Don't Push Buttons on Turtles' Bellies

Next year could be interesting. So far I’ve about doubled my attendance at Fringe shows each year of the festival, from three to five to ten. The madness will have to end though as I’m on pace to see all hundred or so shows by 2011… unless the festival keeps growing—not unlike Telly the Turtle in Prototype 373-G. Telly began as a tiny turtle transported in a leftover Lo Mein box… and ended the play as a stage-filling Tortuga bent on world domination. That’s basically what my Fringe experience was like this year…

It started out all fun and innocent with the funtastic I Like Nuts! (the musical) and Love in the Time of GPS in Ball & Chain. Then somewhere between Through the Looking Glass and Power House: The Disco Energy Dance Along Show things got a little strange—just like when the protagonist in Prototype 373-G, Belly, finds a button on Telly the turtle’s tummy (you know the button that unleashes the evil—and hilarious—space turtle Shiggles, and gives him mind-control powers over Belly... who then becomes an interesting “Tube of Flesh” to pave the way for total-tortuga-domination, by readying her apartment for her insemination at the hands tail (I think) of Shiggles; He likes to munch on leafy greens during coitus, so in preparation Belly’s apartment is soon filled with plants, giant bowls of salad etc.… and an ever expanding Telly the turtle who Shiggles will eventually inhabit.) So yeah, it’s sort of like by going to Power House I unknowingly pushed a button that triggered me to become obsessed with Fringe shows and they took over my life this weekend (though hopefully without all of the insemination and turtle-takeover parallels). Well, something possessed me to see six more shows from Friday to Sunday.

Suddenly everything about my life related to Fringe, thanks to the next show I saw: Tales of Doomed Love. Tales and the next show Children of Medea each had links to the story of Medea, as did Argonautika from a few months ago. Tales also retold part of the Oresteia which I saw recently by Constellation Theatre… with the actress from Tales. Finally, Tales had the story of Tristan and Isolde which I was relieved to have no connection to… until it was the topic of a lecture I heard on Saturday! Tales definitely wins the award for most connections, but I wasn’t in love with the show. I found it most compelling when both actors were interacting to tell a story… unfortunately that only happened in one of the five tales.

The connections weren’t finished after Tales though, they kept going with Children of Medea which was the best (if not fringiest) piece that I have ever seen at Fringe. Among those connections:

• Recurring scenes set in Wonderland (just like Sunday’s Through the Looking Glass), including a memorable scene where Alice meets the March Hare…a character I played in High School
• I saw my favorite Fringe shows alone since Darren had opted out of both Nuts and Children of Medea… and would do so again the next day with another favorite, Gilgamesh (no protest by me since I’d picked up the trend and knew it would be good!)
• Darren and I always check our programs for artists whose credits include our favorite TV show, The Wire. Since it was filmed in Baltimore nearly every show we see includes someone (although no one we ever recognize). Medea did not. However, in the audience for Medea was none other than Delaney Williams who plays McNaulty’s boss Sergeant Jay in all five seasons of The Wire. Now I knew Darren would be pissed he hadn’t stayed!

Friday’s final show Lebensraum was good, and the fact I don’t have more to say about it is not a reflection on Lebensraum but rather just how amazing four other shows I saw this weekend were. Children of Medea was the first of the four and was the clear winner for me… until I saw the next three. Now it’s all muddled again. Gilgamesh for example is exactly what I go to the Fringe festival hoping to see: An ensemble show like my high school theatre teacher Mr. Maiden used to take to the one-act competitions. I loved the rhythms the ensemble pounded out during the fight sequence, the interactions between the actors and the projected shadows, and learning about lacunae (gaps in a manuscript such as the epic of Gilgamesh… or detail about Lebensraum and Power House in this blog post).

Sunday broke the curse and I closed the Fringe out with two more fantastic shows… this time with Darren in attendance! We saw back-to-back shows at the Source Theatre: Prototype 373-G and Born Normal. In addition to having the best costumes of any Fringe show (and just about any other show I can think of) Prototype also included a reference to some of my favorite books growing up: The Choose Your Own Adventure series. The characters had a game of taking turns reading the adventures to each other and swapping when one’s choice led to death… unless they died on the very first decision which would trigger the controversial “Too Young To Die” rule!

• If you decide to read more about Prototype 373-G, turn to page 1.
• If you decide to read more about Born Normal, turn to the next page.

If I thought I was all laughed out after Prototype 373-G (and I should have been) I was quite wrong. There were still some connections to be revealed as well such as:

• Both shows featured new kinds (well names at least) of cancer: Ass cancer in Prototype and Wing cancer in Born Normal.
• Sitting down in Prototype 373-G I joked with Darren about whether there were any Wire cast members in THAT audience (he was, as expected, bitter to have missed Delany Williams on Friday). I turned around jokingly to scan the audience… and of course, Mr. Williams was once again in attendance!
• Not only that but between shows we went to St. Ex where we met a chatty drunk woman who was there with her gay husband and his gay friends (no typos in there, just a unique woman). And while she was not at all interested in theatre (making snoring noises each time we discussed shows with a Fringe volunteer who we also met at the bar) her friends did seem to know Delaney Williams who came in for drinks as well!
• The connections also led to a new friendship with Fringe volunteer Elizabeth at the bar who: gave us our tickets at Prototype, had been in the audience of Children of Medea with me, also had tickets to Born Normal, and is moving just down the street in September.

Oh yeah, I was talking about Born Normal; In which most of the characters are not born normal:

• There’s the mother with wings
• The older sister who can heal animals—provided they a) died of natural causes and b) are under 18 pounds, leading to such lines as “I’ve got a stack of parakeets in the corner I’ve been meaning to get to”
• Younger brother Martin who’s born able to talk and therefore able to answer his mother’s question about his gender: “While I lack the manual dexterity to fully investigate the matter, I believe I am a boy”
• And Sunshine… whose name might be a bit too “on the nose” as the mother would say since it is just a burning glow within swaddling clothes
  

And then there is daughter Jane who actually is born normal. It’s hard to say if I was more impressed with the cast’s acting which was, along with Medea’s Sue Jin Song and Prototype’s Hugh Nees, the most impressive of the festival (well my 10 show sampling of the festival), or the script which was written by Stephen Spotswood who is an MFA candidate at Catholic University. I will definitely be on the lookout for more work by all of them, although with 12 shows in 10 days (including Not the Messiah! at Wolf Trap and my sister Mimsi's terrific turn as Frog in Frog and Toad) I am officially going to take a break from theatre… for at least a week.

