Chapter 9: Birthdays

As I am in a new city, I haven’t had many opportunities to socialize. Also I had a difficult week when a friend who was coming to live here was deported without even entering the country. I had a difficult conversation with my roommates readjusting the living situation in which and continued to stress about the Erasmus and the absence of work. It was not a great week preceding my birthday. But Tuesday came on I had class all day, in the afternoon one of the directors with whom I worked in November-December invited me to her house where she had organized a mini party with two actors from the same show. So a night I thought was going to  be sad and boring ended up being fun, we played guitar, we drank wine, ate popcorn and cake, we laughed and talked nonsense. I ended up going home around two in the morning happy to know that I did have friends =)

The rest of the week I finished the papers that were still pending for this week about my practice and, what I wanted to do in Strasbourg and for my second year. I had to finish before Friday because two friends came over to spend the weekend. We spent all day going up and down and now I have seen the city twice but luckily this time we had a sunny day. We also re-celebrated my birthday because you can never celebrate enough.

This week we have to finish the papers and some classes but I’m starting to get ready because we leave for Italy the following weekend. One of the interviews went well enough and I got offered a position that might start February 11th.

Apa I leave you with some pictures of London not very typical.

Chapter 8: Coming and going

After a Christmas rather warm with family, I'm back in London. The city received me cold and rainy which was much less pleasant than the last time. It was nice to be back in Barcelona for so long. For long I wanted to spend as much time as possible so at some point I could say "I've had enough." This time was a bit like that, so I felt I had chosen the exact time between not getting tired but having had enough.

Chapter 7: English Theatre

Only a few weeks to finish the first quarter, eager to start the holidays and go home. It seems that the routine has been set although I am still doing different things. Nothing remarkable except maybe the theater. Two weeks ago I closed the classic Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus by Arrows&Traps to start working then on a modern classic as Tennessee Williams StepBySteps Productions. A show of three works from the same period represented in a building set in the United States in the years 30’s or 40’s.

Reclecting Reflection

Today we’ll take a break from my life. I want to talk not about the attacks but about the social reactions to it.

For me it all started when my friend who lives in Paris said that something went down in the capital and that there were 18 people dead in 3 attacks. Later she said she was exhausted and she was going to sleep, that was with 30 dead. I was running a show so I didn’t really had the chance to look up what was happening. I did it on my way home and I was horrified. I was in the underground checking on twitter when I could. Things just were getting worst but what was strange to me was the lack of conversations about it around me. No one was talking about it and whoever was on their phone weren’t checking the news. It felt so strange and surreal.

Throughout the next day reactions were clear. People started changing their profile pictures to the French flag, France declared war, ISIS was claiming responsibility over the attacks… But still, no one on the streets said anything about it, neither did any of the 15 actors in the theatre… Someone ask how I was living things here and I responded with all honesty that it was weird the silence about it in the streets. The Catalans in London on facebook were having debates about it, sharing articles and comments, someone mention there was a candlelight vigil that night, but I felt silence around me for the most part.

I honestly felt fear in the morning, something that I haven’t ever felt, fearing that the next victim could be someone I know. When I was younger my mum mention when talking about Palestine, Afghanistan etc that the war one day would come to us, we live too close, the governments are too involved. And for the first time I understand what she meant. And I am scared. But hear me out, I understand that more security won’t do any good, it would be more annoying than anything, I do not want that kind of response form the countries. I will not hate Muslims and I am not even going to get into the absurdity of doing that. I am scared because these people are ghosts and there is no solution against that. I am scared because it could be anyone anywhere, like the girl who played dead said on her scary tale.

And during all of this, I found out about the attempt in Beirut. Have you heard about it? Why isn’t your flag with the Lebanon flag? I am stuck with the fight to make people hear about Beirut more than the fear of ghosts or the weirdness of the silence. Would you guess where I found an even number of posts about France, Beirut and cats? Imgur, that’s right, through that I found out that a man tackled the bomber dying but saving a lot of lives. Through that I found that he had a daughter that is alive. Why don’t we talk about Beirut??? I get angry at the media for focusing and dramatizing Paris so much. At 1pm they still show pictures of the night, what about the morning after? And you, have you heard about Beirut? Why doesn’t your profile say so?  

Chapter 6: Remember Remember ...

... The 5th of november, eventhough I missed it. As the 4th of July in the United States, this national day celebrated with fireworks, I spent in the theater. Not that I regreted it, I was working so...

Yes you heard---ehem... read it right! I found a job. After nearly a month of sending dozens of CVs everywhere, spend thousands of breakfast looking at ads online, and many nights stressing because days passed and I still did not hear any answers... Finally one day I got an answer: they had found someone better, but they were keeping my CV for later.

Chapter 5: Halloween

Looking at this week, I can only recall the desperate search for work for the next two months ... But in fact there have been many other things. As the first presentation of our projects. Needless to say Halloween the Castanyada.

Chapter 4: routine

We started this week on Monday thinking we had class but then it turned out that we didn't. So we didn't do much.

Tuesday we had a session of what I consider it’s our only class in which we talk about art. In this session we talked about religion, theater and rituals, based on a book written by an anthropologist. It was probably one of the most interesting meetings I've had so far. We also discuss the different ways to understand things to start thinking that the audience does not always understand what we want.