Any day with David Tennant in it is good.

YAY! So yesterday (Thursday) was a bit of a mad day! First Alice and myself got up insanely early, suffering from various ailments (unable to turn left for her and a throat like sandpaper for me) and went into Birmingham to queue for the lovely Russell T Davies' booksigning. I say lovely - before we went it was just the 'cool Russell T Davies' but he has not been elevated to lovely status :D Infact Alice and I will no longer hear a bad word said about him so watch it!

We got there 2 hoursish before the doors opened and suprisingly there were not that many people there and we got issued with numbers 29 and 30. - a side note - this issuing of numbers is a great idea to stop people pushing in! They didn't actually check them as we entered BUT it seemed to put off would be pusher inners, and if their was an argument then the numbers could have been checked. I wish that it was this easy all the other times I've had to queue - argh!

Anyway both Russell and Benjamin Cook (co-writer of The Writer's Tale, and writer for Doctor Who Magazine) were completely lovely and Russell in particular was miles nicer than I was expecting. They were both happy to chat, and were very smiley and jolly asking how we were and talking about the laziness of a friend of mine who couldn't make it (writing in her book 'Where Were You' and 'Missing You' - bless! So glad we managed to make the book signing - specially as the book is completely brilliant!! I've only read the first chapter or so as I'm trying to spread out the reading of it so I can enjoy it for longer but it is great! Not only as an insight into various Doctor Whoish things (which it is) but it also has fabulous advice for would-be writers, and on a personal level has made me feel so much better about my own stye and method of writing as with the exception of producing first class scripts at the end of it, he is not that different to me!

A picture :D :




In the evening we went to see Love Labour's Lost with the RSC in Stratford with David Tennant playing Berowne (or Biron, there seems to be different spellings). Argh! 3 hours in the presence of David Tennant! The play was performed exceptionally well, and has jumped to being my favourite. It was so funny, and all the actors played their parts superbly. David Tennant was of course brilliant, but the others were brilliant too. In fact they were so good that it was easy to forget that David Tennant was actually there, so despite what a lot of critics have been saying, David Tennant was not the only thing about the play, he may have drawn more people there, but the cast as a whole were outstanding.

We are going to see A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Hamlet with the same company of actors and I really can't wait! Though I do wish I could go see Love Labour's Lost again!!

Shakespeare & Me

I am posting this in retrospect as I completely forgot to type up my thoughts on the day (due to excessive excitement) but the day was so great and I want to make some record of it here in the blog for when I'm looking back at how cool I was. :P

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..