Shenandoah Shakespeare
Sep. 25th, 2005 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterthunderI'm glad I got the chance to take this trip before my forum semesters ended. Everyone always says it's really good and I have to agree with them.
We left Friday at 3:30 from the scholar's lounge. There were only 9 of us because of the State-Carolina game, but that made it a lot easier to learn people's names:) Speaking in hindsight, I would much rather have been watching A Comedy of Errors than watching State lose, though I'm sure if we had won my tone would be a bit different.
So we left around 3:30/ 4:00 ish and drove four hours to the house of one of Ken's cousins in Scottsville. She had agreed to host us for dinner, and we had a very yummy meal of rice and chilli, with brownies and ice cream for dessert. There were some other relatives there, including one lady who had just returned from working in a doctor's clinic in Mississippi with Katrina victims. They were really interesting people to talk to, and we stayed until almost 11:00. Staunton was another hour on, so we got into our hotel around midnight and went to bed.
The next morning we went down to a cute little restaurant called the Beverly for breakfast, where I had a very yummy omelette and an english muffin. I went down to the farmer's market with Erin and Brittney and we poked around the stalls for a while. We had to meet the rest of the group at 11 for a tour of the Blackfriar's playhouse. The original Blackfriars was burned down in the Fire of London, and this is the only reproduction in the world. They do Shakespeare and a few other playwrights with contemporary music and costumes because in Shakespeare's day the music and costumes would have been contemporary. They also don't use a lot of props or sets because Shakespeare didn't. The dynamics of the performance are a lot different when the actors can see and interact with the audience; it makes the performance a lot more fun. There were seats up on stage, but another college group beat us to them. Grrr!
After the tour and the play we went to this little bakery that had fresh rolls and all sorts of pasteries and such, and then we piled back into the van to head back to Raleigh. We stopped at a little Italian restaurant somewhere near the NC- Virginia line for dinner, then proceeded to get lost on these curvy little back roads- some of which didn't even have lines. Which is not the best situation to be driving a 15 passenger van on. Samia was driving and we were all having fun scaring ourselves silly with freaky scenarios- "What if a lady dressed in white appeared in the middle of the road? What if zombies started attacking the van?" None of which seems remotely scary in my bright dorm room, but on a dark curvy road had a little more potential. It turned out alright, since eventually we ran into Kerr lake, and were able to find our way from there, but it made an amusing detour. We got back to Raleigh around 11:30, I slept in until that time this morning and I'm now typing in my pj's and wrapping up the process of getting plugged back into what I need to.
We left Friday at 3:30 from the scholar's lounge. There were only 9 of us because of the State-Carolina game, but that made it a lot easier to learn people's names:) Speaking in hindsight, I would much rather have been watching A Comedy of Errors than watching State lose, though I'm sure if we had won my tone would be a bit different.
So we left around 3:30/ 4:00 ish and drove four hours to the house of one of Ken's cousins in Scottsville. She had agreed to host us for dinner, and we had a very yummy meal of rice and chilli, with brownies and ice cream for dessert. There were some other relatives there, including one lady who had just returned from working in a doctor's clinic in Mississippi with Katrina victims. They were really interesting people to talk to, and we stayed until almost 11:00. Staunton was another hour on, so we got into our hotel around midnight and went to bed.
The next morning we went down to a cute little restaurant called the Beverly for breakfast, where I had a very yummy omelette and an english muffin. I went down to the farmer's market with Erin and Brittney and we poked around the stalls for a while. We had to meet the rest of the group at 11 for a tour of the Blackfriar's playhouse. The original Blackfriars was burned down in the Fire of London, and this is the only reproduction in the world. They do Shakespeare and a few other playwrights with contemporary music and costumes because in Shakespeare's day the music and costumes would have been contemporary. They also don't use a lot of props or sets because Shakespeare didn't. The dynamics of the performance are a lot different when the actors can see and interact with the audience; it makes the performance a lot more fun. There were seats up on stage, but another college group beat us to them. Grrr!
After the tour and the play we went to this little bakery that had fresh rolls and all sorts of pasteries and such, and then we piled back into the van to head back to Raleigh. We stopped at a little Italian restaurant somewhere near the NC- Virginia line for dinner, then proceeded to get lost on these curvy little back roads- some of which didn't even have lines. Which is not the best situation to be driving a 15 passenger van on. Samia was driving and we were all having fun scaring ourselves silly with freaky scenarios- "What if a lady dressed in white appeared in the middle of the road? What if zombies started attacking the van?" None of which seems remotely scary in my bright dorm room, but on a dark curvy road had a little more potential. It turned out alright, since eventually we ran into Kerr lake, and were able to find our way from there, but it made an amusing detour. We got back to Raleigh around 11:30, I slept in until that time this morning and I'm now typing in my pj's and wrapping up the process of getting plugged back into what I need to.