My Year and a Half Living Abroad Part 1

This post is the first in a series where I’ll be sharing my experience living abroad. This week I’m talking about the reason I moved to the UK in the first place… grad school!

Why grad school?

November 2018. Six month after I graduated from College of Charleston and I was lost. I moved home that September after living in Prague for the summer training at the Prague Shakespeare Company. I was working for a local theatre company doing freelance projects, but I didn’t really have direction in my life. As a writer and actor, much of what I do is freelance and involves me constantly going from gig to gig. I felt like I needed more training or more education than what I got during undergrad. Going to graduate school seemed like the answer.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying all my problems magically disappeared after studying abroad. In some ways, it put off things that I’m dealing with now (finding continuous work, living somewhere that’s not my childhood home, still looking for direction in my life, etc.). After my master’s degree, however, I now feel more qualified going out into the world. I’m very lucky to have been able to afford a second degree, and one I could get while living abroad.

My program

After applying to several acting and writing programs, I eventually decided to attend the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Just typing out that sentence makes me feel pretty pretentious (lol not really), but the Institute is really just a place where a bunch of literature, theatre, and history nerds gather to discuss and research all things Shakespeare related (not to mention his contemporaries, Elizabeth and Jacobean theatre, etc.). There I found an amazing group of people who had similar interests to myself. People from all walks of life and from all over the world.

The Institute building, Mason Croft, is a gorgeous old house situated between the town center and the Elizabethan Village nearby. The building and gardens have a sense of history and capture the imagination. It’s the kind of place where you could find a quiet corner to drink a cup of tea and read an old book (an ideal situation for me) or spend an hour discussing literature with a professor or another student. My inner nerd (I was the kind of person who loved school if you couldn’t tell already) loved every second I spent there.

The Shakespeare and Creativity MA (my degree) is one of many programs the SI has to offer, but it’s really unique. While pretty much everything else, except maybe some PhD studies, is academic and research based, my MA cohort studied practical theatre and modern techniques on top of academic work.

We devised and performed shows together based on our investigations into what makes Shakespeare still relevant and how we interpret his plays in the modern age. Sadly our final project was canceled because of COVID, but the work we did there is still inspiring my current projects.

On top of our practical theatre work (including workshops with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a real dream come true for me!), I also wrote a 15,000 word dissertation on the femme fatale archetype in Shakespeare’s cannon. Although my year-long program was cut short, it was an amazing experience nonetheless. I met many creatives and academics and made some wonderful friends around the world. Studying abroad has also helped me pivot my career towards my writing skills.

In the coming weeks I’ll be covering my search for housing (and roommates!), culture shock, and my life living abroad during COVID, as well as a few other things. I hope you stay tuned for the whole series!