Notes to Jon:

• If I hope to get to 20 shows next year I will need them to add shows back on Monday and Tuesday nights, which they took away this year (my biggest disappointment with the festival)

• Supposedly my Fringe button is good for discounts at local eateries all year long and not just all festival long (I’ll let you know when I test that)

• I walked up and purchased tickets to all three shows on Friday (despite rave reviews for Children of Medea) and Gilgamesh on Saturday night, but found many times that I wished I could have changed the tickets that I had already allocated from my 10-ticket passes. So my lesson for next year is to risk the sell outs and allocate the tickets from the passes on the day of the show (and frankly after I’ve read some reviews).

• If I’m ever pulled on stage at the end of Power House, refuse to dance until they try “Contingency Plan 10” on me (aka seducing the dancer into continuing to produce energy). Other than "Contingency Plan 10", the highlight of the show was the Dharma-initiative-esque video in the beginning explaining how they now breed humans who can dance longer so as to generate energy… from the seismic energy produced by the feet, thermodynamic energy from body heat, and hydroelectric energy from collecting sweat (lovely)
  

• Drama is harder to pull off than comedy (probably because it requires the audience to be fully invested) but Berlin in Ball & Chain and Children of Medea nailed it

• Great comedy is still a hell of a lot of fun to go see and I Like Nuts, Love in the Time of GPS in Ball & Chain, Prototype 373-G, and Born Normal were all exceptional comedies

• I’ll never think of the March Hare the same again after Children of Medea. My portrayal in high school was G Rated. Whereas Sue Jin Song’s NC-17 March Hare sung “You put the right ear in, you pull the right ear out… you put both ears in” etc. Quite the naughty hare.

• Medea also contained other favorite scenes about expectations on children, where “Alice” has a nightmare in Wonderland about the SAT and is running across a giant scantron trying not to be sucked into the reader, and how parents named their children Yale, Princeton, and Harvard… and their fourth kid Bob. Sue Jin Song was at her strongest when switching into the character of Julie Ann, who was her family’s “Bob”.

• I wish Darren got to see Gilgamesh, because it was like the theatre we did in high school, but also because it included the story of Shhh… or how The Flood was sent because humans talked so loud they woke the gods.
  
  
• Most of the embedded photos are from the Fringe's official Photo blog and clicking on them will link to the photo blog for that play.
  

• Go see any show with costumes done by the Crafts Action League. It’s tough for costumes to steal a show as good as Prototype 373-G but they nearly did: from the green dresses Belly wore, to the green underwear everyone wore, to the pull off shirt-pants-and-tie worn over identical shirt, pants, and tie, to the leafy green costumes of the ensemble in one scene, and most importantly to the turtle costumes of Shiggles and the ever expanding Telly—who at the very end got to be nearly as big as this blog entry… somebody get the water

Virile as a particularly attractive mountain lion

It’s generally a good thing when you leave a musical and find yourself singing the closing number as you exit the theatre. It can be a bit disconcerting though when that theatre is near Dupont Circle and the chorus of the song is “I like nuts! I like nuts in my mouth”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not the attention I am looking for.

So what had me singing in the streets? I like Nuts! (the musical). The first of three Capital Fringe Festival shows I checked out this weekend. Nuts was my favorite and only a notch below last year’s favorite Cautionary Tales For Adults and the Many Adventures of Trixie Tickles. For me, Nuts was basically Trixie Tickles without the clever props and my audience crush on the lead actresses. Featuring a quest for Nutty Knowledge to secure a job in a nut factory, the cast included two angry squirrels, a pirate, a robot, and a vegan vampire—and the show was just as delightfully ridiculous as it sounds. From a staging perspective, it was one of the few shows I’ve seen that was in the round, so between laughs I was fascinated to see how they set up the blocking so the entire audience could enjoy the show (exit aisles in each corner are key). While I can’t say I gained any enlightenment (other than some useful trivia regarding legumes, drupes and seeds) I was laughing hysterically for most of the hour. That’s well worth the price of admission and probably a much healthier way to spend an hour than at Anger Therapy—which the squirrels want to start so they can share their hatred with the world.

Saturday night was Journeymen Threater’s Ball & Chain at The Universe, which as the house manager stated “is warm” and he was glad to see we had all received our “fans” (the programs) at the door (The Universe is the basement of a church without AC … and highs on Saturday topped 100°). The show was actually seven mini-shows which had been written about the theme of love and marriage, and while not all seven lived up to the caliber of the hilarious introduction by the house manager (technically I believe I recall he was Marketing Director Matt Dunphy) a couple of them more than made up for the rest. Michael Harris’ Love in the Time of GPS highlighted the humorous side of love. Illustrating what might happen if your GPS was in love with you and got jealous of the new girl—[Proceed straight for 100 yards, and drive over that pulsating red mass in the road… that is my heart]. Or if you threatened to toss the jealous GPS (which has been bitterly insulting you) right out the window and she needs to recant she might say—[You are virile as a particularly attractive mountain lion]. Admittedly I have a much higher standard for enjoying a dramatic piece than a comic one but as I failed to get drawn into some of the more dramatic mini-plays in Ball & Chain, I wondered if that standard was unrealistic… until the final piece, Emily Steel’s Berlin, restored my faith. This poignant piece juxtaposes a girl’s obsession with Berlin with the divisions—and hope for reunification—of her divorced parents. It was a simple but powerful connection. Playwrights outnumbered actors in Ball & Chain 7 to 2 and I fear that ratio may increase if they don’t get a new costume for Krista Cowan (there is a legitimate danger that The Universe will melt her in that sweater). While I still yearn for a piece to rival Journeymen’s 2006 Fringe entry Bartleby, those two sections made Ball & Chain worth enduring the heat (plus, unlike the actors, we were given fans!)

