Gaiety Theater, and more of the green.

So I feel as though I haven't done a big photo + me blathering about Ireland post for a while. Probably because I haven't. I also haven't been taking a lot of photos. We finally have all our classes, have integrated with the Gaiety kids, and are on what is generally assumed to be our normal schedule (but really, with IES, "regular schedule" is a joke). But I never posted the pictures I took of the Gaiety Theatre, which is beautiful; and I took a few more of St Stephen's, so you can see how autumn looks. What, no one else is interested in the colours of leaves and how many are left?

Classes are going well, too. As usual. General updaty-ness:
Movement gets better and better every single class; that Dance (it needs a capital letter) becomes more and more second nature, and we're playing around with it now; plus we're doing contact improv which is the coolest thing ever.
In acting we have one more class, then presentation of monologues, before break. And after break we have a new teacher. No more Amanda. I am severely upset by this. Severely. Does she know how much we all adore her? Because we do...
Voice continues to be voice exercises + poetry circle with Cathal, which is fine by me. Huzzah for Yeats.
Devising...is weird as always. I'm fond of our piece (which we really ought to practice). Anything making fun of Waiting for Godot is okay by me.

And integration with the Gaiety kids is awesome. It's wonderful to meet other students, most of them Irish but not all, and it's actually really wonderful to have boys around, because it brings a completely different dynamic to the group. I didn't realize how boy-heavy SU's drama department is until I'm in a group with twelve girls and one boy (poor Peter has to be the entire boy side of drama at the moment). There are plenty of Gaiety girls as well, though, some of whom I've talked to a little, who are all lovely. This is their first year as well, so we're all a little tentative, but it looks to be really good. (Which means nothing...but I'm tired, and I can't come up with anything better to say.)

Right. On to photos...



These are the stairs leading up to the circle seats. Everything is all red velvet and dark wood. Mmm.



The upper lobby...



And the chandelier in the lobby...



The safety curtain, a feature of older theaters like these.



The side of the theater.



And the front, with a glimpse of the set for Lon Day's Journey into Night.



A look down into the stalls.




You should know by now my fondness for taking photos of doorways and passages and things.



The trees are losing leaves!



They are all on the ground instead.



And sunlight...beautiful sunlight.


On an entirely different note, here's one last photo. In case you're not up on current Irish affairs, there is a great furor going on at the moment over the building of a motorway pretty much right through, or at least right by, the Hill of Tara. As you can imagine a lot of people (myself included) are not exactly chuffed about the idea of building a road through an ancient historical site, with lots of significance, spiritually and otherwise, not to mention probably a lot of as-yet-unfound archaeological artifacts. So there have been protests. And this was one, in Grafton street, today:




...and it's time for sleeping I think...