CAU > Seminars and Study Tours > The Play's the Thing: London Theatre

The Play's the Thing: London Theatre

May 6-14, 2006

The registration period for this program has passed.
Please contact us if you have any questions.

For centuries, London has been synonymous with great theatre, and CAU's tenth journey to the London stage is designed to give you the best theatre in comfortable and gracious style. Our group will be lodged at the Radisson Edwardian Mountbatten, a most pleasant hotel perfectly set between the theatre district and Covent Garden and featuring rooms that will provide a convenient setting for our daily seminars. The heart of the program will be the plays, six in all, including productions at the Royal National Theatre and in the West End.

Our leaders will be David M. Feldshuh, professor in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, artistic director of Cornell's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, and an award-winning playwright, and Glenn C. Altschuler, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, who will also be our quartermaster in London. As a practicing director, actor, and playwright, David will bring practical as well as scholarly perspective to the productions we see. He will focus our attention on the theatrical possibilities and challenges of each production, while Glenn and David will combine their expertise to explore the imaginative process necessary to transform a written script into a successful theatrical creation. We know you will enjoy the daily pre-performance lectures and post-performance discussions.

David and Glenn will select the plays for this study tour this winter. Previous CAU London playbills have included works by George Bernard Shaw, Ben Jonson, Luigi Pirandello, Alan Ayckbourn, Tom Stoppard, and Noel Coward (to name but a few), and Shakespearean productions of King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The marvelous variety and quality of London theatre unfailingly rewards our expectations, and we are confident that the 2006 season will prove equally exciting.

The program fee (per-person, double-occupancy) of $3,990 covers the full educational program, hotel accommodations, theatre tickets (stalls or best-available seats for all performances), transfers, admission fees, escort services, taxes, gratuities, all breakfasts, welcome and farewell receptions and dinners, and luncheon at the Royal National Theatre. The supplement for single occupancy is $1,260. A group airfare between New York and London will be offered (we'll send you cost information with your registration confirmation), but you are free to make your own flight arrangements. This is not a physically strenuous program, but please keep in mind that we will be walking from the hotel to several performances, possibly including productions at older theatres lacking handicap-access facilities. Special note to London theatre participants who also take part in the CAU London art seminar the week of May 14: your fee for the art program will be $200 per person less than the advertised rate (see the program description on the opposite page).