Omniumgatherum’s Through the Looking Glass rounded out the weekend. I had mixed opinions about this show. On the one hand it was an ensemble piece where the actors create the set pieces, which is the type of theatre that I particularly enjoy (and don’t get to see much of outside of Fringe). In addition I have fond memories of bounding around stage in a six-foot rabbit suit as the March Hare for our high school production of Alice. Unfortunately the show was rather short and not as whimsical as I had hoped it would be (most likely because my Alice impressions are colored by Disney more than Lewis Caroll), but mainly I found myself frustrated by the blocking which left me craning to see a scene in the center aisle (while the stage behind lay empty) or staring at the actors backs. Nonetheless, there were plenty of interesting moments to sooth my initial terror when I realized from the program that everyone in the production seemed associated with University of Maryland Theatre. While I am sure they have a great program, my only association with their theatre is the 2006 Fringe show, The Play About the Hurricane, that Darren and I use as our baseline of unpleasant theatre-going experiences. This was no Hurricane and had plenty of fun moments including:

• Representing Alice’s reflection by pushing a mask into an elastic silver cloth creating an effect reminiscent of the water creature from Abyss.

• Two Wonderland creatures do battle by contorting themselves around each other without touching until one loses their balance and falls over

• Having the cast create a door where two members represent the frame, one the door in the middle, and another sticking an arm though to serve as a doorknob which Alice turns

• An exchange along these lines between Alice and talking flowers in a garden:
• Alice: How come you talk and other flowers don’t?
• Flowers: Feel down there
• Alice (feeling the dirt): It’s hard
• Flowers: Yes. Most flower beds are soft… so the flowers are asleep

I’ve learned some more lessons about how to better enjoy the Fringe festival but I’ll save them for my conclusions after next weekend’s round of shows.

The Ghost and the Dysfunctional Family

P.W.Y.C. Yes those four lovely initials (though not an acronym) mean it’s time for another trip to Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Tonight it was David Adjmi’s new play Stunning which I read the following synopsis for:

Sixteen year old Lily knows nothing beyond the Syrian-Jewish community
[…] where she lives a cloistered life with her much older
husband. Soon an unlikely relationship with her enigmatic African-
American maid opens Lily's world to new possibilities - but at a big
price.

So I thought I was seeing something in the vein of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (just replace Syrian-Jewish with Afghani, and African-American maid with first wife). I loved that book but tend to have a hard time with realistic dramatic theatre, so I had fairly low expectations (for my enjoyment at least, not for the quality of the show). My expectations were shattered instantly when New York club music pumped out of the darkened stage and the play opened with a scene I’d describe as Sex in the City-gogue, and the audience was quickly cracking up.

I’d made two false assumptions. First, that the play was set in Syria. Notice that deceptive “[…]” up in the synopsis quote? It hides the words “in Brooklyn” which failed to sink in when I originally read it. The second assumption was that the cloistered girl was poor. Actually the family, and in general the whole Syrian-Jewish enclave (which actually exists) is quite wealthy—Lily had just returned from Aruba in the opening scene, so I had to reconcile cloistered with international travel and conservative with trendy clothes.

Having successfully made this mental adjustment, and breathing a sigh of relief that this would be a humor-infused drama, I began searching for what is seemingly an intentional mark of Woolly theatre: The Ghost and the Dysfunctional Family. The play Nutshell from last year’s fringe festival made a joke by describing a play at Woolly Mammoth as “the one about the dysfunctional family”, and when that didn’t narrow anything down, “the one with the ghost”. That line gets funnier to me with every show I see there. So far this season The K of D and No Child… have both had a dysfunctional family and a ghost. Now the family isn’t hard (how many plays have you seen about a functional family?), but the ghost as well? I didn’t have to wait long. In the very opening scene Lily describes how her new house is haunted, and the ghost plays a recurring (though somewhat inexplicable) role throughout the play. The Ghost and the Dysfunctional Family. Check. Three for three.

So the play was off to a good start for me and for the most part it maintained that feeling throughout, although the first half was more enjoyable than the second and the show didn’t feel quite tight enough at points (to be expected from a P.W.Y.C. preview of a World Premiere show—they even made an announcement about the lack of polish during the house manager speech which was a first for me). While the scene transitions were rough at times, Daniel Conway’s set design itself was far more impressive than I’d expected. They successfully recreated a multi-story NYC luxury apartment (the minimalist igloo was decorated entirely in white—to the point where the maid was told that there was a bucket of paint in every room and if she saw a spot on the wall, or just had free time, to touch up the paint). In fact the only part of the whole set which wasn’t in grayscale was probably “Kitty”… the goldfish. Whole walls seemed to open and close like garage doors to reveal different rooms in the apartment, and more importantly to reveal mirrors along the whole back of the stage. The mirrored wall was a new effect to me and led to some interesting staging, notably it enabled some rarely seen back-blocking where you actually picked up the actors expressions in the mirror, and of course to some extent you also saw the audience. Although that could have been distracting, because of the hazy quality of the some of the reflections, I actually linked our ghostly appearance to the haunting of the house.

Race was one of the themes of the show, as you might imagine from a play about Syrian Jews who consider themselves white, look Arab (or are supposed to), but are, as Lily points out in a great dinner scene, Spaniards from the Iberian peninsula who fled the Inquisition—knowledge which she clearly picked up from her African-American maid... the one who she insists on pretending is Puerto Rican. The race relations are humorous at some points, such as when the maid, Blanche, tells Lily the anti-wrinkle secrets of Cocoa butter which leads to the phrase “Black don’t Crack”, or when Lily’s husband asks Blanche if she’s a hip-hopster… yo. But several times the N word is used to stunning effect, and its power is not diminished even when spoken in Pig Latin… which Lily and her sister use to speak secretly in front of the maid… the quad-lingual maid with the PhD in Semiotics from Brown University. Sound Designer Ryan Rumery did an excellent job capturing these diverse aspects of race and class in the scene transition music which included Arabic techno, hip-hop (shortly after the hip-hopster scene) and Rachmaninoff.

The play benefited from solid acting performances from the whole cast and particularly from the three leads, Laura Heisler, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, and Michael Gabriel Goodfriend, although one of the strongest moments of the night was when Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey, who plays Lily’s sister, personified the rejection which the Syrian-Jewish community apparently expresses to those who leave the fold. Not only are community members directed to only marry other Jews, but they define being Jewish as having two Jewish parents and conversion to Judaism does not count.

David Adjmi’s script was clever and used humor to balance most of the serious issues of the show, which worked well for my tastes, and while the characters seemed a bit caricatured at times, they developed some depth through the show, and became even more real when you realized that no character was wholly good or bad (although some of these changes made it challenging to connect with characters… or at least the same characters… towards the end of the show). Some aspects of the script were a bit unclear to me, so on the off chance someone cares here’s a list of elements that confused me:

• How old was Lily? At various points she claims she is turning or has turned 17, at other times 16

• I assumed Shelly was Lily’s friend and not her sister until nearly the end of the show

• The bookkeeping incident at the office is incredibly vague

• While I loved the ghost for the continuity of the Woolly Mammoth joke, I had a hard time picking up it’s origin or relevance to the rest of the play

• Several times the husband’s attitude toward the maid seems unnatural (e.g. seething “You are dead!” at the close of one scene… and convincing you he means it… and then greeting her cordially in their next scene)

I think we’re about at the point where I need to switch over to my bulleted memory format!

