Archive for the ‘Ashland 2005’ Category.

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I can’t believe our week here has gone by so fast, but here we are on our last day. We saw our last plays yesterday, and have only to check out of our lodgings and get to our plane in Medford this evening. I really didn’t buy anything here, so packing shouldn’t be any more of a chore than it was coming down: the trick is to accommodate the weighty “luxury” items I tend to bring on this trip - my complete Shakespeare, Harold Bloom’s Invention of the Human and, this time, my Krups espresso machine.
All three have seen significant use, so I don’t regret hauling any of them (especially since I slipped the green Shakespeare into my mom’s suitcase when she wasn’t looking.
Our theatre experiences were great this year. Since I purchase a membership in the Festival, I get to participate in the ticket presale that happens in the fall preceding the next year’s season. Our seats just rocked this year, most being in the first or second rows. It makes a big difference when your experience is almost that of a cast member, rather than at a remote distance struggling to hear all the lines.
My mom’s really enjoyed the plays as well, and has been sharing some family anecdotes along the way. One amusing one involved when she was in high school and she was one of the witches in a Macbeth production. Thereafter, an alley where she would meet her friends before school each day was dubbed “the heath”. Before you ask, there were no stories about me worth relating.

Road Trip

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Crater Lake, Wizard Island in the background.

Off For Some Culcha

We’re flying off this morning to Ashland, Oregon for another dose of plays. We’re taking my Mom along, and staying through 7/3. Last year’s trip is chronicled in a category at the left. We’ll be seeing:

    • The Philanderer - George Bernard Shaw
    • Room Service - John Murry & Allen Boretz
    • Richard III - Shakesbeer
    • Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
    • Love’s Labor’s Lost
    • Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - August Wilson
    • Twelfth Night
    • Napoli Milionaria! - Eduardo del Filipo

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival runs from February through November, but we have been going this last week of June for 12 years, and the weather has almost always been terrific. Our first exposure to the festival came when we accompanied a group from our son’s school, and we’ve been going every year since.
Our son is already down there with some friends, and we’ll hook up with him for some hiking and, probably, climbing. We’re hoping to make a trip to Crater Lake again this year, but we’ll check the snow level to make sure we can get around. There’s a lot of recreation to be had in the area.
My laptop’s poised, our lodging claims to have wireless broadband and I’ll report as often as I can.