2010 promises big things for Royal Holloways RAG team!

It’s likely you will have noticed the exciting new logo popping up all over campus, but did you know that on top of this, a fab new team boasts a new RAG Chair, Sponsorship Officer, Off-Campus Events Officer and their first ever Social Secretary? Of course these positions exist alongside the old team, who are working hard to make RAG better than ever!

As the new chair, elected at the beginning of February, Ben Parfitt already has big plans when it comes to changing the image of RAG and taking it in a new, exciting direction.

‘Having only very recently become involved with RAG I was somewhat underwhelmed by the rather dismal level of participation. When the opportunity arose to run for RAG chair following a resignation halfway through the year, I jumped at the chance and relished the challenge of turning RAG around!’

As for the other new positions on the team, not all students may be aware of what this hard working bunch’s jobs actually involve. So here’s a quick summary to introduce you to the new board!

It is the role of the Off-Campus Events Officer, or ‘Raids Officer’, to organise raids outside of university. This means RAG invading our local town centres, shopping malls, train stations etc, usually in outrageous fancy dress costumes, to collect money for a specific charity. This year the responsibility falls on Emma Harding, who has already organised two raids for you to get involved with.

‘I hope to take RAG off-campus as we re-launch. It will be great if we can get out there in the big towns to maximize our fundraising potential for the charities that need us! I hope to be the organization behind such events and the one to make connections between RAG members and charities they feel passionately about and to liaise with the social sec so that we can make our off-campus stuff great fun too’, says Emma.

Beth Bridewell, as Social Secretary, will this year organise all the social events for the members of RAG themselves. This includes union nights, society dinners, after-raid parties and anything else, ensuring all the volunteers have as much fun as they deserve!

She was ecstatic about taking the role, commenting ‘I am really excited about making RAG a sociable, fun and productive society that gives to people that need it (with major jokes and banter in the process.) As Social Sec, I am so up for encouraging a RAG community spirit and organizing lots of exciting things to bring us all together.’

Finally, Emily Hampton-Matthews was recently voted RAG’s Sponsorship Officer for this year. In order to hold future events, the sponsorship officer has the role of convincing businesses to donate money and prizes to RAG, essential to organizing the most amazing events yet.

‘I am really excited about becoming part of the RAG Board. Every year RAG week takes on a different persona and I am looking forward to being part of the team that creates the look and feel of this year’s events.’ Emily explained. ‘I am looking at innovative ways to raise as much money as possible from local businesses, organizations and individuals to support our events to enable us to donate as large a sum as possible to our chosen charities.’

As well as the exciting new Board members, RAG is also pleased to announce it’s brand new upcoming events! This term already, RAG has arranged two raids, one for Barnados and one for Great Ormond Street. Then on March 19th, there is RAG Day itself, promising to be one of the most fun-filled events yet.

The day includes an old-school sports day, open to all, and for the evening, a fancy dress SU night. The imaginative theme is ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, and RAG invite you all to get as creative as possible – dress up as a tiger, a lion, Tarzan, Jane, or anything else you can think of.

This is just the start of RAG’s innovative plans for this year. However, the sole reason the volunteers working for RAG arrange these events is so that students can raise money for a range of important causes, many of which may be close to your heart.

It’s not too late to get involved! It’s free to join, and the team are always ready to welcome new members. The more people that volunteer, the more money RAG can raise, the more good our chosen charities can do!

If you are interested in getting involved with RAG, contact RAG Chair, Ben Parfitt, at ragchair@su.rhul.ac.uk

We sent our Associate Editor for Culture, Ben Goldsmith, down to The Savoy Opera Society to have a bit of a chat about their latest venture: The Sorcerer.

So Nic, what’s the Sorcerer about?

On a basic level it’s the story of an idealistic young man who thinks everyone in the village he lives in should know about the wonders of being in love. To do this, he hires a firm of old established sorcerers to drug them all with a love potion which will make them fall in love with the first person they see, and naturally some Midsummer Night’s Dream style mismatching then takes place.

On a slightly deeper level the show has undercurrents of political and social satire of Victorian class relations, Eugenic Theory and the Victorian fascination with the occult, something we’ve tried to make the most of by really going to town in the magical scenes.

Not everyone really knows what The ‘Savoy’ is all about. We’ve all heard of Pavarotti and the Opera House; how does The Savoy differ?

Savoy Opera is a blanket term for any operetta that was performed at The Savoy Theatre, to a large extent this means works by Gilbert & Sullivan, but is generally broadened to include works by other composers these days. The main difference in that, unlike opera, operettas are not completely sung. They also tend to be a lot lighter and more comical that a lot of romantic opera – they’re certainly considerably shorter!

