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Here's to the lasses, we love them so well
Oct. 3rd, 2013 04:14 pmWhew, it's been busy round these parts. And I have things to report upon, and no coherent strategy for doing so.
In my usual capacity as a cultural vacuum, who only goes to the theatre when prodded, I was booked to go to The Globe with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snow_leopard to see Blue Stockings. In the event, she couldn't make it, so I bravely went along anyway (realising that beyond the title, and beyond it being something Snow_Leopard recommended), I knew nothing about it.
Anyway, it turned out to be a very enjoyable play about the female students at Girton College, Cambridge at the end of the nineteenth century. They were battling to be admitted as full members of the university, and to be permitted to actually take degrees.
The Globe does odd things to people, I think. The standing-space of the yard where people mill around, eating hog roast and cracking nuts, lends itself well to the sort of raucous participation that we're all led to believe Shakespeare's audiences expected as a matter of course. So when the play opened with a speech explaining why women were completely unfit to be scholars, the speaker found himself boo'd and hiss'd like a pantomime villain. I like it. Theatre should be more raucous and participatory.
Last weekend was the annual weekend away with a bunch of university friends, where we rent a "cottage" big enough to sleep 20+ and eat too much. My weekend was slightly confused by my having to run away all day Saturday and inflict rapper dancing on the good people of Shrewsbury, but apart from that it was lovely to catch up with people and meet the new crop of offspring that's arrived since last year.
The logistics of trying to do a fry-up for nearly thirty people remain complex, but with long practice and two kitchens we've got it down. The pressing problem this year seemed to be how to arrange the toast... separating white and brown? That's toast apartheid, that is. Alternating slices? Well, that might look like integration but really it's just another form of racism. Arranging it in the order it came out of the toaster? Why do you think toast ageism is any better? The debate raged fiercely and was eventually won by a small (and hitherto unsuspected) cell of white toast supremacists...
In my usual capacity as a cultural vacuum, who only goes to the theatre when prodded, I was booked to go to The Globe with
snow_leopard to see Blue Stockings. In the event, she couldn't make it, so I bravely went along anyway (realising that beyond the title, and beyond it being something Snow_Leopard recommended), I knew nothing about it.Anyway, it turned out to be a very enjoyable play about the female students at Girton College, Cambridge at the end of the nineteenth century. They were battling to be admitted as full members of the university, and to be permitted to actually take degrees.
The Globe does odd things to people, I think. The standing-space of the yard where people mill around, eating hog roast and cracking nuts, lends itself well to the sort of raucous participation that we're all led to believe Shakespeare's audiences expected as a matter of course. So when the play opened with a speech explaining why women were completely unfit to be scholars, the speaker found himself boo'd and hiss'd like a pantomime villain. I like it. Theatre should be more raucous and participatory.
Last weekend was the annual weekend away with a bunch of university friends, where we rent a "cottage" big enough to sleep 20+ and eat too much. My weekend was slightly confused by my having to run away all day Saturday and inflict rapper dancing on the good people of Shrewsbury, but apart from that it was lovely to catch up with people and meet the new crop of offspring that's arrived since last year.
The logistics of trying to do a fry-up for nearly thirty people remain complex, but with long practice and two kitchens we've got it down. The pressing problem this year seemed to be how to arrange the toast... separating white and brown? That's toast apartheid, that is. Alternating slices? Well, that might look like integration but really it's just another form of racism. Arranging it in the order it came out of the toaster? Why do you think toast ageism is any better? The debate raged fiercely and was eventually won by a small (and hitherto unsuspected) cell of white toast supremacists...
