....because rather than posting my christmas cards (which, despite Wonderful Man's protestations, WE ARE SENDING THIS YEAR), I've been to the post office to post my application to study my next uni course.
Shakespeare: Text and Performance.
I'm so excited!
It starts in February, and we will be studying nine of Shakespeare's plays. Eight of which I've read and know well! It will be like welcoming old friends back.
Years and years ago, I studied drama in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford upon Avon. Wonderful fun, and as a finale we were allowed to tread the boards of the mighty RSC (now re-done and even more spankingly brilliant) in a set of performances of bits of Shakespeare plays.
We also did our own plays, including Agamemnon, combining the floral Aeschylus version with the raw, brutal Steven Berkoff re-write. I remember particularly clearly one scene, with my parents in the front row. I was playing the part of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife. Agamemnon angered the goddess Artemis who stopped his boats from sailing so, to appease her, he sacrifices their daughter, Iphigenia in a particularly bloody scene. As she lay on the sacrificial stone, I was to do a soliloquy over her body, while a bucket of fake blood (a mix of coffee, beetroot juice, red food colouring, water and flour) poured over the top of both of us. Very suitably gory and Carrie-like (I think that's where we got the idea).
What I didn't realise was that I was performing, as were all the cast, in a thin white cotton dress. And what happens to thin white cotton dresses when they are drenched? You got it.
Suffice to say, when I looked up from my soliloquy, dripping, into the front row, my parents' faces were, to say the least, a bit shocked. Afterwards, buzzing with adrenaline after a good performance, and red raw from scrubbing off all the stage blood (BOY does that stuff stain if you don't scrub it off quickly) I asked them what they thought.
"Lovely darling, simply lovely!" gushed my wonderful mother, a huge smile on her face.
"Umm, yes, well. Very good. Quite." said my father.
Now of course, these days, this kind of thing doesn't matter. I watched a wonderful version of King Lear with full frontal nudity from no less than Ian Holm. And who hasn't seen Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) prancing around on stage in Equus with his bits dangling around?
But back in 1994, when "woman-shows-ankle-to-chimney-sweep-shock" was a regular headline, I certainly turned heads. Needless to say, I have no theatrical aspirations with this new course.
And even if I did, I doubt my father would allow it.
