{"id":1526,"date":"2019-11-18T10:36:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T15:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2019-11-18T10:36:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T15:36:57","slug":"twelfth-night-fall-2019-tour-entry-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/twelfth-night-fall-2019-tour-entry-15\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTwelfth Night\u201d Fall 2019 Tour: Entry #15"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week Fifteen: United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, <\/strong>Colorado<\/strong>
\nBy Kaffe Keating<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s all one, our play is done.\u201d<\/em>
\n– Feste, Act 5 Scene 1<\/p>\n

And after what feels like a lifetime and no time at all, we\u2019re arriving at our final destination, Colorado Springs. Where the Rocky Mountains rear up on one side, and the plains of middle America on the other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re finishing off our tour at another military academy. This time we\u2019ll be the guests of the US Air Force. The United States Air Force Academy, or USAFA for short (think of Simba\u2019s dad and you\u2019ll get the pronunciation), sits high above the city of Colorado Springs, nestled within the mountains themselves.<\/p>\n

My grandfather was an RAF pilot who got picked to be part of an exchange to the US and so flew with the US Air Force during his training. It\u2019s funny to think that I\u2019ll be teaching in some of the classrooms where officers he would have known received their own education.<\/p>\n

Our flight from Indianapolis takes us into Denver, known as the Mile High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile, or 5280 feet, above sea level. An hour and a half later we climb a bit higher and arrive at Colorado Springs (6035 feet) and our hotel, with its incredible mountain view.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re met by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Lee, who\u2019s one of the instructors at USAFA and who\u2019s
\norganised the residency. He\u2019s the one who first lets us know that the altitude may be more of a factor in our week than we thought\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, by the way, you\u2019ll need to drink a lot more water than you usually do. You don\u2019t want to get altitude sickness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altitude sickness. Brilliant. I suppose it\u2019s fitting that the cadets here train at altitude; I know that
\nmarathon runners often train at higher elevations so that their bodies can adapt to the thinner air. Then they\u2019re able to use all the extra red blood cells they\u2019ve made to carry extra oxygen to their muscles for the race itself.<\/p>\n

We, however, are doing the opposite. We\u2019ve been in Indiana for a fortnight. If you\u2019ve been to
\nIndiana, you know that altitude sickness is probably the last thing you\u2019d need to worry about.
\nWarsaw, where we were last week stands at a modest 823 feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrink lots of water. And maybe lay off the booze for the first few days,\u201d says Bill. The academy, which we can see from our hotel window, is even higher than Colorado Springs itself, 7258 feet up in the air.<\/p>\n

The problem with altitude is that the air gets thinner the higher you go, meaning that there\u2019s less oxygen available for stuff like, you know, moving around. This can cause fatigue (because god knows we need more of that), nausea and, the Shakespearean actor\u2019s favourite, shortness of breath. You also start vomiting and stuff when it gets really bad. I decide to heed Bill\u2019s advice, lay off the beers and drink enough water that I\u2019m in search of a restroom every half hour.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s AFTLS\u2019 first time at USAFA (we decided that the fight over who could get the most letters into an acronym should end in a draw), and we\u2019re aware of the importance of making a good first impression on the way to our final faculty meeting, where we meet the tutors whose classes we\u2019ll be commandeering. But, as ever, everyone is incredibly friendly and inviting and it promises to be an interesting week of teaching.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve only got the one show at USAFA, which will be our final US performance. Our burgeoning outcry is quashed, however, when we learn about the size of the theatre. Arnold Hall, the theatre on base, seats over 2700 people \u2013 we\u2019re not going to need more than one performance in a space that big. It\u2019s absolutely massive, more than twenty times bigger than Grace College\u2019s Little Theatre. In the space of two weeks we will have performed in the smallest and biggest auditoria of the tour, one after the other. Talk about adapt or die\u2026<\/p>\n

