Conference stuff
I had a paper accepted at the Blackfriars conference, and now I have to decide if I'm going to go. With the furloughs, money is going to be tight this year, and I also have to figure that there may not be any travel funding at all. Conferences are expensive, but usually I apply for a travel grant and a special Mini-Grant and if I'm lucky, it almost just about covers it. We don't usually find out whether there will be or not until maybe November, and BFriars is in October, so it's a gamble: if I go and there isn't any funding, I will be out more money than I care to think about.
Cons:
1) Ralph runs a hella expensive conference. Registration is $325 this year.
2) Ralph runs a LONG conference. It starts on Wednesday and ends on Sunday, so you can figure it's an extra night at the hotel or whatever.
If you live on the West Coast, you usually have to come the day before anything happens: it's something you get used to, but it can be a pain.
3) Staunton, VA is in the middle of nowhere. There's no really good way to get there: you can fly into Washington DC cheaply, but then you have to get to Staunton somehow, and that's four and a half hours plus that wipes out whatever you saved. Usually flying into Roanoke, Lynchburg, or Charlottesville is about as expensive as flying into Shenandoah Valley. Trust me: I've gone there just about every way there is and nothing is a great way to get there. Big exception: if you live on the East Coast, driving is a perfectly good way to get to Staunton. It's near a couple of big freeways; you can even go the scenic route and see a lot of pretty stuff. I've gotten from Staunton to Philadephia in six hours. It's very doable.
Pros:
1) You get a lot for your $325. Ralph usually has three or four big food events, and there are four or five Shakespeare (or other) plays, one every night. Food in Staunton is cheap: you can pick up a stuffed baked potato or a quick Mexican meal for less than ten bucks. So once you've coughed up your $325, your food is more than half taken care of.
2) Ralph runs an AWESOME conference. Everything is in the Blackfriars playhouse, which is a replica of Shakespeare's indoor playhouse: as far as I know, the only one in the world. All the papers are ten minutes long, instead of the standard twenty-minutes-but-you-didn't-really-mean-twenty-minutes-so-I-think-I-will-keep-talking. When Ralph says ten, he MEANS ten, and if you run over, someone in a bear suit comes onstage and chases you off.
3) It's a theater history conference. That's nice, too. When I don't go to Blackfriars, I usually go to the Shakespeare Association conference, but the papers there can be on nearly anything. Honestly, I'm not very interested in anything that isn't about theater history, performance, text studies (dull, but handy), or money. At Blackfriars, there are presentations on stage fighting, and BLOOD. Yayz!
4) The real reason is that the conference is in honor of Andrew Gurr. Andy Gurr is one of my heroes: he writes terrific theater history books about Shakespeare that ordinary humans can understand. Later he became a mentor. He's really, really encouraging to younger scholars: he genuinely wants to have more people go into theater history, which for a while there was a seriously graying field. He has a heart problem now, so this will be the last time he'll be in the States, and probably the last time I will ever see him. And I wouldn't be in this field if it weren't for him.
So I think I will go, and find some money, perhaps by holding up a liquor store.
Pimpness: The American Shakespeare Center. Blackfriars playhouse, terrific FAST fun performances of Shakespeare plays. If you're anywhere near the area, maybe going to Civil War battlefields or whatever, it is so, so worth it.
Cons:
1) Ralph runs a hella expensive conference. Registration is $325 this year.
2) Ralph runs a LONG conference. It starts on Wednesday and ends on Sunday, so you can figure it's an extra night at the hotel or whatever.
If you live on the West Coast, you usually have to come the day before anything happens: it's something you get used to, but it can be a pain.
3) Staunton, VA is in the middle of nowhere. There's no really good way to get there: you can fly into Washington DC cheaply, but then you have to get to Staunton somehow, and that's four and a half hours plus that wipes out whatever you saved. Usually flying into Roanoke, Lynchburg, or Charlottesville is about as expensive as flying into Shenandoah Valley. Trust me: I've gone there just about every way there is and nothing is a great way to get there. Big exception: if you live on the East Coast, driving is a perfectly good way to get to Staunton. It's near a couple of big freeways; you can even go the scenic route and see a lot of pretty stuff. I've gotten from Staunton to Philadephia in six hours. It's very doable.
Pros:
1) You get a lot for your $325. Ralph usually has three or four big food events, and there are four or five Shakespeare (or other) plays, one every night. Food in Staunton is cheap: you can pick up a stuffed baked potato or a quick Mexican meal for less than ten bucks. So once you've coughed up your $325, your food is more than half taken care of.
2) Ralph runs an AWESOME conference. Everything is in the Blackfriars playhouse, which is a replica of Shakespeare's indoor playhouse: as far as I know, the only one in the world. All the papers are ten minutes long, instead of the standard twenty-minutes-but-you-didn't-really-mean-twenty-minutes-so-I-think-I-will-keep-talking. When Ralph says ten, he MEANS ten, and if you run over, someone in a bear suit comes onstage and chases you off.
3) It's a theater history conference. That's nice, too. When I don't go to Blackfriars, I usually go to the Shakespeare Association conference, but the papers there can be on nearly anything. Honestly, I'm not very interested in anything that isn't about theater history, performance, text studies (dull, but handy), or money. At Blackfriars, there are presentations on stage fighting, and BLOOD. Yayz!
4) The real reason is that the conference is in honor of Andrew Gurr. Andy Gurr is one of my heroes: he writes terrific theater history books about Shakespeare that ordinary humans can understand. Later he became a mentor. He's really, really encouraging to younger scholars: he genuinely wants to have more people go into theater history, which for a while there was a seriously graying field. He has a heart problem now, so this will be the last time he'll be in the States, and probably the last time I will ever see him. And I wouldn't be in this field if it weren't for him.
So I think I will go, and find some money, perhaps by holding up a liquor store.
Pimpness: The American Shakespeare Center. Blackfriars playhouse, terrific FAST fun performances of Shakespeare plays. If you're anywhere near the area, maybe going to Civil War battlefields or whatever, it is so, so worth it.