• Some of my other favorite lines, paraphrased as best as I can remember:

• Lily: I look white!
  Blanche: Not to me you don’t! (gives Lily the trademark Larry David eye from Curb Your Enthusiasm)

• Blanche: It’s like Helen Keller said, “I’m just one person, but I’m still a person!”
  Lily: I thought Helen Keller was mute.
  Blanche: I’m paraphrasing.

• Blanche: Lobster isn’t a fish, it’s a sea insect.

• And because I always think fondly on the college dinner when James tried to explain how the Law of Diminishing Returns applied to our enjoyment of Fazoli’s breadsticks (later I believe he corrected this to be The Law of Marginal Utility), I particularly enjoyed this exchange:
  Lily: You don’t seem drunk at all
  Blanche: I drink a lot. It’s the Law of Diminishing Returns.

• And because Natalie and I discussed this generation’s Nature Deficit Disorder and its relation to Attention Deficit Disorder, this line was particularly appropriate:
  Blanche: You have the attention span of an Aphid!
  Lily: What’s an Aphid?

• And some memorable visuals:

• Blanche, nearly crying, frantically spraying glass cleaner until the mist coalesced and ran down the mirror like tears.

• Seeing what someone might look like after an attempted drowning in a tray of paint

Finally, Notes to Jon:

• Apparently I am a horrible date because I’ve now had a different date to each of this year’s four Woolly shows. Granted all but one of them were “dates” with a close friend, but even my real date didn’t want to come back to this one! I may soon be seeing these shows by myself.

• Parked at the usual Gallery Place spot, and arrived in the theatre right at 6:00, which put us about 70 people back for tickets.

• I wish I’d read the New York Times article about the real-life Syrian-Jewish community which the play was based on like Natalie did, fascinating stuff.

“Who gives a f@ck about a fleece?”

So it may not have been a literal translation from the Greek. Regardless, the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Argonautika was my kind of theatre. I was taken right back to high school—which is good since Centreville High School had a damn good theatre program—with the ensemble cast narrating in unison, Athena’s Suzuki voice, and even a fabric river (which was probably the only clichéd staging of the entire show).

I’m an instant fan of Mary Zimmerman and her tech crew. There were some strong acting performances (and one phenomenally stilted one—which I am convinced had to be the director’s (poor) choice), but what made the show was some of the most ingenious staging I’ve ever seen. I believe I even whooped with joy after the scenes when Hercules killed Andromeda’s sea monster (an actor under an ocean of cloth, holding two stuffed eyeballs through the sheet) and when Pollux slayed the boxing King Amycus (best stage combat I’ve seen involving a two-story monster played by a puppet covering a couple of vertically-stacked actors—complete with slow-motion finishing moves worthy of Mortal Kombat). The literal, and increasingly bloody, Cupid’s arrow that Medea wears through herself in the second act perfectly symbolizes her fate.

The whole design crew was strong, but particular standouts were Michael Montenegro’s puppets (never has a bundle of cloth behaved more like a real baby… which made murder-by-string-cutting poignantly brilliant) and Pluess and Sussman’s sound design (from the sound of the furiously scribbling Fury to the transformation of a puppet eyeball into a stage-filling dragon-that-never-sleeps).

Aside from those I’ve already mentioned some of the memorable moments and lines I want to record are:

• The Argonauts “Roll-call” rap and the rigging of the stage as the Argo (followed by flying around that rigging in perfect sync with Poseidon’s man-handling of the Argo’s scale model)

• The final images of the cast as constellations, and the interpretation of the Zodiac as characters in this particular myth:

• The Golden Fleeced Ram = Ares

• The fire-breathing bulls Jason tamed = Taurus

• Twin Argonauts Castor and Pollux = Gemini

• The serpent that next sleeps = Scorpio (stretch?)

• The pitcher that dooms Hylas = Aquarius

• The maiden Medea = Virgo

• Hercules the Hunter = Orion (which isn’t a Zodiac sign but should be since it’s one of the only constellations I can reliably find)

• Pisces, Capricorn and Libra were such stretches that I can’t even remember them now and I think Leo and Cancer were left out altogether.

• And in addition to the headline quote a few favorite lines as best I recall (most of which you’ll notice were memorable for their shock value in a “Greek” play):

• “I was fucking winning!” Cried the dismayed Hercules after Hera breaks his oar during the rowing contest.

• “Happy Birthday” What I believe I heard a Harpy puppet exclaim as it flew offstage… after it puked and shat on its prisoner.

• “Are you thrilled your sister is a whore?” Aietes challenge when sending Medea’s brother and a suitor after Jason… and a subsequent response “I’ll cut his dick off and make a eunuch of him”

• “As long as you remain a maiden, your father has some claim on you” Jason’s pickup line, which leads in short order to Athena commenting “Oh yes they did! Right there on the fleece”

In conclusion… that $10 ticket was a hard to beat value (although there is always the Shakespeare Free-For-All)

Turning Japanese

Ah, Japanese Culture. All I can do is smile. The Japan! Culture + Hyperculture festival has descended upon the Kennedy Center and Mimsi and I decided to join Darren in checking out Shintoku-Maru (performed in Japanese...without supertitles).

The highlight of the evening turned out to be the pre-show exhibits we explored, especially Yayoi Kusama's Dots Obsession Installation which coated two rooms with black and yellow polka dots. Particularly in the yellow room, you feel like you are losing your balance. An installation of flying textiles and Asimo, the running robot, also kept us entertained until showtime.



As for the play itself, it felt like Oedipus goes to Japan, which is fine... if you're in to that sort of thing. I can usually find something to appreciate in any play and this was no exception. For example, I was impressed that none of the costumes burst into flames due to the shower of sparks that four power grinders were raining down on the stage during the opening and closing scenes. The grinders were an excellent effect and helped set the atmosphere of a chaotic city street.

