The main reason for the whole day (well for me anyway!) was the Shakespeare and Me Talk with David Tennant, Patrick Stewart, Gregory Doran and.. some journalist person I can't remember the name of. We were allowed to take pictures for the first couple of minutes which was cool (particularly as most other things there were no pictures allowed at all!) so I'll include a couple of those at the bottom. Anyway the talk was really cool, got some great insight into Hamlet (which Patrick Stewart and David Tennnat are both in, and Gregory Doran is directing) aswell as to a few other Shakespeare plays which would have been much better if I had of read the plays mentioned! Doh! I'm a little behind on my Shakespeare reading! But still, was of course extremely exciting to see David Tennant on stage, and I am pleased to say that noone in the audience make any 'Doctor' remarks! Patrick Stewart seemed much less snobbish than I had imagined he would be. He did however seem very distractable and bored, become intent on picking bits of fluff up from the stage and fiddling with them. But when he was talking he seemed much more engaged, and was actually very funny. He kept forgetting to use his microphone to talk which as David Tennant picked upon he did not need anyway. What a great voice! Such a brilliant talk, we had amazing seats, and for the price of a fiver who can complain! AND now we have seen David Tennant AND Patrick Stewart. Woo!
There was lots of Shakey stuff going on all day, and although we missed out on getting wounds painted on us, and being made into a Hamlet poster we did make a great performanceish thing illustrating the use of ropes in various plays which was extremely cool! We also got to go to a techinical rehearsal mock up of The Taming of the Shrew which was great, and gave us a little preview of the things we should expect from the play.
We even walked past Stephen Boxer (Joe Fenton from Doctors, and Petruchio in RSC's Taming of the Shrew) which I got very excited about, almost causing Alice to spill her Chai Tea all over herself and probably made myself look like an idiot. Ah well - you can't look cool all the time!
Was a really cool day, and was the first time I've really had to walk around Stratford (though at the time of writing this I have spent considerably longer there!) and it's easy to forget how nice the town (? is it a town?!) is. Shakespeare days are cool!
A couple of pictures..
