Shakespeare!!

Here is the promised update for my trip to the Shakespeare festival.

Word Friend and I left my house around nine. We had checked the highway because of the wild fire between us and the festival. We had several alternate routes planned out in case of closures. Fortunately, we didn't need any of them, the road was clear the entire way. We did see a haze from the smoke and one random tree that was on fire.
We arrived in good time, but we couldn't check into our hotel yet. We parked and found out there was a student discount half an hour before the show. So we wandered around a little and ate our brown bag lunch. Then we went to get our tickts and we saw Lend Me A Tenor. We really enjoyed it, it was quite funny. One thing that tickled my funny bone was when we got our tickets, they saw which school I was from and warned us that there was swearing in the show. Lend Me A Tenor had some very Shakespeare situations. There were mistaken identities that led to some really interesting situations.
We went to our hotel and checked in. We had dinner there. Word Friend and I split a salad and scones. The scones were amazing!! They were so good. They were English style, so they were more of a pastry and came with raspberry jam, marmalade and Devonshire cream. I discovered I love Devonshire cream. Then we met with our group and brought up a couple questions to consider while watching Coriolanus. We watched the Greenshow before the show. They did it Festival of Fools style.
I don't know if you have read or seen Coriolanus before, but it is definately not a favorite. It is a very political play, and very military. We were sitting in the balcony, which was really hot, considering the theatre is a replica of the Globe. It was interesting to watch, some parts became clearer, but it was still a difficult play to digest.
The next morning we got up and went to breakfast at the hotel. It was a homemade breakfast for free! It was very yummy. Then we went to the literary seminars they had. We discussed Coriolanus and Lend Me a Tenor. The composer of Lend Me a Tenor was there and it was cool to hear so much about the play and how it developed. The discussion on Coriolanus was very helpful too.
We split a meal from Arby's and ate it outside the theatres. The campus was just beautiful. I think probably because it had so many trees. We had a discussion with our group on Coriolanus, but it started to rain a little. The auditorium theater was cold because the air conditioner was on and we were wet from the rain. We saw Twelfth Night. It was much easier to follow and the actors were really good. We really enjoyed that show. Word Friend and I went back to our hotel and went swimming. It was a little cool because the temperature had dropped because of the rain, but it was sunny, and we wanted to go swimming. I am really bad at breathing when I swim laps. We had leftover fruit (from breakfast) for dinner and then went to our group discussion. We talked more about the different roles the actors played. Then we watched the Greenshow. This time it was Irish. They sang ballads and danced soft and hard shoe. It was neat because that was the setting that King Lear was set in. I really liked that because it made a lot of the superstitions understandable. King Lear was amazing. They had a fabulous ensemble cast, they were all so good! I really appreciated the set. It was only a slab that had a map of the country on it with a decorated edge, but it was slightly cracked. When Lear's daughters kick him out, it split apart. That was the end of the first act. In the second act, it was spread out all over the stage and they moved pieces of it to different places to represent different places. His madness made so much sense on stage, reading it can be a little harder. It was a very moving show, I almost cried three times. If you get a chance to go and can only see one show, King Lear is my recommendation.
The next morning we had breakfast and went to the discussion on Lear. It was fun to hear what people said. They all thought it was a great cast and many of them thought it was one of the best productions they had seen. After that discussion, we went back to the hotel and I took a nap. We checked out and had lunch. It wasn't as good as I had hoped, but I had the scones again and that made me happy. Then we went to the gift shoppe. I bought some mugs that have phrases from Shakespeare on them (one has insults and the other love quotes). We saw Candida, by Shaw. It was really cute, we enjoyed it. We found out that one of the actors in the company had to fly out to New York because her mother had a stroke, which is why we saw several of the understudies in the shows. That was an interesting piece of information because the shows were all so good.
We drove home after Candida. We were worried that we would run into problems with the wild fire, because it was supposedly just as bad, but we didn't run into any delays. It was smooth sailing all the way. Word Friend and I are thinking about going down every year, we had so much fun. Seeing five plays in three days seems like a lot, but intellectually, I loved it. Physically, I had a hard time sitting still becuase the shows were mostly about three hours long. But it was really so much fun. If any of you would like to come next year, you should let me know!!