The Savoy Opera lot have done a couple of other plays this year haven’t they? Is this one any different?

On the face of it this is just another G&S [Gilbert and Sullivan, for those not in the know], however as a creative team we’ve tried to do something different with it. A lot of people have the idea that Gilbert & Sullivan is all a bit dry and twee and the humour outdated. With The Sorcerer we’ve tried to dispel that feeling as much as possible, we’ve updated a few of the gags, but more importantly we’ve tried to focus on the magical aspects of the show and create an exciting and vibrant visual spectacle. On top of that there are some really quite dark undertones running through the narrative which you wouldn’t perhaps expect from an operetta. We’ve tried to use these to give the characters, and the story, a lot more depth which should give the whole production a lot more life and vitality than people might perhaps expect!

Does this play include any new faces, any RHUL stage débuts?

There’s one in the principal line up, Gilly Franklin, who’s a second year music student making her first stage appearance at Uni. There are also quite a few new faces in the chorus, as well as people you may recognise from other societies popping up now and again. It’s also been nice to give some bigger roles to people who’ve previously appeared in the chorus.

So, you’re the director, right? Why did you put yourself forward for the job?

I am the director, although I should probably add I’m one half of a directing duo (before Alex, my co-director kills me for not mentioning him!). I put myself forward for the job for a couple of reasons, one as simple as having directed much smaller scale things I wanted to have a crack at a large scale project. That said, my main aim was to take some regular G&S and do something different with it. I was sat in the pub last year talking to a couple of people that claimed there was no way to make Gilbert & Sullivan appropriate to a modern audience or to make any element of it ‘new’. So I thought, alright, I’ll soon see about that…

Does your cast enjoy working for you or are you a bit of a tyrant?

Oh no, I really can be quite a tyrant at times, thankfully I have Alex to balance out my bad cop routine, I do try to be as nice as possible and remember that I still need to be friends with these people once they show’s out of the way. That said it seems to be working, we had a really great rehearsal last week and I was consequently very happy and nice to the cast, the next run through was a shocker so I had to go back to being my usual dry and sarcastic self.

Ok, it’s your moment – tell us where and when the show is happening?

It’s in the SU main hall from Saturday 6th – Monday 8th. On Saturday and Monday the show starts at 7:30pm, and on Sunday we have a matinee at 1:30pm plus the evening show at 8:00. Tickets are £5 for students; I hope to see you there!

UCAS statistics reveal that the number of university applicants have risen by 22.9% this year.

The record is broken once again just as university funding chiefs have warned of there being 6,000 fewer places for the up-coming academic year, compared with last academic year. This is fourth year of increase in applications with the rising rate higher than ever before.

In total 570,556 people are trying to start course in higher education. In 2009 the figure was 22.9%, or 106,389, applicants less. Chief executive of UCAS Mary Curnock Cook commented to the BBC, ”the current economic situation is causing people to apply to higher education.”

The figures show that the biggest rise in applications is from mature students, with a rise of 108%. There has been a 58% increase in applications from people aged from 21 to 24 and only a 20% growth from applicants aged 20 or younger.

The rise comes alongside some universities reducing the amount of courses and places they offer because of cuts in funding. Altogether the diminution in universities funding is £449m with 5% of reduction in teaching money. Some universities have increased the excepted grades for successful applicants to tackle the situation.

This year’s Big Spring Clean event on Wednesday 24th February saw over 100 volunteers make their way down to Egham, Englefield Green and a number of other villages with the goal of cleaning up the local community.

Students undertook the tasks of repainting planters at St Jude’s School in Englefield Green, sprucing up gardens at Lynwood Residential Home in Sunninghill and removing trolleys from the River Thames, among many others.

Absolute Harmony and Revolution Rock Gospel societies also organized the first ever ‘Sing Up’ at Englefield Green Infant School. Royal Holloway’s Community Action Volunteer Manager, Phil Simcock, spoke highly of the initiative, explaining the positive impact the projects have had this year on the community.

Friday 26th saw further volunteering events taking place, with the Men’s Rugby Club partnering with Enterprise Rent-A-Car staff to carry out the second wave of the ‘Sunken Garden’ transformation project at Merlewood Residential Home, as well as a painting team at the new non-contact Boxing Gym set up by Surrey Police and Runnymede Borough Council.

The event was overall a success and the Volunteering Management team has high hopes for the event next year.

These books are, in short, pretty amazing.

There are already 200 in the ever expanding series, and they range from history, popular culture, philosophy and, well, even the meaning of life. It would take no more than a couple of hours to read one of these books, yet each one will leave you with a basic knowledge of the subject, whether it be Dreams, Dinosaurs or Deserts.

