So i thought i

26.2.18 I spoke to Alexandra Blanchard about her upcoming tour of 'What Would Harold Pinter Think?', which opens March 1 at the Judith E Wilson Studio.... 1- This is your first staged play. How long have you been writing for? And is stage your main focus, or do you write in other mediums? I’ve always written but not seriously until three or four years ago. I’m more interested in performance rather than the stage in particular. I’m fascinated by ways of performing, ways of seeing performances and the fragments of performance that lodge in the dusty nooks of your brain that grow and reshape your interactions with the world. I think that’s a discussion that all performers run into - what you create will never be seen or remembered as a whole. But as long as one shard get stuck, then something remains of that one unchangeable and unrepeatable night. That has to be enough. I write a lot of poetry which I often think of as a collage of shards that I’ve collected from perform...

23/2/18 Frankie moved to London in October 2016 “I know I said I was thankful for my legs that carry me everywhere around London yesterday but what the fuck I am tired. On the nice side of things, I bought a falafel wrap today. Yes.” My diary - Monday 22nd January 2018. My words about London have been waiting to spill out of me for a long while now, and they have finally arrived. It took myself a sufficient amount of time to begin, knowing that they would never quite fall how I wanted them to. Here is my short attempt at voicing a few words on a city I both love and hate. I’m not a small town girl. I love my hometown/where I grew up; being surrounded by an abundance of green, having my family nearby, the air being so fresh. It’s just not quite me. My patience is extremely short (as I’ve finally come to terms with), and I longed for something new to sink my teeth into. London called. When arriving, it was all excitement. Moving out, properly, for university was alway...

19/2/18 Will Ward moved to London in October 2016 I’m sitting in the café on the first floor of the KCL Strand Campus drinking a smoothie I prepped the night before. I’ve just come out of a lecture on Aristotle and I’ve got a seminar at eleven. It’s sunny today. I’m going home this weekend to babysit my brother while my parents are on holiday. I’ve asked my mum to buy me some Meridian Hazelnut and Cocoa Spread. This little gem is basically healthy Nutella. Hazelnut butter mixed with cocoa, coconut, sunflower oil and a little bit of honey. Later today I’ll go to Fernandez & Wells at Somerset House with some friends and have lunch. The coffee there is okay but I prefer Press. Some girl with rounded turtle glasses and curly black hair walks over to the drinks rack. My phone’s on airplane mode in my bag. One night, about a month into my first year, I went out to XOYO. It was ‘Monday Monday’ which meant free entry before eleven. Pre-drinks was at one of my friend’s halls. T...

17.2.18 Eleanor Paisley moved to London in September 2016 London is many things to many people: formidable, dirty, modern, exciting, full of opportunity. For me, London represented a step towards the life I wanted to have: being at the centre of everything in a multicultural society. As a student, I did feel as if I was in another world. It didn’t feel like I was in England at all. I would regularly socialise with fewer English people than otherwise – which suited me just fine. In university as well as all over London, the word ‘metropolitan’ applies perfectly. However, the adjective that I would most use when describing my time in London is ‘lonely’. In a sea of people, running from A to C to B then back to A again on the tube, buses, bikes, taxis, cars and trains, you become totally anonymous. Despite walking every day from Southwark to Strand, I rarely got to see much greenery. The air is alive with the business of the people, and only myself and a handful of my cohorts dared ...

14/2/18. Mania Lewandowska I moved to London in (a) September. They had organised a farewell party for me, where my brother said: “ I remember when you were three and you would scream your lungs out every time you saw a fly. And now you ’ re going to uni. I can ’ t believe it. ” I couldn ’ t really believe it either. A week later, on the first day of Freshers ’ , I twisted my ankle running through Camden to catch a bus, and spent five hours in the accident and emergency waiting room of UCLH, dozing off with my head resting on my mum ’ s shoulder. She was supposed to fly back the next day, and I was supposed to stay, mature and independent, on my own. They told me the leg wasn ’ t broken and gave me a pair of wobbly crutches; it was 3a.m. as I hopped back to my dorm along Euston Road. It was the first time that I realised that traffic was a constant thing in London, happening not only in rush hour, but absolutely always. You could be stuck in a senseless jam at 4 at night ...

11/02/18 So I thought I should: Announce ‘The Sea’ is wending its wonderful way to a theatre near you. If, that is, you live on Euston Road. We’re three weeks into rehearsals and looking forward to opening on March 1 @ The Camden People’s Theatre. Interviews, press releases, email exchanges to infinity. Soullessly using your friends for your own selfish ambitions. It’s all fair in love and theatre. I return to the blog only to leave again. From the bottomless well that is the wisdom of C Dougan, I take the advice ‘Do guest-blogging. People love talking about themselves.’ And from this comes the new season of ‘So I Thought I’: different perspectives from different people. I have contacted a bunch of people, some from London, some new to London, some having left, some having just arrived. Our inaugural blogger, Mania Lewandowska, moved to London in September 2016 from Warsaw. Her blog will open our series on Tuesday. Watch. This. Space. "I found out about p...