#pragueshakespeare

Today was a really nice day :) I went out for my breakfast and then wandered around looking into bookshops, and just getting out about town again. It had been a while since I just walked around, so I scoped out a few shops that I might want to look into the next day. I found a couple of books by Tim Burton, that yes are only sold in Czech), but one of them was a children's book version of The Nightmare Before Christmas illustrated by his concept art for the movie, so I kind of feel drawn to it. I also stopped by a bookstore that sold sheet music! FINALLY! I may have gone a little crazy though....but who knew that Barenreiter had a Praha publishing location?! Needless to say I bought several scores of Czech music because they were cheap as well as a Barenreiter copy of Schubert's "Shepherd on the Rock." The Czech music includes a copy of Dvorak's "Biblical Songs" and "Moravian Duets," a set of Martinu and Janaceck folk songs, and some others :) All for like $75 US! Can't beat that.

I dropped my stuff off at my room and started walking over to the Palladium mall to meet the class and head up to the park for our class today. I met Leni and Josh S. on the way and we walked the short distance to old town to get a sausage and beer for lunch. YUM! I don't know what it is about Josh, though. Whenever I am with him, I always get turned around somewhere and it takes 5 times longer to get where we need to go. Haha! Sad, but true. Curse of the Servantes.

So we went up to this great park (i.e. beergarden) to have class today! It was a wonderful, cool day and the breeze was lovely. There was a stunning view of the city, which we explored further after class was done. The beer garden was about a 5 minute walk away from the giant metronome, so some of us walked over to it. It replaced a large statue of Lenin that was demolished when the iron curtain fell. The metronome indicates that the Czech culture/people will continue on in spite of political repression.

After we finished hanging out at the monument (we spent some time because it was gorgeous AND the weather was awesome!) we walked down into old town to look at some shops before meeting for "Venus in Fur," which was being performed by the Prague Shakespeare Company. we went in this shop right by the Estates Theatre that had some cool Mucha merchandise, which I must admit I was very close to paying too much for a Mucha music device that played Smetana's "Vltava." If it was also a jewelery box, I probably would have bought it.

This morning Kurt and I walked over to get coffee at Mama Coffee (the little place around the corner) after finishing our homework, and then set off to walk. I went and withdrew some money from the bank, and then we set off to Tesco to look at the groceries. Well...to figure out where the groceries were...We went to the Tesco the second day we were here and thought it was just a department store, but we figured out that the supermarket was in the basement! This market is my foodie's dream and my waistline's nightmare. I swear an entire quarter of the store was bread. Not just loaves of pre-sliced nonsense, but good bread. If you don't know where I am, come looking for me there!

We each bought a couple of things (yes, and bread) and dropped our stuff off at the apartment before going to get lunch with Jamie. We decided that after we spent a bit of money at the super nice Thai place yesterday, a dollar hot dog was probably the way to go. And by hot dog, I mean a great kolache with amazing mustard that I hate we don't have in America. We got some ice cream nearby as well, but noticed that the sky was turning dark rather quickly. We decided that it was best to head over to UNYP immediately, just in case. Boy was that a good decision! We only had to walk in the hard falling rain for about a minute before we arrived at the school. Side note: I am shocked that people would smoke outside in that kind of rain. Is it really that important? Rant complete. So we show up to school with wet feet. The next group shows up basically drowned. I'm glad we didn't get caught out in that!

Class was good today, and shorter than anticipated. We discussed the NEA, which just reinforced some things Jamie and I learned last semester (which I appreciate). I wonder if something like the Fringe is able to flourish here because the production cost of theatre here is also low. We have been talking about government subsidy of the arts and that many European countries contribute up to 80% of a company's income. Wow! I'm curious as to whether or not there is any kind of regulation on the cost of space rental and other components of production, since the government is footing the bill. Its funny, I have been taking administration classes for two years now and I still do not have a definite opinion on some of these issues, or, rather, a solid stance on the degree to which I agree or disagree. I am completely for funding of the arts. As an opera singer and director, I don't think there is any other option for me. However, I do sometimes wonder about censorship and the "slippery slope." I automatically dislike the idea of censorship since it causes me to immediately recall 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and I am already scared at aspects of life that resemble those books. You want to become paranoid? Read those books. Maybe transparency is the answer...transparency regarding content, intention, and approach. I know we want to be artistic and lead people to make their own decisions about a work, but perhaps if we leave them too much to their own devices, they won't reach the conclusion intended by the work. Maybe instead of censorship or editing, we should be more candid about content--which will, in turn, promote better communication from artist to audience, and hopefully decrease controversy. Who knows if it would work, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?

After class we dropped off our books at the apartment and headed over to the National Theatre area to grab some dinner before we went to see "The Murder of Gonzago" at the Fringe Festival. I had this chicken with a yogurt sauce and some amazing mashed potatoes with cheese. I think we upset the waitstaff (this was a little higher end of a restaurant) when we asked to get our tickets with the food because we needed to be somewhere. They then proceeded to bring our checks out immediately. Oh well! The food here was amazing. It seems like we just keep picking better and better restaurants! We quickly headed over to the theatre venue to see the play and it was AMAZING! This is by far my favorite show of the Fringe so far--probably because it was put on by the Prague Shakespeare company. Haha! The venue was beautiful (spacious, marble stairs, etc.) and wasn't hot, unlike the next show. All of the characters were perfect, the pacing was great, and I was legitimately sad when it was over. "The Murder of Gonzago" is the play that Hamlet commands the players to put on in Hamlet, and this version ended up with the entire acting troupe dying. My favorite part of the play was probably the fat cook character, who was the comedic foil to a lot of what was happening in the action. She (playing a he) had this ridiculous voice that was just as character-y as you could get! I would go see this again in a heartbeat, and is what I thought more of the shows here would be like.

We headed to the next venue, which was like a block over, and bought our tickets to see "Metamorphosis." We figured anything based on Kafka would be really important and helpful to see for our class. We were there over an hour early, so we headed to a tapas bar across the street that had the best Spanish wine. Also, they had free water-hooray! Strangely, they also had corn nuts as bar top food. Weird. We went back across to the theatre and showed up just as they were opening the doors. Oh my goodness did they pack us in...there were probably 5-6 people over capacity for this tiny, tiny room that had absolutely no ventilation. If I wanted to see another show in this theatre I wouldn't because of how gosh darn uncomfortable it was. Nope nope. The show was good, but not nearly as good as the Murder of Gonzago. It was about a guy who woke up one day transformed into Kafka and became an amazing writer. It paralleled the "Metamorphosis" in many ways, which I think was the point, but I was so distracted by how hot it was!