The simple and concise language, coupled with diagrams, time lines and pictures, convey the information in a way which our brain seems to snatch up rapidly. If you want to talk about a subject in your essay that you aren’t quite sure about, you can sound like you are more than acquainted with it in a very short space of time.

They cover almost every historical period, scientific subjects (epidemiology anyone?) and lots of uncomplicated philosophy. These aren’t just useful for work; they are a fascinating insight into some things that we would simply never learn anywhere else. Some of my favourite titles include A Very Short Introduction To: Cryptography, Intelligence, Chaos, Emotion, Free Will and Nothing. Yes, literally, Nothing.

LA Candy was the debut novel released last year from reality TV show ‘The Hills’ star Lauren Conrad. I find ‘The Hills’ is like marmite, you either love it or you hate it, but this book (in which the main character is a shamelessly obvious double of Conrad) could appeal to both lovers and haters.

Ok, so, you can tell that Conrad isn’t an Ivy League Graduate in creative writing; her constant uses of the abbreviations ‘OMG’ and ‘WTF’ and the abundance of the conversational word ‘like’ prove that pretty early on.

However, as I read the novel I gained a sneaky suspicion that Conrad was actually being rather tongue in cheek, and each ‘OMFG’ might in fact be steeped in irony. A disillusioned Conrad recently left ‘The Hills’, as the show became more and more scripted and less about actual reality. The reality show that Jane and Scarlett (Conrad’s characters) are featured in tells us about the invasions of privacy, the deceptive dangers of crafty editing, the fake friendships and the tensions between real friendships that arise from having your personal life on air. The authors own issues with these factors come through clearly in the text.

Lauren Conrad has left the constructed drama now to pursue her writing career and develop her own clothes line, goals that will hopefully gain her respectability away from the dazzling lights of the Hollywood Hills. If you read her novel with a pinch of salt, what you really find is an intelligent insight into the wealth, fame and beauty obsessed heart of Hollywood – and suffice to say, all that glitters is not gold.

‘The strange juxtaposition between empty churches and full art galleries was there right in front of me, and the more I examined the way in which we attend galleries, museums and other forms of cultural undertaking, the more it occurred to me that in a largely humanist and secular culture: these were our forms of devotion.’

Will Self is quoted above, talking from the exalted dais that is Radio Four. It makes you so excited when you hear a sentence like that, doesn’t it? I happened upon it by chance. I was trawling through the big newspapers’ websites looking for something interesting to read to accompany my cup of tea. It would have accompanied a Muller corner, but I’ve run out. Anyway, I was sifting through articles – in the e-columns of broadsheets and best-sellers – reading gobshitery of the highest order.

Before this particular foray onto the internet I had no idea that an auction was being held from which Dr. Who fans get the opportunity to purchase Billie Piper’s pyjamas. Neither did I realise that Timbaland was enjoying being a dad. Neither did I realise that anything, anything at all, could worm its way into the popular press.

And so, I retired dejected to Radio 4, and the very first words I heard were those quoted above. An advert for Radio 4’s Lent Talks, the first of which is given by Will Self. And he is sooo right, isn’t he? Sorry to keep on with the rhetorical questions but it seems fitting.

God is nothing in London any more. The fair city, the place of my birth is – by the grace of God – Godless. And I don’t mean that in a way that it’s full of heathen, bloodsucking creatures of the night who live to steal from children. I mean that it has advanced into the perceptive space left by the enlightenment and shed all the laboured trappings of ‘Worship.’ And, if we are to believe Will, it has replaced Christianity’s satisfaction of the natural human yearning to be in ‘awe’, with culture.

And what better way to do it. Culture is the educated person’s way of understanding the world. We, as human animals, better comprehend the world when we are mentally stretched, and are forced into reconsideration. Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Darwin, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde, Marx, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Freud, Eliot, Camus: They didn’t inspire through giving the masses what they already had, did they? We are beings that learn ravenously, it is how we survive.

Thereby theatres, galleries, museums, cinemas, concert halls: their ability to inspire, to tease the mind into questions and to draw tears to the most unwilling of eyes renders them perfect new art-forms for our idolatry. And why are these alternatives better than organised religion? Because they do not ask for your soul as a deposit, promise you the scientifically unattainable, and in return provide a life of indoctrination and – admittedly – fine architecture.

If you go to the National and watch ‘Love The Sinner’, Will Self’s words will turn to ash in your mouths as the African preachers explain to their western counterparts that as they live in a world where there is plague, pestilence and poverty the Bible stories appear real to them. And it’s ‘cultural undertakings’ like that that make me realise that God – to be honest – is still quite a big thing in London.

