Fall 1999 Memories at ICLC

By Jessica Martenson, Fall 1999 ICLC Student, November 7, 2024

We received the loveliest memory-filled email recently from a Fall 1999 ICLC student! Check it out!

During our recent 50th Anniversary Celebration for the ICLC, we encouraged alumni to send us photos of their time here. One past student understood the assignment and we recently received the following email from them, which they gave permission for us to share. So please enjoy this little trip back to Fall 1999 with Drama Student Jessica Martenson.

Hello,

I am Jessica Martenson, BA Drama ‘01 and ICLC alumna from the fall of 1999. I participated in the ICLC 50th anniversary celebrations last summer and was inspired to go through my ICLC photo album and this is what I found!

The photo below is me (on the right) with my classmate / London flatmate Kathryn “Katie” Fleury, BA Drama ‘00, posing with the guard of changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

My London semester was fantastic and I fell in love with this city I now call home. The history, the buzz, the cosmopolitan-ness, the melting pot of languages and cultures, the fantastic cultural offerings - I fell in love with it all. My classmate / flatmate Katie said at the time that “I was eating the city alive” and she was right as I was trying to see and do so much in the time we had. After graduating from IC in 2001, I briefly moved back to my native Finland for a year, before moving to London the following year to do a postgraduate diploma in acting - and I’ve never left! After graduating from Drama

Studio London in 2003 I worked as an actor and voiceover artist, before entering the corporate world for about a decade, working for media companies such as Sony Pictures Television, NBC Universal and Disney, until I became a full-time voice artist and occasional actor. Most recently I appeared in Marvel’s “Secret Invasion” alongside Samuel L. Jackson on Disney+. I still cherish the memories from the fall of 1999 and it was wonderful to connect with so many alumni in the summer, to share our memories form this very special city and our time at the ICLC!

Here Katie (on the left) and me are sitting on the lions of Trafalgar Square. I doubt this would be allowed these days!

Here is a bunch of us at an American Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant near ICLC, I cannot remember the name. We were a mixed group, many were drama majors but many others as well.