Week 2 - Two Plays, Mud-Larking, and Stephen Wright

Two Plays, Mud-Larking, and Stephen Wright

This week in the Londons art class was, as usual, accompanied by a wide variety of activities, the first of which was a play entitled Top Girls by Caryl Churchill. The play was about issues with American feminism, and problems with peoples families or something like that. I was never really sure what it was about, and I honestly kind of hated it. Nothing made sense and everyone was sad or angry. None of the main characters were particularly likable, and the play never really had a conclusion.  

The next time the class met, we spoke with artist Stephen Wright about outside art and his House of Dreams. His house has become an art gallery full of color, light, statues, dolls, and words. I thought his art, and the subject of outsider art were both really fascinating. Its just people creating, in any way they want, as much as they want, as long as they want. They don't stop when other people don't like what they do because they do it for themselves. I really liked the video we watched with Stephen about Possum Trot. I thought the dolls were kinda weird, but still really amazing.

The next day, we went out to go mud-larking, then to a museum. Turns out, the tide was different than we thought it was going to be, so we visited the Tate museum first. The Tate museum had a lot of interesting exhibitions. My favorite was the one on materials in art. I liked it because I liked all the unique shapes and textures everything in that exhibit had. I also kinda hated it because I wanted to touch everything but obviously, it was an art museum so I wasn't allowed to. After the museum, we went mud-larking. Mud-larking means you walk next to the Thames and find cool stuff. This was probably my favorite thing I've done in London. Mostly cause I'm always picking stuff I like of the ground and shoving it in my pockets, and now I got to do an activity based solely on that. I found lots of bones, pipe-stems, and old ceramics and pottery chunks.

After a short break to clean up, we went to dinner at the Cafe in the Crypt, then to another play. This play, entitled The Play That Goes Wrong Is a comedy of errors about a theatre company trying to perform a murder-mystery play. I say trying because, as the title suggests, it all goes wrong. The actors are terrible, the set falling apart, and the tech guy is more interested in finding his Duran Duran CD set than keeping the play running smooth. By the end of the play, 3 different people and a clock have played the leading lady, the set has fallen down around them, and the sound guy has a serious concussion. Is was probably the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life.