold, it was fearless, and it challenged me. I like to be challenged when I go to the theatre, because all too often I am not, and find myself trapped in what Peter Brook defined as "deadly" theatre. This production was rough, at moments holy, and certainly immediate, but never deadly. Bravo!


After the show we had a pint (some of us had two) and attempted to talk it over, but it's difficult to do that when you are overwhelmed by a production. I know I was and I am certain that the students were. But one, Carly Richards, has already written briefly in what the 1960s would have seemed to be coming out of a "brave new world" or from "a clockwork orange" -- facebook -- and in my "Bravo!" I am only echoing her "Bravo, Marat/Sade, Bravo!"


The students and I strolled around, I made sure they could find the train station, and then I went off to a very good meal at Pizza Express, after which, pretty much exhausted, I forced myself to stay awake until a reasonable hour on what I consider a very unnatural weekend -- "falling back" an hour. There is an immediate reward in this action, but for me at least there are less than pleasant repercussions. This morning for example i awoke at about 5 am -- 6 am only a few days ago. I'm a creature of habit and I usually rise at around 6. In my bones I know it is 6, well, now nearly 7 am, and I'm ready now for a breakfast that won't be served for an hour and a half.


What else to do but to write my way through to that time? 


And what better to write about than my surprising Sunday in Stratford. I had planned an easy day, and it was, really. It started with a wonderful breakfast provided by Bill, the brilliant hose of Moss Cottage. I met and chatted with a couple -- I was going to say an "older" couple, but they're just about my age, who knows, maybe a few years younger -- while at the table, then left to write for a while, then get ready for what a good walk on what was not looking like the best of days for an outing. Still off I went at about ten am. My first stop wes the RST again, this time to view Stratford from above in the new-build tower. It's not at all a bad view, even on a very cloudy day, and as usual I snapped far too many photos, most of which I've already discarded, thanks to another inventon that would have seemed science fiction in the Sixties, the digital camera.

View of Clopton Bridge from the Tower

Coming down from the tower I walked into a day that had not at all improved. In fact it was beginning to drizzle. Still I strolled and shopped, successfully resisting several urges to buy myself and others presents. One shop particular intrigued me: it was called "Old Gusy Rule" and featured t-shirst and sweatshirts and mugs and caps etc etc with that phrase and a number of variations of words and visuals to accompany it. At one point I had shirts picked out for me and for all my brothers -- also for Bill Sheasgreen -- but at £20 a pop I shook that notion off and retreated briskly from the store. 

As the drizzle continued I remembered something else I'd seen that might take me back indoors for a time, a reading of a Caryl Churchill play by members of the RSC. I must admit that I'd really rather have had a walk through the woods to Anne Hathaway's cottage or some other similar diestination, but that would risk a slow soaking which I knew I would not find pleasant, so at about 11:15 I hoofed it back to the RST, bought a ten pound ticket that placed me in row D,  stalls center, for what turned out to be another intriguing and very well done theatrical experience.


The play was one of her seldom perfomred eforts from the mid-1980s called Softcops, an often hilarieous treatment of crime and punishment. It was a very slightly staged reading, several men mostly in jeans and t-shirts, and one woman, an accordianist, who accompanied the reading with music, sometimes for added emphasis, a few times as the instrumental portion of songs written into the script. One of the most intriguing things about the style of the reading was the lack of a reader of stage directions. Instead the actors read their own, or other characters' descriptions, seamlessly introducing characters, settings time shifts in a fascinating way. To make such a device seem seamless is not simple, and it required the considerable abilities of the very fine actors  involved. I needed no more than this reading to envision a full production of the play, and in fact had no desire to see more than the reading, not because I was not interested in the material, but because the simplicity of the reading made clear what anything but the very finest production of the play would have clouded and obscured instead.

I had planned to head to a jazz brunch for lunch, but had already been entertained and settled instead for a very tasty sea bsss in a mediterranean sauce, washed down by white wine, at a restaurant whose name I've already forgotten. I won't forget the meal! It was the perfect choice at the perfect time of day, and I was very happy with it. I walked out of the restaurant into brilliant sunshine, had a long walk around a few portions of Stratford I'd not yet , and at aobut 3:30 (4:30?) in the afternoon called it a day.

Chrstimas decorations in the pedestrian zone!

Back at the B&B I found a piece of cake waiting for me in my room! I accompanied that with tea and set out to write the rest of this post. 

Near my B&B a good Halloween scene
spooky graveyard!

Alas, it was at that point that my day became less than perfect, because instead I began again to search obsessively for the perfect hotel ar which to spend Christmas in Prague. I only paused in this pursuit to run out to the nearest convenience shop (which was conveniently close by) for a completely mediocre ham sandwich, crisps and a pint. That was dinner. I needed no more than that after the perfect lunch, but I had steppled into a less than perfect world, created completely by myself. I finally gave up the search, hving narrowied my choice to four or five places only to begin another, for the perfect hotel at which to spend New Year's Eve and Day in Amsterdam, followed by still ANOTHER at which to spend my birthday in Bruges! All of this took me until about 9:45 pm, 


That's right. More than six hours...and do you know what? I've still not decided on a hotel in any of those places! Narrowed the field considerably, and may in the meantime have narrowed my trip plans, as Amsterdam is outrageously expensive on the 31st of December (as I'm sure are many popular destinations at that celebratory time), and as I'm beginning to re=think Prague for Christmas.


So I ended of what had become a very special trip to Stratford, in a mundane and tedious manner. Still it was lovely all in all, I am now only 35 minutes away from my much anticipated last breakfast in Stratford (for this trip at any rate). On from there back to london where I will probably continue with the somewhat tedious and certainly mundane task of preparing tomorrow's class. Unless of course I amdrawn back into the vortex of searching-for-hotel-hell!

And I now find it necessary to repeat in only slight veriation what I noted earlier in this post: "My God I DID go on in this post. You called it Bloggo PICCOLO, Dottore Gianni, Bloggo PICCOLO! 


Va bene -- ciao tutti!