Post Shakespeare

What a busy week. Family (nine of all told - cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, sisters, brothers, daughters, etc.) - we flock to the gorgeous Winchester Inn in Ashland, Oregon each year and see six plays in three days. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a rotating repertory theater company, which means that in their nine-month-or-so long season, they put on something like eleven plays, at least six of which are being performed in any given week, on three of the stages in the town. This means that the actors (the fantastic actors) are in at least two plays at any given time, and may very well play Hamlet in the afternoon, and a ruffian in Pirates of Penzance in the evening. Oh, yes - and they do put on non-Shakespeare plays as well.

This year, our six were:

Day One: The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare: a comedy, but a harsh one, about a woman who must be wed so her darling younger sister can be married, yet the elder sister is a bit rough around the edges, one might say), My Fair Lady (musical, premiered 1956 on Broadway, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion - about a woman who wants to sound more like a lady and lose her rough street accent, and a gentleman who just can't wait to show off his talent as a voice teacher).

Day Two: The Tenth Muse (Here is what the festival website says about this play: "In a lively 18th-century convent in colonial Mexico, young nuns and servants unearth a hidden play written by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun and famous intellectual who died 20 years earlier after falling out of favor with the church. At night, behind the back of the Mother Superior, they act out Sor Juana’s ribald farce, revealing her blazing, blasphemous talent...and discovering their own complex bonds of sisterhood." I couldn't give a better description, and I'm still reeling at how incredible this play was. Totally unexpected, totally touching.) and Cymbeline (Shakespeare - this is one of the plays that isn't put on that often, and so we were excited to see it - though because of the wildfires in Oregon, there was a great deal of smoke in the air - so much so, that the outdoor performances on the Elizabethan Theater (modeled after the Globe) were in jeopardy so as to not harm the actors or the audience. Thus, we saw Cymbeline as a staged reading - no costumes, no makeup, no set, no blocking (hardly) - in the auditorium of the local high school. And you know what? It was brilliant. The actors were sitting in folding chairs in a semicircle on the stage, and that was the "backstage" if you will - if they were in the scenes that were happening at the moment, they stood up and acted, while rest sat back - so we saw all of their reactions to the rest of the acting (such as cracking up or being moved by the scenes), which we don't usually see. Plus, there was the added fun of improvised goofiness - a hair tie was substituted for a ring that had to be given back and forth, fight scenes were a good laugh for everyone, and it was still so believable - the love, the beheading, the scenery - it was kind of amazing to see their talent displayed that way. I definitely wouldn't trade that night for a show in the actual theater.)

Day Three: King Lear (Shakespeare. King goes mad. People die. *sigh* Very intense. Three and a half hours long. - Also where we get phrases like "Reason not the need," "Never never never never never," and the famous "Blow, winds, crack your cheeks" speech) and The Heart of Robin Hood (David Farr, a take on Robin Hood written for the Royal Shakespeare Company that tells of Robin Hood when he was stealing from the rich, but hadn't learned to do the other half yet - until he meets Maid Marion, in disguise as a man, who teaches him to have a heart as well. Compared to the other plays during the week, this was pure candy - dances, swinging on ropes, mistaken identity and multiple identities, sword fights, and a disney-esque villain, and it was simply lovely, and wonderful to end on.)

And then we drove home.

:)

And today, my sister and her boyfriend fly back to Meadville, my father back to work tomorrow, and myself to Meadville on Monday. Two more nights in Berkeley, three in Meadville, and then Budapest. Wow.