Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Stratford-upon-Avon

Today we had a leisurely day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, aka Shakespeare's birthplace. The only item on the agenda was a play in the evening, so a group of us spend the rest of the afternoon strolling around the town and shopping. (I bought a Shakespeare umbrella, among other things.) It was nice to have a library- and museum-free day. While there are several museums and places of interest in Stratford, some of my classmates and I decided to skip them. (This was based on the fact that so much of Shakespeare's life is speculation and so little is actually known that most of the museums seem like a bit of a waste; this was just the verdict we came to.)


The play in the evening was fantastic. Our class saw The Winter's Tale, which is a Shakespeare play that I was unfamiliar with. The set design was phenomenal. Most of it, such as the leaves on trees, were made up of book pages. Book pages also littered the stage and made up the costumes of some of the characters. At one point, a giant book page bear puppet (yes, you read that right) dragged off one of the characters, which was a cool effect (trust me on this).

Image courtesy of guardian.co.uk

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