After a week of the Bard

Wow.

Every year, Ashland is an experience. I'm not sure how in detail I've described it before, so I'll give it a go now. Basically, every year, my father's mother and father's sister and her family (as well as mine) travel to Ashland, Oregon - a town of roughly 20,000 people located very near the southern border of Oregon. We stay in a lovely Inn called the Winchester:

The first year that I was part of the Ashland experience, I went with my sister, my grandmother, my aunt and one of my aunt's friends. That was 2006. I skipped the year that I was in Thailand, so this year, it was my fifth time going - and this year, I was there with my grandmother, girlfriend, sister, sister's girlfriend, father, father's friend, aunt, uncle, and two cousins. Eleven of us. I don't think we ever imagined it would be that big of a group! 

While we're in Ashland for those three and a half days, we are serious theater goers. We see six plays in three days - an afternoon matinee and an evening show every day that we are there. Now, it is called the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but there are also non-Shakespeare plays. This year, I saw:

Party People

Henry V

Romeo and Juliet

The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa

All the Way

As You Like It

It was absolutely fantastic. Now, unfortunately, after a week of these brain-taxing plays and the discussions afterwards (especially since my aunt has continued the tradition each year of rating the plays, -- the director, lead actors, composer, etc. -- during breakfast the day after we've seen the plays), I feel like I've talked the plays to death and my brain feels like a wrung sponge. 

However, if you are at all interested in hearing what the plays are about, you can read about them on the Shakespeare Festival's webpage here. I need to recover from that amazing week (which involved an eight hour drive on each end, with six people in a car) so I will go back to my cup of tea. 

This is the Elizabethan Theater, one of the Festival's three theaters. Every evening show that I saw was performed in this amazing theater.