Dachs Thoughts

After three days in the high country I drove back down to Boulder, while not exactly low, it was 4000′ lower in altitude, and I seem to have more energy. I chose to stay at an interesting Airbnb, which seems a bit like a hippy ashram, right next to South Boulder Creek. My room reminds me of my first Berkeley apartment and is very spartan, but the place is quite beautiful, and the host is an artist who has created in interesting visual ambiance on the grounds and in the river.

I saw my first play of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Richard III, in the University Theater. It was a great production to start my visit. It was really well done, as I’ve come to expect with CoSF company. The lead was played by a familiar face, Rodney Lizcano, who I’ve seen in past seasons, and he did an amazing job with an enormous amount of dialog during the nearly 3 hour play. It was framed as a production of Richard III being put on by a 19th century acting company, and the staging was very basic but effective. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Tonight I saw the second and final play in the Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s season, The Winter’s Tale. It was a very good production, particularly considering the minimalist staging available in the Wente setting. The acting was solid, and the play was very moving. Considering I saw this twice two summers ago I thought I might not be all that up for it, but it was great.

It was a very pleasant night, and I again joined Bob, Blanca and Jim. I guess this is the fifth year I’ve been coming to these with Bob, and it’s turning out to be a very solid company.
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For the second night in a row, I went out to see a play. This time it was my first Shakespeare play of the summer, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was this year’s San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Free Shakespeare in the Park.

This was a decent production, but I guess I was generally un-thrilled. This was from a combination of factors, the play itself in which the actors were good enough, but it appeared to be a somewhat short version (although it still seemed to go slow), and the audience and environment was generally annoying me. People came in late then just plopped in ahead of people and blocked entrances, got up in the middle of things and walked in and out, people answering phone calls, and there were loud kids playing a few hundred feet from the stage throughout the entire play. They also provided a “green show” ahead of time with kid actors to summarize the play for newcomers, which was totally useless and not entertaining. Maybe I’m just grumpy.

Despite that it was a pleasantly warm night for Shakespeare in the park, and even though it wasn’t the greatest it was still good to see some Shakespeare again.
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Tonight was the beginning of this year’s theater season for me, with the first CalShakes play of the year, Octavio Solis’ Quixote Nuevo. This was a world premiere production of this play by a noted Latino playwright, adapted from the classic story Don Quixote.

This was a solo trip for me as Bill and Andy had to switch nights due to a conflict, and I wasn’t able to fill my other seats. It was a very pleasant evening considering it was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the first official day of summer. The play addressed many issues from elder care and dementia, life choices and the road not taken, and immigration issues on our border. The staging was well done with modular units for various set elements could be wheeled in and out and opened up. There was also lots of tejano music throughout the play. It took me a while to get into it, but in the end it was quite moving.

I’m still a bit concerned with the change in structure of the season to just 3 plays, only one of which is a Shakespeare, it it is an amalgamation of several plays. We’ll see how it all goes, but I’m trying to be optimistic.