Other scenes of note were the disturbing scene of the step-mother spanking her son, and the even more disturbing scene of the son dressing up as the step-mother and attacking his little step-brother... by ripping his shirt off and biting his neck. What was really twisted was that during both of these scenes the music suddenly becomes so cheery—and in the latter case comical dancers fill the stage—that you find yourself experiencing counterintuitive emotions.

The whole experience was reminiscent of watching Peer Gynt in Olso in 1994; strange things were happening in a language I didn't understand, but there were some powerful images (e.g. 14 years later I can still remember the first act of Peer Gynt taking place inside a set made to look like a motherboard, and I remember watching Peer scale the motherboard wall by climbing up the circuitry).

I'm sure some people enjoyed the show (Darren wanted to know what a Japanese person thought of it... but didn't ask) but I just hope it wasn't because they could relate to the characters. Here's the closing line of the synopsis (Alan Rickman reads this aloud before the play ever starts so I'm not the one ruining the ending here): "They finally acknowledge their love for each other and [the son] pleads with [his step-mother] to consummate this love, so that she may give birth to him, and hence become his real mother."

Note to Jon:

• If you can figure out how to make the illegal turns we took from the Rock Creek Parkway up F St. (or can get to New Hampshire Ave. a more legal... *cough* boring... way) then get there shortly before 6:30 and the Saudi Embassy has two free spots reserved just for you... well as long as you drive blue Prii.

Back to School Day

Round Two of volunteering on Martin Luther King Day of Service was won by the racist unenlightened corporations. Last year eight friends took the day “on” to paint Hine Middle School. This year I was on my own—alright, well I was a group of one—joining the JCC volunteers at Ferebee Hope Elementary School in Anacostia. I still had a fun and fulfilling time, but it was tinged with the disappointment that this isn’t a more respected national holiday. Regardless, I plan to keep the tradition going and at least for myself make the association between MLK Day and volunteering as strong as Thanksgiving turkey and fireworks on the Fourth. And perhaps in the future, if not recognizing the holiday, more corporations will at least take after National Geographic and offer their employees a floating volunteering day.

The bookend to my school day was yet another return to Woolly Mammoth Theatre, this time to see Nilaja Sun’s one-woman show about the school system entitled “No Child…” For those keeping track, yes, that would indeed be my third trip to Woolly Mammoth in three weeks and my second one-woman show in two weeks, and yes, as satirized in Nutshell, the two Woolly Productions involved both a ghost and a dysfunctional family! Apparently I am addicted, or else my New Year’s Resolution somehow evolved into see-woolly-more (rather than free-willy-more?). Although I enjoyed “No Child…” and think Nilaja did an outstanding job portraying the characters, the piece itself really didn’t cover any new ground for me. That’s not to say it isn’t an accurate portrayal of the struggles of teaching (I know my middle-school-theatre-teaching sister could identify), just that in my mind it will be hard to top the depiction of the inner-city school system from Season 4 of The Wire…

Notes to Jon:

• On the surface (which is all I saw) both the school and the neighborhood were in much better condition than I had expected

• For a small group (like 1) I think the JCC is a better option than Greater DC Cares. At least for the school I was at, the volunteers seemed to be an assortment of friendly individuals or small groups, whereas my impression from last year with Greater DC Cares is that it was much larger groups. Greater DC Cares did provide lunch though…

• Woolly Mammoth must be instituting a frequent attendee program because our seats were right in the second row, despite being about 80 people back in line (after arriving at 6:10).

You Don't Know Until You've Tried

Chock another one up for Facebook. I believe the official tally is now 4–1 . Despite my previous contempt for all things FaceSpace-y, it has helped hone my vocabulary and geography skills , reconnected me with friends of decades past—including most recently, the Prince from my Indonesian dancing photo, who I’d published an article about, one that he may have been unaware of… until now (gulp)—and now Facebook led me to the best one-(wo)man play I’ve ever seen, The K of D by Laura Schellhardt.

I actually haven’t given anything away yet because it was the first one-person show I’ve seen. Never seeing a one-person show isn’t from lack of theatre exposure actually; I was quite the thespian in high school and even co-wrote a show. I guess it is like when people don’t like food… that they’ve never tried, or how I didn’t like Facebook… before I joined. I didn’t like one-person plays… and so I never went to see one.

Facebook changed that in a rather unusual way; I stumbled across the “Are YOU Interested?” app on several of my friends’ profiles, and decided to try it. While the app is probably one of the worst executed on Facebook, it serves its purpose of connecting you to people you wouldn’t otherwise have an excuse to talk to (without being a stalker). The app lets you browse through women (or men, if you are into that sort of thing) who are interested in finding out if you are interested in them (well interested in their photo at least since that’s all you get—unless you take the time to look up her their profile outside of the app). From the amount of participants who list themselves as being in a relationship (or married) I’m thinking the app may be viewed more as an ego booster than a tool to connect people. Nonetheless, as I clicked through photos I came across one that was clearly taken on stage, and which looked vaguely familiar. Her name was Kimberly Gilbert, and I’d seen an advertisement for her show during last week’s theatrical frenzy.

After confirming where I knew the photo from, I contacted her to offer encouragement for the ambitious project she was undertaking… to spend two hours alone on stage performing all fifteen characters. She sent a friendly (if self-promoting) message back and since I didn’t have specific plans during tonight’s Pay-What-You-Can performance I decided to put aside my prejudices against one-person plays and hope that it would be more like trying mussels for the first time the other day (pleasant) than clams (which taste exactly how I always imagined—sometimes you can know you don’t like a food without tasting it)

As it turns out, you do need to be in line by 6:15 for PWYC performances at Woolly Mammoth… and my 6:30 arrival was one person too late to get the last of the tickets. But Laura (my friend, not the playwright) was sport enough to wait for the half hour until we’d know if any of the reserved production tickets would be available. Eventually we were told that the production tickets were all used, that there wouldn’t be any more, and that the best they could do was half-price tickets to a show in a couple of weeks. We only stuck around to phone James with the bad news… which turned out to be just long enough for them to come up with two (though not three) of the tickets we wanted. James sacrificed to stay longer at work and so Laura and I filed in with the last two tickets to the sold out show…

“This could either be really good… or really bad” Laura commented, echoing my thoughts as the lights went down. I just hoped it was funny at least. And why wouldn’t it be funny; after all, let’s see, it’s a show about a girl whose brother dies… uh oh.