When you’re up town on a Saturday morning the masses that throng from the synagogues is impressive. I do not usually see London on a Sunday but I suppose that the reaction for the Christian Sabbath is not dissimilar. God is still around, whatever I, or Will Self says. Admittedly, there are no bible tracts on the sides of our buses like those I saw in Scotland, but he ain’t dead – Sorry Nietzsche.

However, does the religious dominion and the cultural world join hands, or are their lands separate? I don’t overly care. It’s an issue for Will to deal with on the wireless. However, if you are a Ruskinite and think that all art leads to God then, by Christ, read some Pater before you go to bed.

Talking of going to bed, it is presently 1.26 on a Thursday morning, and I am writing this…God give me strength.

N.B. All blasphemes are steeped in irony. Please listen to the radio.

Aliens, UFOs, impossibly intelligent life forms have visited, are visiting, or will visit us…

Science geek or not, we all have our own opinions. So, what do you believe?

This science fiction novel by David Myers and David Percy explores a multi-dimensional universe, and offers an alternative history to the human race and how we came to be on this earth. There is plenty of maths and geometry to keep you going, but even if you don’t understand it, the gripping story behind it will keep you enthralled! Co-Written by an author and a researcher, it ties in its narrative with the reasons behind phenomenons such as the face on Mars, Crop Circles, the Pyramids and UFO’s – complete with diagrams and pictures of the latter.

It is not only the scientific paths we experience these characters follow, but conversely the spiritual and their ethereal development and evolution as human beings. (Take that Richard Dawkins!) But are these characters completely human? Where did they come from? And why are they expressively forbidden to go to the ‘Blue and Green Planet?’

You may not need to know what the correct angle to approach a solar system is (though it might be handy during a heavy night at the union), but it’s a bloody good yarn and though it may be a hefty tome it’s definitely a page turner!

Ben Goldsmith chats to Simon Sladen, the director of a new play on campus which is being produced by the German Society.

Wow! Royal Holloway has a German society? Where have you guys been hiding?

The new German Society has only been re-ratified this year, but there’s always been a German Society on campus. Our members enjoy a packed programme: visits to Germany, German film nights, visits to Bavarian Bierkellers in London, drop-in-study sessions, Christmas Market jaunts, the occassional Stammtisch and of course many socials which don’t necessarily have a German theme to them.

So what’s the game, do I have to be German to join?

You don’t have to be German to join, or a member of the German Department. You don’t even have to be able to speak German! All you need is an interest in Germany and her sister German speaking countries.

And you’re doing a play! Do you often put on productions?

We stage one production each year. This is a tradition that goes back over 25 years and we are glad that it is continuing this year. Staging a play is hard enough, but when it’s in another language it’s even tougher. The play is about making language come alive; staging a play is just one way to do this. It also allows us to encounter different texts to those studies in class, whilst improving our language. Oh, and of course, it’s a lot of fun putting on a production!

What made you chose this play?

Who wouldn’t want to stage a play where three giant comic cockroaches jump around the stage eager to devour their next victim, whilst trying to fend off the prim and proper narrators who keep stalling them by telling the story?

Sybille Berg is a great writer, her work is surreal and comic, but unfortunately this play has hardly been produced in Germany. Think Kafka mixed with Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and a bit of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and you’ve almost got ‘Herr Mautz’.We’re very lucky to be able to say that this is the play’s UK premiere, and Sibylle Berg herself knows that it’s Royal Holloway bringing her work to Britain.

What’s the theatre scene like in Germany, do they have a theatrical hub like London’s West End?

Germany doesn’t really have a theatrical hub, although I think if you asked anywhere to claim the title, Hamburg would. Germany still works on the rep system – local theatres are also quite generously subsidised and most produce everything in-house, unlike our current commercial touring system here in the UK. Musicals are quite a recent addition to this play going nation’s theatrical scene, but they sure do love them; they even built a theatre especially for Starlight Express in Bochum!

Give us the details: when and where is your production going on?

‘Herr Mautz’ by Sibylle Berg runs from Tuesday 9th – Thursday 11th March 2010 in Arts Lecture Theatre 1, at 7.30pm each night.

Tickets are only £4. We advise that you reserve tickes; we usually sell out as lots of colleges and schools also come. You can reserve tickets by emailing GermanSocietyRHUL@googlemail.com and then pay on the night.

And why should we go?

A UK premiere? Three Hollowegians in Cockroach costumes? Need I say more..? Oh and it’s only just over an hour long, so plenty of time for a German Beer afterwards!

Thanks Simon, and best of luck!