(no subject)
Yesterday afternoon broccolipwns and I went to Shakespeare Santa Cruz's free "Shakespeare to Go" production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Vets Hall downtown, sitting in the front row with Jasmin who was extremely enthusiastic throughout.
This production took the words "dream" and "ass" very literally: For the former the actors were generally wearing white sleepwear of one sort or another, the stage was covered with white sheets and pillows (used for general fighting as well as for the fairies to knock the mortals into sleep), and the Changeling Boy once played by violetclm was represented by a large teddy bear. For the latter, once "translated", the flap covering the well-padded behind of Bottom's union suit opened to reveal a plush butt with eyes and donkey ears, and he walked around bent over and with it pointed at the audience to serve as his new face/head. (If you have a Facebook account you can see many photos of the show here.)
Shakespeare to Go productions are all 50 minutes long for the purpose of doing lots of performances in schools, and while some abridging had been done here, the main method of speeding things up was that all the actors were saying their lines as fast as possible to the point of being kind of disorienting. Though for me seeing/hearing any production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is always kind of disorienting anyway, because having seen all the rehearsals in addition to all the performances of both the 1998 and 2003 productions violetclm was in, it's *those* actors and their deliveries and staging and so on that are permanently fixed in my head.
Unfortunately yesterday also brought heat-record-tying heat, and that plus the remnants of my cold and a migraine really knocked me out for the rest of the day -- as soon as we got home I lay down, and even lying around with a freezer pack I had trouble getting enough energy to even be able to sit up until things started cooling off again. Today is also way too hot, and what with not having gotten much sleep on top of the other things, I'm definitely not at my best today either. At least I've got some Fig Chocolate-Chip ice cream here which is pleasant enough to cool down with.
This production took the words "dream" and "ass" very literally: For the former the actors were generally wearing white sleepwear of one sort or another, the stage was covered with white sheets and pillows (used for general fighting as well as for the fairies to knock the mortals into sleep), and the Changeling Boy once played by violetclm was represented by a large teddy bear. For the latter, once "translated", the flap covering the well-padded behind of Bottom's union suit opened to reveal a plush butt with eyes and donkey ears, and he walked around bent over and with it pointed at the audience to serve as his new face/head. (If you have a Facebook account you can see many photos of the show here.)
Shakespeare to Go productions are all 50 minutes long for the purpose of doing lots of performances in schools, and while some abridging had been done here, the main method of speeding things up was that all the actors were saying their lines as fast as possible to the point of being kind of disorienting. Though for me seeing/hearing any production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is always kind of disorienting anyway, because having seen all the rehearsals in addition to all the performances of both the 1998 and 2003 productions violetclm was in, it's *those* actors and their deliveries and staging and so on that are permanently fixed in my head.
Unfortunately yesterday also brought heat-record-tying heat, and that plus the remnants of my cold and a migraine really knocked me out for the rest of the day -- as soon as we got home I lay down, and even lying around with a freezer pack I had trouble getting enough energy to even be able to sit up until things started cooling off again. Today is also way too hot, and what with not having gotten much sleep on top of the other things, I'm definitely not at my best today either. At least I've got some Fig Chocolate-Chip ice cream here which is pleasant enough to cool down with.