I know, I know, after a ridiculously long lead-in even by my standards… what did I think of the freakin’ show already!?! I loved it. Read her blog. Go see it. I have no reservations about this show (unlike the previous show, Nutshell, at Woolly Mammoth that I discovered I’d seen Kimberly in). Then, come back and read the rest of this entry because a) it might contain spoilers and b) remaining in a sitting position as long as you’d need to read this could result in an air embolism when you stand up.

As I mentioned Kimberly plays all 15 characters who take part in this urban legend set in a small town in western Ohio. A town which is described as [having drive-in movie theatres… which are closed because not enough people drive in, and having drive-thru liquor stores… which don’t have that problem]. Yay! It was going to be funny. But even funny shows, actually especially funny shows, can be terrible when they suddenly get serious. And while there were quite a few serious moments, they were never jarring, and they were quite often poignant. Listening to the scene in which a starving dog dies literally left me breathless—thanks in large part to the impeccably chosen sounds for the barks and yelps as the dog transitions from rage, to fear, to madness, to desperation.

I imagine it’s not easy for an actor to develop accents and mannerisms for fifteen characters, but it’s essential when the actor has to switch between them, sometimes for as little as a single word, and often in the middle of another character’s line. Kimberly nailed them all (well 14 of the 15 at least, her intonations for Judith “Actually” were too similar to my favorite character, Steffi Post, though it was obvious from the context who was who). In addition to the verbal gymnastics, Kimberly’s yoga apparently paid off because she was able to continue acting while essentially imitating the Karate Kid’s Crane Kick, balancing on one leg while swirling the other in a circle.

One of the things that I don’t like about one-person shows is that they tend to be rather boring from a technical standpoint. This show wasn’t and I was as impressed with the designers, Marie-Noelle Daigneault (Set & Costume), Andrew Griffin (Lighting), and Matt Otto (Sound) as I was with Kimberly and Laura (the playwright this time). The set was projected onto white sheets strung across the front of the theatre, through which they successfully conveyed chopping down a tree, capturing a firefly, light reflecting off the surface of the lake, rain, a villainous silhouette, and the flight, perch, and ultimate demise of a heron. The mobile of origami boats, which are a symbol in the show, is also a nice touch on the otherwise bare stage.

The sound was just as impressive, and required timing with (or by) Kimberly to kill a buzzing mosquito, silence a croaking frog, and repeatedly ring a bell. And I’ve already mentioned the sounds of the dying dog which stole the show for me.

And now since we are both tired, I’ll end with some of my favorite moments from the show:

• The secret pygmy language which the twins speak, reminiscent of the poem Op-Talk by Rives.

• The playwright’s observations that urban legends are usually rural, are always told by someone other than the person it happened to (well maybe), always contain enough detail to be believable but never have any proof, and rarely focus on what happens afterwards.
  
  
• Herons tempt their prey by swirling the water in front of them with their leg.
  
  
• Children travel in packs… like wolves… and this pack contained some memorable characters.
  
  
• Becky Ray Voss who moves [from candy cigarettes, to pall malls, to packs a day… with an occasional hit of Meth, and eventually to standing reservations at three hotels on the rowdy side of town].
  
  
• Brett, who records everything in his notepad and is constantly flipping back through it to recall previous events. I actually went “awwww” when we learn that Brett’s notepad was stolen.
  
  
• Quisp, who names periods of time by taking the most memorable event and putting the word “the” in front as in, Summer of The Death.
  
  
• Steffi Post, the “like” addict whose father owns Chrysler. Steffi obsessively pulled her hair when she spoke, often spoke in Darrenisms (or at least mispronunciations), and quivered orgasmically to any prospect of violence.
  
  
• Mrs. McGraw’s character is another great one. She’s the local school teacher with an unhealthy obsession for maintaining her teacher-of-the-year streak (kind of like the unheathly obsession I have for noticing that the teacher who corrects her husband's grammar describes an upset person as "mad" instead of "angry") even staking out the new teacher who has taken her idea for a summer reading program. Mrs. McGraw seems to be primarily interested in keeping her 10-year streak going in order to accumulate more silver bracelet prizes which she tries on one after the other in a disturbing manner that is one of the funniest scenes in the show.

Busy? Who, me?

It’s been a busy 24 hours. I’ve experienced 30 plays, one lecture, and two of D.C.s finest quick-eat establishments—Julia’s Empanadas and The Amsterdam Falafelshop. It certainly helps that 29 of the plays were performed in just over an hour as part of the umbrella work Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, which is the longest title of a piece I remember seeing: so long in fact that on the ticket it merely lists it as the initials (or acronym, if you can figure out how to pronounce it) TMLMTBGB.

My audience-member marathon began with Journeymen Theater’s preview of Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life’s a Dream. While arriving at Golden Hour (6:30 pm) is helpful for parking it isn’t necessary for getting a preview ticket to the show (unlike my previous experience with a Pay What You Can at Woolly Mammoth Threatre when a 6:30 arrival meant a line around the corner and no shot at a ticket). While I don’t intend to review the show, Darren and I did feel it was worth our time and money. Some memories from the show include,

• experiencing a play from the 1600s translated into English, which I assume gives a rough idea of what it must be like for a foreigner to watch Shakespeare translated into their native language (able to focus on the plot rather than deciphering the lines),
• actor Rex Daugherty providing the comic highlight of the show when he makes the best of his imprisonment by turning his manacles into musical instruments,
• and Darren eventually realizing that the two main actors were in the previous play he saw: Ambition Facing West (which may lead to the creation of our own personal IMDB—okay, a spreadsheet—of DC theatre).

