Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Well, as before, events simply overtook me down here, and I’ve just glided along.  We saw a great collection of bloody, funny, challenging, luminous drama, and got a couple of good hikes in as well.

As a bonus, our son came down with some high school friends, guys that he’s been coming here with since they were in middle school, and it was fun running into them around town, at the plays, and sharing a meal or two.

I have notes on the plays, and will spin out some thoughts later, when I ‘m not in the midst of the experience.  One funny thing: yesterday afternoon, we were seeing an old Italian comedy called Servant of Two Masters.  It’s derived from an old form of Italian improv called Commedia dell’arte, in which the actors all have a number of schticks in their quivers, a lot of it broad and physical, but requiring impeccable timing to work.  This play wasn’t improv, it was scripted, but there was some latitude.

At some point in the first act, one of the characters is starving and begins soliciting candy and sandwiches from the audience.  We’d been apprised of this, and brought along some of our saved airline snacks.  Our seats were in the front row in the cozy New Theatre, and this character, after importuning one man in the front row and coming up empty, turned to my mom on the other side of the aisle, sat down next to her and put his arm around her.  She was sitting across the theatre from us (it was “theatre in the round”)

She presented him with her airline snack, which seemed to take him aback a little, since I think he was expecting candy.  He opened it, pronounced it “trail mix”, and pretended to sample it.  Then he asked my mom her name, but she wouldn’t tell him.  After a couple of tries, he said, “OK, I’ll call you ‘Flo’”.  At various times throughout the play,  he’d refer back to her, calling her variously “Flo”, “Joyce”, “Barbara”, etc.  It was pretty hilarious, her 15 minutes.  We thought.

That night, we were in the outdoor Elizabethan theater to see Henry VII, and people kept coming up to her and asking, “Aren’t you “Flo”?”  I told her she was going to have to join Actors’ Equity.

I promised photos.  Here’s a pretty funny piece of video I took on the plane down here - it’s our flight attendant’s instructions to us before takeoff.  Ignore the video and concentrate on what she’s saying - she does a bit of improv herself.  She actually sang parts of it, which I regrettably missed:

Since we have to be out of our little cottage in 20 minutes, I’ll just link to some photos I posted on Facebook, and issue a rain check for better stuff later:

Our hike on Wednesday on Grizzly Peak east of Ashland.

Other photos, including a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail near Mount Ashland.