The second year of the course was the busiest of the three. We rehearsed our shows; we had classes in voice, movement, verse, circus performing; we went to the zoo once a week for animal study.
Animal Study was the brain-child of Barbara Caister, movement guru extraordinaire. She began the first lesson by telling us how Dorothy Tutin's - or was it Claire Bloom's? (Peggy Ashcroft?) - 'Puppies in their Basket' was astonishing. We had a hard act to follow. Quite how Dorothy, or Claire, or Peggy, managed to be four or five puppies at once was beyond me, but there you go. Barbara was a law unto herself. I'm sure she lived in another world most of the time. She had a heavy accent and looked like a Russian who'd had one too many vodkas.When she put on her sheepskin hat in winter, she was Brezhnev. She freaked us all out once by telling her story of how, in her youth, she'd had sex with a young man in a punt. To put that image in our young minds was, quite frankly, irresponsible. I joke a little, of course. We held her in great affection and she has unfortunately since passed on to the great distillery in the sky. I'm sure Central is the poorer without her.
Anyhow, part of our second year was Animal Study, culminating in a 'showing' at the end of the second term. We had passes to London Zoo and would go along there once a week to find an animal we felt an affinity with.