The marathon continued today with Peter Mumby’s lecture on Thresholds and the Resilience of Coral Reefs . While perhaps not as juicy as his lecture a couple days earlier on Parrotfish sex, this one certainly captivated the audience of scientists, and was even presented clearly enough for me to follow along (though I wish someone would write a wiki on “coral recruitment” so I knew exactly what that meant). To sum up my understanding of the lecture, there are two stable equalibria for a reef ecosystem: coral dominant or algae dominant. A reef will approach one of these states depending on which side of a threshold curve it falls on. A reef’s location relative to the curve is determined by the existing percentage of coral coverage on one axis and the percentage of the reef that can be grazed by local fauna (primarily Parrotfish in the Caribbean) in a six month period on the other axis. The resilience of a reef is defined as the probability that it will stay on the coral dominant side of the threshold. Because of the threshold nature of the system, a small change for a reef that is right near the threshold will have far greater consequences than a larger change for a reef that isn't near the threshold. The important thing to consider when managing a marine ecosystem or determining the cost effectiveness of management options is to prevent the reef from crossing the threshold towards the algae dominant stable state. Trust me, his presentation was much more compelling—at least to the ladies, probably because of his accent. But hey, this is called Note to Jon after all and I want to remember the lecture…

But the highlight of this endurance event was definitely the 29 plays of TMLMTBGB (we ran out of time to see the 30^th play, which in this case would have been #26 My Family in 2D). We were led to our seats by Greg Allen, who AB mistook as an usher, but who actually is the Founding Director of the Neo-Futurists (oops), which have been performing variations of this show in their home town of Chicago since 1988. The show was then introduced by a handsome, articulate man (the description he asked us to use, as best I can remember) who encouraged the audience to go right home after the performance and tell everyone to get on the internet and purchase tickets to the show before it ends this weekend since tickets are going fast and every performance deserves to be sold out… and since I agree with that assessment I am doing just that. Without spoiling any of the 29 plays (which the audience request by numbers that literally hang above the stage, and which must be performed before the 60 minute timer runs out, or you just don’t get to see them all!), if these are on your menu, don’t let them be the one(s) hanging from the clothesline when the buzzer sounds:

• Mr. Science Demonstrates Othello, which wins for best use of props,

• The Dobler Effect, which involves about the most intimate audience participation you can get away with legally,

• Pastie On My Dick, which shouldn’t require much imagination,

• Low Stakes/High Drama, which is exactly that,

• Veterans Day: July 4^th Edition, which is a poignant change of pace,

• The Lamb May Lie Down With the Lion (But She Doesn’t Get A Lot Of Sleep), which I really hope isn’t autobiographical,

• and, my personal favorite, Moonlit Threatre Presents: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing, which will ensure that you never think about a moon landing the same way again.

AB is the proud owner of the numbered sheet for the concise play, Republican Compassion in Action, and through my die roll on the stage at the end of the show I am responsible for ensuring that 3 plays will be swapped out on the January 11^th performance (it’d have been 6 plays if I remembered to let AB blow on the die). So go check it out and if you find out what The Chair is or you get to see My Family in 2D, let me know…

On The Fringe

It turns out I planned my trip to Africa one week too early because I leave before the Fringe festival and Tour de France finish. In fact in less than twelve hours I will be on a plane bound for Senegal (well it will be bound for Atlanta, but after a layover I will be bound for Dakar). So unfortunately I won't get to devote as much time to my thoughts on the 2nd Capital Fringe Festival as I'd like.

Overall the shows I saw (and it was a limited selection) fell into the middle range compared to last years shows (upper middle actually), with no play quite as impressive as Bartleby (though Trixie Tickles was awfully close) but nothing nearly as bad (alright, as unenjoyable for me personally) as The Play About the Hurricane.

Here's what I saw in roughly the order I appreciated them:
- Cautionary Tales For Adults and the Many Adventures of Trixie Tickles put on by Bouncing Ball Theatrical Productions (7/22 9:30pm at Source Theatre). From a pure enjoyment standpoint this did actually top Bartleby (although I appreciated some of the ensemble and staging elements of Bartleby more). I particularly loved the second play with Trixie Tickles (Casie Platt) who Darren and I now both have a little crush on (along with her mom - Alessandra Migliaccio). Highlights included the creative use of the red rope during Cautionary Tales, especially as the entrails of the lion eating Tammy, mother of twins Timmy and Tommy. The opening song of Trixie Tickles was amazing, as was the song Trixie's mom sings to her about not pooing with lines such as "You lose a little part of you, when you poo" and "Everyone who's ever died is watching you, when you poo". Added bonus for sitting in the same front row as Regie Cabico, who is one of the poets on HBO Def Poetry Jam and who's poem "You Bring out the Writer in Me" was on my cell phone (but for some reason it wasn't playing or I might have really creeped him out by walking over and showing him his video on my phone!).

-Abstract Nude by Gwydion Suilebhan (7/20 5pm at Source Theatre). This was a last minute decision when I saw a post writeup from last year's fringe that the staged reading of this show was "The find of the Festival". It was well worth the early trip up to U St. and I was amazed to find the show nearly packed for a 5pm performance. The show was great and was Darren's favorite since he felt it was more challenging to pull off well than Trixie Tickles. Everything worked well for me except for the very end where it felt a little overly theatrical to have each character come forward with their monologue, the final monologue was especially jarring since it seemed out of character for the son. However the point of the final monologue - that the painting which was causing so much trouble for everyone didn't mean anything to any of them was a good one - although it would have been nice, as Darren pointed out, if somehow the audience could have come to that realization on their own.

- Breadhouse presented by Journeymen Theatre (7/20 8pm at Ebeneezer's Coffee House). First off, it was great to discover Ebeneezer's Coffee House tucked next to Union Station. We had high hopes for this show after Journeymen set the bat last year with Bartleby (did I mention I liked Bartleby :-p). Unfortunately the material just didn't have the same potential. This show seemed to me to be an example of excellent execution of a below average piece. The script didn't have particularly standout dialouge and the plotline was about as straightforward and uninspiring as I remember. Thankfully the actors really squeezed just about every last laugh out of the show and as negative as the review may sound so far, it was a lot of fun to watch. My favorite part was when the "director" of the play within a play gives the horrible "actors" masks to wear and they are suddenly transformed into brilliant performers. Loved Teresa attacking Chad with her lighter. And, of course, the witch trying to blow out the fire in the oven that she was just pushed into was classic.

- Kuon Kukki: The Legend of Hamachi and Unagi presented by The Informall Theatre Company (7/20 10:00pm Wooly Mammoth Mainstage). Despite having the most potential to pull a "Hurricane" on us, Kuon Kukki wound up having plenty to appreciate. Overall I think if the show were cut from 1:15 to 45 minutes and the acting tightened up a bit, it could really shine. In particular I would edit down the Bush/Cheney scenes (and not because of any political issues I have with it, as would be obvious if you know me) because they seemed to drag quite a bit. Highlights for me were the scene changes done in traditional Japanese style with deliberate rhythmic steps (or quite humorous shuffling). And the scene which I appreciated most of the entire festival was the Dragon Kufuku, with it's ensemble movement, eating of the Samauri, and then shitting the Samauri right on through. Good Times!

