The Foundling Museum
The Mediatheque at BFI Southbank
The Mediatheque at BFI Southbank
The Foundling Museum made us eager to discover more about life during this period. Happily, we stumbled onto a treasure-trove of film history next door to the National Theatre. The Mediatheque at BFI Southbank is charged with preserving, restoring and interpreting British filmmaking through festivals, film restoration and cinema programming. Our film experience picked up where the Foundling Museum left off. By pressing a button at one of its 14 workstations we could call up films that portrayed the starkness of 18th-century life, such as the 1958 film version of “Tale of Two Cities”; the 1920 silent version of “Bleak House”; episodes from the 1985 and 2005 BBC adaptations of the same book; and the first episode of the 2008 “Little Dorrit.”
Backstage at London’s National Theatre
“The play’s the thing,” said Shakespeare, but for the 800-plus crew of creative people who work behind the scenes, it all comes down to illusion. Kids will be fascinated by learning the secrets of making a good severed head and other body parts, why it takes 200 hours to make a wig and that it takes 2530 measurements to fashion a single costume. The final puzzle is figuring out which department uses the most cheese graters (clue - it’s not the kitchens). Touring behind the scenes at the National is both an intellectual and physical workout just keeping pace with the guide through three theaters, six rehearsal halls, dressing rooms, wardrobe facilities housing thousands of costumes and huge spaces for building sets.
Places to Eat
London’s National Theatre
Enter a glass-roofed atrium filled with cherry blossoms and shrubbery. www.infinitieplus.com
infinitie plus
october 2012
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