My life so far
Jul. 24th, 2004 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasOn Thursday, I worked at the Grill Bar. Around noon, the 9/11 commission was on CNN giving their report. Watching the panel, I found myself thinking, "I didn't know there WERE ten intelligent, conscientious, dedicated people willing to rise above partisan politics IN Washington." So, I guess that the 9/11 commission has been protecting Washington from G-d's Sodom-like wrath.
Anyway, an older couple came into the bar to wait for their daughter and grandkids so they could go on to Fenway Park for the game. They sat down, and looked at the TV, where the chairman of the commission was speaking, and the husband turned to the wife, and said, "Look! It's Tom."
Anyway, we chatted some -- turns out that the gentleman had worked with the intelligence community for several years, and was telling me some of the challenges of developing intelligence sources. "Because your sources are ALWAYS weird, and you have to distinguish between people who are simply weird, and people who are weird and useful."
I asked, "I assume you have to distinguish between 'dangerous to you' and 'dangerous to the other guy', too," but he said that that was frankly not a consideration. EVERYONE you're working with is psycho and he was QUITE happy when interviewing some of these people that there were armed guards in the next room . . .
Anyway, a bit after the daughter and grandkids showed up and left for the game, I switched the TV from the discussion of terrorism to something TRULY terrifying -- the first game of the Sox/Orioles doubleheader.
It was . . . sad. I don't wanna talk about it.
Anyway, yesterday, I got trained for the Commonwealth Lounge, which I was trained for before, but they re-worked stuff so I needed to learn where they'd moved stuff to. Because next week, Louis is on vacation, so Vienna, the day bartender, will be covering his shifts at night, so I'll be covering Vienna's shifts during the day.
Yesterday MORNING sucked though. The water went out while I was in the shower. A water main broke. That sucked and I don't wanna talk about it, except to mention that I've got very sensitive skin and end up in horrible pain when things like that happen.
At 3, Lis picked me up, and we hopped on the Mass Pike (the Mass Pike is RIGHT next door to the club) and drove 122 miles across the state to Lenox, Massachusetts, to Shakespeare and Company, a theater company thingy out in the Berkshires. We were TRYING to get there by 5 PM to get to a free lecture, but we were about fifteen minutes late. Which wasn't too bad.
So we got to see most of the free lecture on "Construction Techniques of the Sixteenth Century."
See, Shakespeare and Company is building a replica of the 1587 Rose Theater. That was Shakespeare's first theater -- burned down and was rebuilt in 1592, slightly differently. Eventually, Shakespeare's troupe moved over to the Globe, and there is in London a replica of the Globe.
But nobody's got a replica of the Rose yet. . . they're building one using mainly period construction techniques.
They've already got a little wagon shed they've built with period techniques, mainly as a practice to learn how, but they're going to use that as a box office/gift shop thing when the Rose is finally built. And they've got a tent with seats and a stage in it, where the Rose will go, so you can see how big it is.
After the Rose is finished, in two years or so, they're going to throw up a couple more buildings -- a haberdashery, a tiring-house, and a blacksmith shop.
Yes, they're going to be selling garb, grub, and swords. All period.
And then they're going to add in more shops and stuff.
*Squee* hardly seems strong enough. It's a Shakespeare learning center that has decided what they need is a permanent, ACCURATE RenFaire.
I wish it wasn't two hours from Boston. Because that would be SO FRICKIN' COOL to work at. I mean, they're building an Elizabethan tavern. That means that they'll need bartenders. I can think of not many jobs cooler than "bartender at an accurate period tavern which is being run partially for educational purposes."
After the lecture and demonstration on building techniques ("This is how you turn a log into a beam using a broadaxe." Neat stuff), we ate some dinner, which Lis had packed as a picnic, and then there was a bit of a pre-show in the Rose Footprint Theater (the tent), where someone sung some settings of Shakespearian sonnets, which was okay, but sonnets really don't go to music that well. . . the blues setting was most successful, because blues lyrics are often iambic, although not always in five metrical feet. . .
Anyway, then we went in to see the play, on the main stage, which is an thrust stage. We were seated on the left side towards the back.
The play was As You Like It, which is one of my favorite Shakespearian plays, because it basically feels like Shakespeare had a couple days to throw together a new play, and they'd just lost their best physical clown, and their leading lady boy actor had just gone through a growth spurt and wasn't looking very convincing as a romantic lead, and one backer was pressing him with, "Hey, pastorals are really popular this season, why don't you write one," and another was pressing him with, "Hey, Robin Hood is really big right now, can we cash in on this," and one of his friends had just been murdered, and so he scraped up basically everything that was left on the cutting room floor from everything else he'd written recently, and stitched it together with a whole bunch of dirty jokes, and it's a total piece of hack work, and I love it.
