The host of this challenge, Travel with Intent, has a gallery of haunting photographs on this week’s theme. Check them out!
Morning Sky, 2 January 2023
Parking Garage, Berkeley
Category: Plays
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Self is in a nostalgic mood this rainy, gloomy Sunday in northern California.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s One-Word Sunday. The theme is SKYLINE.
Here’s Southbank by the Thames. Took these pictures leaving Shakespeare’s Globe after a play. The bridge is the old Blackfriars.
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1661 England coming out of the Cromwell era reminds self so much of the world as it slowly emerges from years of pandemic lockdown:
There were also the newly opened theatres, which he found irresistible, with their repertoire of Elizabethan and Jacobean masterpieces, their many adaptations from the Spanish and the French, new works by Dryden and D’Avenant, and ambitious scenery. Throughout 1661, he went two or three times a week to either the King’s Company, managed by Thomas Killigrew, wit and courier, or the Duke’s, under D’Avenant. In January he saw a woman onstage for the first time . . .
— Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin, p. 133 -
The host of One Word Sunday is Travel with Intent, and the theme today is STEPS.
Self picked three pictures with steps from a road trip she took, the summer of 2021. Gov. Newsom had just lifted the pandemic ban on travel. You can bet she took off (so did the neighbors: the 90+ woman across the street went on a road trip to Seattle, a few days before self took off).
First: steps to Cal Shakes’ Theater-in-the-Round, One Shakespeare’s Way, Orinda. Self was waiting for the start of The Winter’s Tale.
Next: steps in Growing Grounds, a wee plant nursery, across the street from the San Luis Obispo Mission (Son graduated from Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, years ago. Self hadn’t been back to San Luis Obispo in a long, long time) Proceeds go to a local mental health organization:
Finally: Steps from Ocean Drive to Ocean Beach, Carmel-by-the-Sea:
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Another photo challenge!
This one is loose: any picture taken with your cell. The host is Journeys with Johnbo.
Here are self’s fridge magnets. Shakespeare rules!
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There are many ways to interpret this month’s Squares Challenge, Past-Squares. Self will confine herself to just one interpretation, this whole month of October:
- Have fun with the word ‘past’ by sharing squares of history and heritage, and that includes past holidays!
Summer is over, but Cal Shakes came back with a vengeance, staging an adaptation of The Winter’s Tale that quite took self’s breath away. She went to see it three separate times in September: two Sunday matinees, and one Saturday night performance. The final performance is tomorrow night. WAAAAH! September moved by too quickly.
See you next year, Bruns Amphitheatre!
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Even though self just started reading (last night), she likes the characters already, and that means she’s probably going to enjoy finding out what happens to them. It helps to know the FORMULA, because that is the only way self can stand reading about two likeable people who do not see what is right in front of their noses. Self is not against formula, as long as the writer keeps it fresh.
Take Shakespeare. She can take any Shakespeare, as long as it’s done with energy. Her first Shakespeare at The Globe in London was Titus Andronicus. Buckets of gore, in that one. People walking out, clutching their stomachs. LOVED! And this last Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale at Cal Shakes. She saw it three times. It was absolutely the highlight of her year. Some snob over at Facebook said it looked “awful.” Good! Stay away! Don’t take a seat away from someone who might love it!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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“Go rot! Dost thou think I am so muddy?” — Leontes, The Winter’s Tale
Self grew to love Shakespeare only in middle age, and that was entirely because of Cal Shakes, which is in self’s humble opinion the Bay Area’s best theater company. Of course, it didn’t hurt that her first Cal Shakes play was Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo was played by ADAM SCOTT.
Since then, Cal Shakes has become firmly fixed as a rite of summer. Last year they were forced to cancel their entire season and lay off two-thirds of their full-time staff. This year, they came back with one play, The Winter’s Tale.
As soon as it was announced, self e-mailed son. She couldn’t believe it when he said right off that he would pass. Pass? How could he? He practically grew up with Cal Shakes! She used to bring carloads of his friends here! Of course, they’re all married now, but still!
She ended up seeing it with a friend, while it was still in previews. Before seeing it Sept. 12, self had never read the play, didn’t know anything about the play, would probably have gone through the rest of her life not giving a hoot about the play. Then, she saw it. Ummm. She sat stupefieadd and amazed for three hours. How stupefied and amazed? Exactly one week later she was back, by herself. By then, she’d already begun reading a hefty novel called The Slaughterman’s Daughter. She lugged it along, and remained in her seat through intermission, reading.
What’s really good about seeing a play alone is: you can eavesdrop. The person to her left (separated by two seats) was a woman perhaps a decade older than self, who’d come alone, and was wearing the cutest gold sandals. To her right was a family with teen-age girls, who were at Bruns for the first time, probably just to see what all the fuss was all about.
The parents were sitting immediately to self’s right, the daughters several rows behind. At intermission, the mother went to check on the girls. When she came back, the girls were trailing her. The mother told her husband:
“You know what, I just realized everyone thinks the King is an idiot.”
Daughter: “That’s cause he IS.”
Onward!
Self could remember so many more lines, after watching The Winter’s Tale a second time:
“Good Queen, my Lord. GOOD Queen.”
“Gross hag!”
“Oh! She is warm!”
But her favorite line is the last: Hermione tells a repentant Leontes, “Let’s from this place.” And with that, the play ends. If anyone had told self a week ago that she would end up shipping Hermione/Leontes, she would have said, Get out!
This adaptation of The Winter’s Tale was by Cal Shakes Director Eric Ting and Resident Dramaturg Philippa Kelly. Kudos.
Her love for Cal Shakes is undiminished.
Stay tuned.
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It’s been almost a year since the world stopped, plans got thrown out the window, and nothing will ever be the same.
Self thought she’d take a moment to celebrate the things that got her through the past year:
Of course, gardening. Her garden has never looked so great. Every day she watches the oxalis in her backyard get higher and higher. And she just loves it.
Second, books, and her fantastic local library and their curbside pick-up system. She’s been using it since June (Before that, she ordered many books from Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, which is equally fantastic). Also, self would like to thank the AUTHORS of these wonderful books. When self needed to be transported to another place and time, these authors delivered:
Self would also like to thank FREE CONCERTS. The week after everything shut down, St. Bride’s in London began streaming everything. And so did St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, which used to hold free noontime concerts every Tuesday.
She would also like to thank Cal Shakes, whose summertime Shakespeare was a high point of her summer, as long as she was home in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Her first Cal Shakes was Romeo and Juliet. ADAM SCOTT PLAYED ROMEO. Sold!!!) A few days ago, she got a message that they would mount ONE live production this summer (Dates to be announced), with appropriate social distancing, of course: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
Also, FaceTime. Self has actually learned to FaceTime with Dearest Mum. It’s been so great.
And The Economist, which managed to come every week (every two weeks lately, since DeJoy destroyed the USPS)
Finally, she’d like to thank her favorite TV shows, because she’d never have gotten through without them: The Expanse (closing with Season 6), Peaky Blinders (closing with Season 6), The Crown.
A big hand also for Trader Joe’s, for being most sanitary of all the different supermarkets she’s shopped in.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Kanlaon 