The Dramatics of Traveling

Bridget Kim ('19)

I am so lucky. During such a drama-centric period of my life, I am so utterly, monumentally lucky to have experienced the fascinating magic of scrumptious theatre in these past two whirlwind weeks. In the fall, I'm going into my last year as an undergraduate at the University of Louisville studying Political Science and Theatre Arts, and the stunning serendipity of the Oxford Society's focus on both of those subjects has given me enough imaginative fuel to propel me through the rest of my life. I always felt that politics and dramatics were two lovers bound by their incessant quarrels over legitimacy and legacy and who gets custody of the kids, but getting to travel to Oxford and London in the Summer of 2018 has secured the notion as confirmation of that entangled relationship. Feasting on the Royal Shakespeare Company's Romeo and Juliet, stomping through a gut-busting Kinky Boots in the West End, and standing as a groundling through The Merchant of Venice at The Globe? I cannot put a price on the ridiculous gratitude I have to be able to immerse myself in a program that provides me with a space of creative appreciation and participation.

McConnell Scholars in London (May 2018).

But it was not just the official displays of theatre that make me appreciate the McConnell Scholars Program and the people who care enough about it to take us straight to the history. The unofficial drama of traveling entices the lurking shadows to release all hidden intentions and bad blood. Yes, Shakespeare is fantastic to behold in the space he was meant to be performed, but is there ever such a plot twist as juicy as the one that life kerthumps onto you when you're strained to the point of breaking? Do you feel the wave of camaraderie and the rhythm of collision as furiously and fiercely as when you are thrown in the thick of things (one of many examples: someone losing a backpack in Russell Square en route to the airport a couple hours before the group flies to China)? No. You cannot. The theatre facilitates, but, it is true, all the world is a stage.

That is why when something discombobulating happens at the Rose and Crown and fifteen people of varying strengths and qualities band together to form a phalanx of friendship to protect you, you feel the value of the dramatic highs and lows of travelling. That is why when you are two hours late to an open mic with new friends and miss it entirely, you feel the growth of learning from lessons of regret and releasing the loss of potential forevers. There was a moment that Dr. Gregg, one of the kindest and bravest men I know, and I shared after a group outing to a candlelit classical concert held in a church in Trafalgar Square. He related to me, at a pivotal moment, a moment suspended in time, the beautiful burn before the ice, a quote by Edmund Burke. He said, "The theater is a better school of moral sentiments than churches where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged." After two weeks of seeing two thousand old BFCs, all beautiful in their own right, I agree and I don't. I felt human sitting in the audience of those theatres where life was happening, and I felt gloriously human in the stillness of those vast historical churches. I found solace in the mania of play plotlines, and I found refuge in the peace of troubles long simmered. I leave part of my heart in the Oxford Society 2018. I leave you with something I read on a stone monument in St. Bart's Church by Edward Cooke in 1952:

Unloose your briny floods,

What can you keep

To eyes from tears

& see the marble weep

Burst out for shame:

Or if you find no vent

For tears, yet stay,

and see the stones relent.

I wish I could yet stay. There will be plenty more drama to come, but never again of the same texture and taste or with the same friends. I am so lucky to have seen the dramatics of traveling once, and I long for the day I can see it once more. Luckily, for the members of my scholar class, Shanghai, Xi'an, and Beijing await. China, here we come!

Bridget Kim, of Morehead, Ky., is a third-year student at the University of Louisville where she studies political science and theater arts.