On one of the days we were treated to lunch with the cadets, who all eat together in the vast Mitchell Hall. Just like at the Naval Academy, the cadets are required to march in in sections to the sound of the academy brass band playing the Air Force song, before sitting down to eat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey call this the longest table in the world,\u201d Colonel Kathleen Harrington, who runs the English department, tells us as we survey the cadets all chowing down. \u201cBecause the freshman sit at one end of the table, and at the other end of the table is a senior. It\u2019s the longest table, because it takes four years to get from one end to the other.\u201d The cadets sit not in year groups, but in squadrons with the older, more experienced cadets guiding, and in some cases policing, the younger ones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The academy itself is quite different to what I imagined. I suppose after visiting the Naval Academy and walking around their yard, I was expecting architecture of the same mid-1800s feel. But the Air Force, of course, is a much younger branch of the military; the academy was founded over a hundred years later and thus has a more modern, functional design. The standout, however, is the incredible chapel, which was, unfortunately, closed for renovation for the next four years. I guess they\u2019ll just have to have us back then so we can check it out\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bill, along with an ex-student of the academy, Captain Kelly Griffith, was kind enough to take us of a tour of the campus, talking us through the various traditions which the students observe after graduating. Freshman have to run everywhere in straight lines, everybody jumps in a fountain after they graduate, and every graduating year group has its own unique insignia. Kelly pointed out the one for 2013 which featured a pig\u2019s snout on a nose of a plane. This was because that year, during their basic training, about a third of the cadets contracted swine flu. There\u2019s a joke about pigs flying in there somewhere, but I won\u2019t put you through that.<\/p>\n

We rocket through the week until we arrive at our first and final performance, on a chilly Colorado evening. It\u2019s abundantly clear how much breath we\u2019re going to need. Big spaces like this always require a lot of diaphragm in order to both be heard and avoid damaging your vocal cords in the process. But here we\u2019ve got the added element of being up in the mountains, 7000 feet above sea level. Bill was kind enough to buy us a couple of mini oxygen tanks, the sort I guess you\u2019d use when climbing Everest, and we kept one behind the chairs on stage just in case.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a wonderful show, and a fitting end to our time both at USAFA and in the United States itself. We had been told to expect roughly 200 cadets, but we were greeted on stage by an audience of about 600 \u2013 not a bad turnout at any stretch.<\/p>\n

After the show, walking to the cadet\u2019s SU bar, Bill told us about two big wins. One of his students, who had been struggling to understand the play in class, came up to him after the show and simply said: \u201cI get it.\u201d This is precisely what we\u2019re trying to do. There\u2019s loads of incredible stuff you can do when studying Shakespeare in the classroom, there\u2019s no denying it. Loads of interesting, clever stuff. But what is so often overlooked, so often forgotten or shied away from, is reading it and hearing it aloud. That was always the way it was intended to be received; through the ears, not the eyes. Words hit us in a different place that way. The second win was that another of Bill\u2019s students preferred our version to the filmed performance at the Globe from a few years ago. Eat it, Rylance.<\/p>\n

In one of her classes with some seniors, one of Katherine\u2019s students told her that in the military, they spent so much time having to play a role \u2013 living up to whatever their duties demanded of them \u2013 that it was a rare treat to spend some time actually being themselves. Oddly, that\u2019s sort of what theatre\u2019s all about, I think. Not so much putting on a mask, as showing people what you really, truly look like when you take your mask off, and then encouraging them to do the same.<\/p>\n

With the tour over and the final US performance done, all that remains are the two final
\nperformances back in London at the John Lyons Theatre at the end of November. In the meantime, our group of five will temporarily diverge, some continuing to explore this incredible, beautiful country, and some heading back to the country we call home.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been an incredible ten weeks. I\u2019ve started to feel at home here, finally. This huge, sprawling land with its giant cars, self-flushing toilets, cowboy boots, fall colours, marines and sailors, giant redwoods, generous townsfolk, Amish settlements, and stretching mountain ranges.<\/p>\n

Cheerio, America. We\u2019re off to that little island you had that barney with a few hundred years ago, but we\u2019ll be back. Thanks for having us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week Fifteen: United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado By Kaffe Keating \u201cBut that\u2019s all one, our play is done.\u201d – Feste, Act 5 Scene 1 And after what feels like a lifetime and no time at all, we\u2019re … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2812,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47489,361299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actors-from-the-london-stage","category-twelfth-night-fall-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}