Greetings from the UK

October 28, 2024
2 mins read

Last week, we showed off some of Idle Muse Theatre Company’s archival photos for their remarkable production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I’d intended to show some cool onstage photographs from that production this week, but we’re traveling in the UK, and I’ve only got my iPad with me, so some travel photos will have to do for this week. Limited editing capabilities on the iPad, so I present these with only minor adjustments.

The Whys and Wherefores

In September, our friends Rachel and Victoria reached out with a random question as to whether we wanted to travel with them to an immersive experience in Wales called The Key of Dreams. They’d attended the previous event, The Locksmith’s Dream, and loved it, and they highly recommended the experience to us. And so, a month later, we found ourselves UK-bound to live these dreams with our friends.

London

On our first night in London we met up and, during dinner, we decided to check out the National Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, playing close to where we were staying. Halfway through the show, we read the program and learned that the actor playing Coriolanus was David Oyewolo (Martin Luther King in Selma and many other roles). We also realized that the actor playing Cominius was Sam Hazeldine, aka Adar from The Rings of Power, which we’d just caught up on the previous week. The whole cast was comprised of actors we’d seen in other shows as well.

The second night, Rachel and Victoria took us to Bridge Command, an immersive experience where you play (essentially) Star Trek from the Bridge. It was pretty incredible, and it should surprise no one that Elizabeth was promoted at the end of the experience. I played the communications officer, and my role was essentially to act as a bureaucratic customer service agent when dealing with space pirates on the comms.

We explored London more, helped a very drunk man find his way to his hotel one night, celebrated Rachel’s birthday at an exceptional West African restaurant called Akoko (meaning “it is time”), visited Spittalfields Market, and had many other small adventures before hopping a train to Wales for The Key of Dreams. On one of those adventures, we explored an the underground tunnels in which London citizens took shelter during the Blitz in the Second World War. Fallout vibes.

One of London’s underground tunnels the citizens lived in during the Second World War.

The Key of Dreams

The main event of the trip was The Key of Dreams, which took place in a country manor in the Welsh countryside. We arrived in Newport, Wales, by train, and then we took a cab to the estate for the event.

The Key of Dreams is a night of interactive puzzle-solving activities set against the backdrop of H. P. Lovecraft stories, with The Silver Key as a major element—but also The Music of Erich Zann, Dreams in the Witch House, and many others, as well as stories from other authors, from “The King in Yellow” to “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The participants spend the evening frantically solving puzzles, trying to piece together fragments of story to figure out the history of the house and the supernatural elements present within it. Elizabeth was very good at this. My favorite experiences came from talking to some of the actors and the other guests, with whom I collaborated to solve puzzles. All in all, it was a really fun experience, and I met a lot of great folks from Germany, Australia, and Orlando, FL.

The Adventure Continues…

We returned from Wales Saturday afternoon and settled back in London for the rest of our adventures. Our new hotel is near Baker Street, so of course Elizabeth had to pay a visit.

We closed the weekend with a visit to The Globe Theatre, where we saw the final performance of the season, A Comedy of Errors. It was one of my favorite Shakespeare productions I’ve seen—hilarious, touching, and magnificently well done, and once again it featured exceptional actors we’d seen in many of the shows we watch.

It’s been a week of new experiences, stimulating conversation, great food, high adventure, and excellent company—and there’s still a little bit more to explore.

Subscribe to
The All Worlds Traveller

Distant Era's weekly blog delivers every Monday.

Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

The All Worlds Traveller

Welcome to The All Worlds Traveller, an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from a Distant Era. Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories. This is a blog about photography and narrative; history and myth; fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird; creation and experience. This is a blog about stories.

Steven Townshend

I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print. It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds. Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.

Follow Me

About a Distant Era

Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away. We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.

Popular

Previous Story

Archival Photography for The Tempest with Idle Muse Theatre Company (Part 1)

Next Story

Archival Photography for The Tempest with Idle Muse Theatre Company (Part 2): Costumes

Latest from Blog

Go toTop