I mean, I really feel that the "Seven Ages Of Man" ("All the world's a stage") speech was something he had floating around, and there are a bunch of other pieces like that throughout.
Exposition is handled terribly.
"Hey, Charles the Wrestler, what's going on in the the world?"
"Why, there's nothing particularly new happening, it's all the old stuff that you already know that I've got no reason to tell you -- so, here, let me tell you it all!"
I whispered to Lis as one character came in, "It's Sir John Exposition!"
Anyway, the whole thing takes place in the Forest of Arden, which is a forest in France well known for its diverse wildlife, including sheep, goats, deer, poisonous snakes, and lions. The resolution is totally deus ex machina. . .
Guy runs in from offstage and says,
"Hey, exiled duke! Your brother was coming here to kill you, because he hates you, and, on his way in, he met a mysterious hermit in the woods, and the mysterious hermit convinced him not to kill you, and your brother was so impressed that he decided to become a mysterious hermit himself, and just give you back your duchy. Here you go!" I mean, I'm not exaggerating. That's the resolution. I just have this image of one of the actors running into Shakespeare saying, "WILL! The play starts in ten minutes! Have you come up with an ending YET?"
Anyway, the staging and costuming was nifty. For the first act or so, EVERYTHING was black and white -- the stage was black and white checks, costuming was black with white shirts, and so forth. The only color was green apples on the ground, since the first scene is set in an orchard. And the green apples became a bit of a reoccuring theme, usually adding the only color to the set.
In the court, the costumes were all black, with some white accents. Then, when they got to the exiled court in the Forest of Arden, the costuming was all white, with some black accents. Touchstone's motley they did all as black and white, which was rather nifty. Mostly black with white accents in the court, mostly white with black accents in the forest.
The shepherds and shepherdesses all had brightly colored pastel costumes -- mauve for Phoebee, Sylvius was all in green, the elderly shepherd was blue, Audrey in orange.
As the play went on, the staging added more and more bits of color, giving an impression of time passing -- they came to the forest and it was all white, as winter, a few scenes later, they added green plants as accents, a few scenes later, more flowers were added, giving an impression of a passage of time from winter through spring through summer.
We got home around two in the morning and the water was fixed.
Anyway, an older couple came into the bar to wait for their daughter and grandkids so they could go on to Fenway Park for the game. They sat down, and looked at the TV, where the chairman of the commission was speaking, and the husband turned to the wife, and said, "Look! It's Tom."
Anyway, we chatted some -- turns out that the gentleman had worked with the intelligence community for several years, and was telling me some of the challenges of developing intelligence sources. "Because your sources are ALWAYS weird, and you have to distinguish between people who are simply weird, and people who are weird and useful."
I asked, "I assume you have to distinguish between 'dangerous to you' and 'dangerous to the other guy', too," but he said that that was frankly not a consideration. EVERYONE you're working with is psycho and he was QUITE happy when interviewing some of these people that there were armed guards in the next room . . .
Anyway, a bit after the daughter and grandkids showed up and left for the game, I switched the TV from the discussion of terrorism to something TRULY terrifying -- the first game of the Sox/Orioles doubleheader.
It was . . . sad. I don't wanna talk about it.
Anyway, yesterday, I got trained for the Commonwealth Lounge, which I was trained for before, but they re-worked stuff so I needed to learn where they'd moved stuff to. Because next week, Louis is on vacation, so Vienna, the day bartender, will be covering his shifts at night, so I'll be covering Vienna's shifts during the day.
Yesterday MORNING sucked though. The water went out while I was in the shower. A water main broke. That sucked and I don't wanna talk about it, except to mention that I've got very sensitive skin and end up in horrible pain when things like that happen.
At 3, Lis picked me up, and we hopped on the Mass Pike (the Mass Pike is RIGHT next door to the club) and drove 122 miles across the state to Lenox, Massachusetts, to Shakespeare and Company, a theater company thingy out in the Berkshires. We were TRYING to get there by 5 PM to get to a free lecture, but we were about fifteen minutes late. Which wasn't too bad.
So we got to see most of the free lecture on "Construction Techniques of the Sixteenth Century."
See, Shakespeare and Company is building a replica of the 1587 Rose Theater. That was Shakespeare's first theater -- burned down and was rebuilt in 1592, slightly differently. Eventually, Shakespeare's troupe moved over to the Globe, and there is in London a replica of the Globe.