- Nutshell presented by DC Dollies & The Rocket Bitch Revue (7/21 9:00pm Woolly Mammoth Mainstage). I had some problems with this show... but there were some great lines and moments and although the play as a whole didn't work for me I was glad I went (especially when I found Mimsi had auditioned for it). My issues: I couldn't find the benefit (or even the connection) of all of the Hamlet lines. Things like the male "spam" beating up the female "spam", and the death of the expedition leader felt the most "Hurricane"-like of anything we saw this year. The show was too funny to be a drama, but too serious at parts to let you fully enjoy the comedy. It was too absurd to be a normal play, but also too normal to really be the kind of experimental theatre that I appreciate. All that aside, here were some of the lines/ideas that I did like: The elephants referring to Peanuts as "Golden Infinity Nuts", Eliot getting trunk slapped for joking that Asian elephants are better at math, "Privacy is something Americans want for themselves... but not for others", "Preventative Tuskectomies" (although here is where the drama/comedy line blurred to the point where I didn't know if this was a joke or a legitimate proposal! - research required), references to the Woolly Mammoth play about "the dysfunctional family" which fails to narrow anything down, the director coming up with the whole "Hamlet is dyslexic" thing and ostrich tipping, the hyenas as the office cleaning crew, and Mundy Spears portrayal of the Tall White Bird.

Well, I hate having to wait until next year for another Fringe festival but at least if the attendance and overall quality of the shows I was at is any indication Fringe should definitely be back and stronger than ever in year three...

Misery Loves Comedy

I saw Caryl Churchill's update of August Strindberg's "A Dream Play" at Source Theatre. Spent much of the play laughing despite the overarching theme of the play being how miserable life is. Agnes, daughter of the gods, is essentially shown what life is like on Earth until even she has nearly lost hope and wants to get the hell out. The play really does capture the essense of a dream in many ways. Like a dream it is surreal and nearly absurd while still being completely comprehensible. One theme is how the people want the gods to know about their suffering and fix it. Reminded me of the sentiments in Ani DiFranco's song "Coming Up" which ends:

and whoever's in charge up there
had better take the elevator down
and put more than change in our cup
or else we
are coming
up

Another consistent theme is how it is possible to know something but to be incapable of expressing it in words (a point which is consistent with Steven Pinker's Language Instinct which I'm currently reading). I find myself in that position with this blog entry, and will take the dreamy way out...

The Officer waits for his love Victoria to come down from the theatre year after year while his roses fade from red to black.

What is time?

Time flies by while I speak. You are speaking now and we are flying (kids with airplane arms) so we are time. No.

2 times 2 is 2. I will prove it by analogy: 1 times 1 is 1. 1 goes into 1 once, therefore 2 goes into 2 twice. No.

That's logical, but wrong.

The sign poster with his green fishing net and green bucket appears happiest of all, but even he admits the fishing net is green, but it's not exactly the green I expected.

Other than the sign poster, the only happy characters are those newly in love, and that love always burns out.
I'm so happy I could die. Why would you want to die? Because our love can't last.

We'll have a baby to bring us closer.

I don't mind so much being poor, it's the dirt I mind. Being poor can lead to dirt.

I hate lentils. I hate your untidiness. We'll both have to change a little. I'll eat lentil soup. I'll stop tidying up after you. We'll both live the rest of our lives doing what we hate...

PASTING... PASTING... PASTING... pasting up the cracks

But I can't breathe. All the cracks let the heat out. If heaven cracked open you would paste it shut.

The Good and the Grand, the law-abiding citizens and the hardworking families.

The ocean is salty from all the sailors tears, all the sailors cry because they are so far away.

Why is this world so screwed up. Why's everything wrong way round? There was a problem with the copying. A copy! I always felt there was an original out there where things are right way right.

A petition to the gods: Why is it so painful to give birth? Why does being happy make someone else sad, but being sad doesn't make someone else happy?

Characters holding a meeting on whether to open the chained door that no one had ever seen opened. Truth is hidden behind the door. The lawyer (truth is what I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt), scientist (truth is what I can see in my microscope), bishop (truth is what I believe), and psychologist (truth is what you discover about yourself after all those hours of talking) all wind up in a hilarious slow-motion brawl while the glazer opens the chained door behind them. It is empty.

Like a dream, I remember bits and pieces because I just saw it. Even now some of these memories are flawed and important connections are missing. I know what I saw but I can't express it. I hope this helps me remember what I can.

Enfreedoming Shakespeare

Tonight I got to see "Love's Labor's Lost" at this year's Shakespeare Free For All. This was the third year in a row I've seen it and this was easily my favorite (though I loved the past two and the free for all is one of the highlights of my year). The original director Michael Kahn set the play in 1960s India and the setting fit perfectly (with obvious adaptations). Beatle-esque rock stars have agreed to study with an Indian maharajah and forsake women for three years... until a quartet of lovely, witty women show up at their court.

The scene at the end of act one is perhaps my favorite single scene of any play I've seen. Each of the students (and the maharajah) come on stage and "secretly" express their love of a lady to the audience (and the now hidden previous players) through song (including the drummer who rolls an entire drum set out under a sheet where he ultimately hides as the next confessor arrives), and then proceed one by one to call out each other on their hypocrisy before ultimately deciding to renounce their oaths and pursue the women together. The scene finally culminates in the foursome playing a full rock concert song, complete with computer controlled rope lights scrolling around the prescenium. I'm sure you had to be there but it was spectacular.

The best thing about the free for all is that is it outdoors at the Carter Barron amphitheatre. Of course the worst thing about the free for all is that it was nearly rained out, but they build a 30 minute rain delay into their schedule and wound up seating us as the final drops fell. Some other highlights of the show were lines about the "posterior of the day" (afternoon), "remuneration" (which Costard determines to mean 3 farthings), and "enfreedoming your person" as an offer to remove his handcuffs. Michael Milligan as the hippie stoner Costard really stole the show, and I will always remember watching him sit on the bench at the side of the stage, pull out a bag of weed and roll his own joint (like the statue on the National Cathedral I suppose).

What I also want to remember is that Jeffrey mentioned that his goal was to see every one of Shakespeare's works performed and I am going to steal his suggestion and make that a life goal of my own (with this blog hopefully helping to keep track). So far I will only officially count A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, and Love's Labor's Lost as crossed off the list.

Update: I enjoyed it so much I went back to see the show the next Friday. It was still good the second time although the audience was dead and the energy of the show was down. I did catch an additional favorite quote though: "Abstinence engenders maladies"...