Drama and Youth - NYU London 2022

 by Sarah Kahn  If only we'd seen Kiss Me Kate tonight, because it was Too Darn Hot! (I'm sorry, I've been waiting for way too long to make this joke.)  Photo: The wonderful Corbin Bleu tap dancing in Kiss Me Kate This morning, we woke up determined to make it through the record-breaking heat with our daily Pret. I am definitely going to miss this part of our routine when I go back to New York! Photo: DaMonique, Christine, Taylor, Disco Dave, and Sarah before the trek to UEL The tube to UEL wasn't as bad as we expected, and we arrived excited for some physical theatre with Caroline Griffith! We were so excited that we spontaneously did the wave! (no, I absolutely did not ask the group to do this...) Video: the group doing the wave  When Caroline arrived, we pretty much jumped straight into an intense warmup game. "Red" meant stop, "Green" meant go, "blue" meant find a pair, and "yellow" meant find a trio. There was lots of running...

By  Julia Herrero Hello from London!! The NYU crew woke up today prepared to beat the record breaking heat, so my fellow London ladies Taylor and Sarah joined me for our daily trip to Pret-a-Manger to grab some iceI'lld beverages. Thankfully we are spending these hotter than usual days in an air conditioned studio (a rare commodity here in London) at the University of East London. Our workshop this morning was run by Vishni Velada and Sam Adams, two drama therapists. They started the session by walking in with some music, and that energy truly set the precedent for the day, as my classmates and I found the urge to dance and sing and experience that moment together, which ended up being a common theme throughout the workshop.  Here’s a little video I caught of the moment: Our workshop for the morning was titled “Bring All of You”. We did a few introductory activities, and then had time to check in with our bodies and our own internal dialogue about how we were feeling in the pr...

  Sit down everyone cause I'm about to throw a LOT at you. Today began with our usual Pret a Manger run, we cannot function without our first of five coffees for the day (that's right, you heard me ₁ ) A few of us go together in the morning before our classes, and if you ask me it's a really great way to start my day with coffee that's practically free at this point. Eventually, we met up with the rest of our classmates and began our walk to our class for today which was at UEL (University of East London) in Stratford. Now, usually, this would be a pretty chill day. HOWEVER, this day was anything but. Today London's highest temp was a whopping 37 °!! For those in the States, that's 99 °. We've been dreading it for days, we even prepared for the trains to close. It ended up not being the worst thing in the world. Luckily we were inside all day workshopping with a couple of incredible artists (as well as enjoying some air conditioning). After meeting with Lise...

By Tamara Geisler    Happy Friday! Today we had a later start to the morning than usual and first on the docket was our small group tutorials. The tutorials are a chance for students to openly discuss any takeaways, questions and connections in our London experience thus far.   My group discussed the excitement of learning new drama conventions and finding creative ways to implement previously used exercises. We ruminated on the realisation that Educational Theatre, as we know it, is a young discipline and that we are, at most, a generation away from the founding practitioners. In reality, we will be the new leaders of the praxis. What an exciting (and potentially  daunting/intimidating ) r evelation/responsibility !    After the tutorial I made my way to Covent Garden as we had a few hours break before our next workshop. I found a few cute vintage shops to explore.  All of a sudden, while at one called  PICKNWEIGHT , (recommended FYI 😊) I heard ...

July 14, 2022 London News Headlines today: Heathrow Airport Flight Cancellations! Airports and airlines are not able to come back from reduced pandemic staff in time for the summer travel boom. ✈️ MY DAY… On my walk to the NYU workshop today, I stopped at the Italian caffe Tropea inside the Russell Square Gardens park for a Full English breakfast ; eggs sunny side up, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, (yes, breakfast includes beans, like pork & beans, without the pork.) Delicious food, cute restaurant, with beautiful calming scenery! (Nice English waiter who tells me he’s been to New York and New Jersey.)  I then headed off to our NYU workshop, passing school kids in uniform heading into the British Museum (yes, the British Museum is in walking distance between the NYU apartments and NYU School Academic Center .  Beautiful Bloomsbury neighborhood. Central London.   Today, we had the honor and pleasure to learn from and workshop with Dr. Ceci...

 By Christine Skorupa Today, the NYU apartment cohort began the sunny, breezy Thursday by trekking to the nearest Pret a Manger, a common occurrence among us coffee-craving folk. The £12.50 for 5 barista-made beverages a day deal caught many of our eyes, causing us to make Pret runs a compulsory part of our schedule. (I'd recommend their hazelnut frappe, if their blender is in operation! Not sponsored. ) pictured: Julia & Taylor, sunglasses-clad and Pret-bound Today's workshop at the New York University London campus was with the accredited Cecily O'Neill, a master of process drama and arts in education research (and all around, incredibly enlightening teacher). We explored the text of Shakespeare's King Lear , a play we appropriately saw just a few short days ago at The Globe. To begin, we made some Still Images of poignant moments we witnessed in the play (which is an example of a drama structure that can be used in process drama).  pictured: a group of 5 students...