But nobody's got a replica of the Rose yet. . . they're building one using mainly period construction techniques.
They've already got a little wagon shed they've built with period techniques, mainly as a practice to learn how, but they're going to use that as a box office/gift shop thing when the Rose is finally built. And they've got a tent with seats and a stage in it, where the Rose will go, so you can see how big it is.
After the Rose is finished, in two years or so, they're going to throw up a couple more buildings -- a haberdashery, a tiring-house, and a blacksmith shop.
Yes, they're going to be selling garb, grub, and swords. All period.
And then they're going to add in more shops and stuff.
*Squee* hardly seems strong enough. It's a Shakespeare learning center that has decided what they need is a permanent, ACCURATE RenFaire.
I wish it wasn't two hours from Boston. Because that would be SO FRICKIN' COOL to work at. I mean, they're building an Elizabethan tavern. That means that they'll need bartenders. I can think of not many jobs cooler than "bartender at an accurate period tavern which is being run partially for educational purposes."
After the lecture and demonstration on building techniques ("This is how you turn a log into a beam using a broadaxe." Neat stuff), we ate some dinner, which Lis had packed as a picnic, and then there was a bit of a pre-show in the Rose Footprint Theater (the tent), where someone sung some settings of Shakespearian sonnets, which was okay, but sonnets really don't go to music that well. . . the blues setting was most successful, because blues lyrics are often iambic, although not always in five metrical feet. . .
Anyway, then we went in to see the play, on the main stage, which is an thrust stage. We were seated on the left side towards the back.
The play was As You Like It, which is one of my favorite Shakespearian plays, because it basically feels like Shakespeare had a couple days to throw together a new play, and they'd just lost their best physical clown, and their leading lady boy actor had just gone through a growth spurt and wasn't looking very convincing as a romantic lead, and one backer was pressing him with, "Hey, pastorals are really popular this season, why don't you write one," and another was pressing him with, "Hey, Robin Hood is really big right now, can we cash in on this," and one of his friends had just been murdered, and so he scraped up basically everything that was left on the cutting room floor from everything else he'd written recently, and stitched it together with a whole bunch of dirty jokes, and it's a total piece of hack work, and I love it.
I mean, I really feel that the "Seven Ages Of Man" ("All the world's a stage") speech was something he had floating around, and there are a bunch of other pieces like that throughout.
Exposition is handled terribly.
"Hey, Charles the Wrestler, what's going on in the the world?"
"Why, there's nothing particularly new happening, it's all the old stuff that you already know that I've got no reason to tell you -- so, here, let me tell you it all!"
I whispered to Lis as one character came in, "It's Sir John Exposition!"
Anyway, the whole thing takes place in the Forest of Arden, which is a forest in France well known for its diverse wildlife, including sheep, goats, deer, poisonous snakes, and lions. The resolution is totally deus ex machina. . .
Guy runs in from offstage and says,
"Hey, exiled duke! Your brother was coming here to kill you, because he hates you, and, on his way in, he met a mysterious hermit in the woods, and the mysterious hermit convinced him not to kill you, and your brother was so impressed that he decided to become a mysterious hermit himself, and just give you back your duchy. Here you go!" I mean, I'm not exaggerating. That's the resolution. I just have this image of one of the actors running into Shakespeare saying, "WILL! The play starts in ten minutes! Have you come up with an ending YET?"
Anyway, the staging and costuming was nifty. For the first act or so, EVERYTHING was black and white -- the stage was black and white checks, costuming was black with white shirts, and so forth. The only color was green apples on the ground, since the first scene is set in an orchard. And the green apples became a bit of a reoccuring theme, usually adding the only color to the set.
In the court, the costumes were all black, with some white accents. Then, when they got to the exiled court in the Forest of Arden, the costuming was all white, with some black accents. Touchstone's motley they did all as black and white, which was rather nifty. Mostly black with white accents in the court, mostly white with black accents in the forest.
The shepherds and shepherdesses all had brightly colored pastel costumes -- mauve for Phoebee, Sylvius was all in green, the elderly shepherd was blue, Audrey in orange.
As the play went on, the staging added more and more bits of color, giving an impression of time passing -- they came to the forest and it was all white, as winter, a few scenes later, they added green plants as accents, a few scenes later, more flowers were added, giving an impression of a passage of time from winter through spring through summer.
We got home around two in the morning and the water was fixed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-24 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-25 07:13 am (UTC)Unfortunately, because there's currently a building over it, they've had to flood the site to preserve the remains. But you can see the stage through the water. I had fun imagining the plays being performed there.