Went to a wonderful production of Sarah Ruhl's Orlando yesterday! My wife and I go to a lot of theatre locally anywhere we live (we saw Uncle Vanya and Play it Straight last weekend), because both of us have interests in the performing arts academically and enjoy theatre as a hobby. I love having the opportunity to experince something new and creative, especially when I get to support local college, high school, or community theatre shows in the process!

I've only seen Orlando one other time, with a brilliant experimental drag theatre group back in Mass before we moved. This production was at the black box theatre for one of the local community colleges and had a very different focus, chorus usage, and performance style to it. It was great to see how flexible the play can be with its script and style! I felt they capsured a lot of the comedy the story can have so well. I especially appreciated the flexibility in their costuming, which allowed for seamless transitions between the centuries of the show and great explorations of gender and presentation. The actor in the lead had absolutely delightful timing and portrayed Orlando's different selves really well.

The Show Must Go On, Even With Bats: everything at the show went super smoothly and well, except for the poor bat which I suppose was trapped in the theater and started flying around in the rafters at the top of the second act. I thought it was a bird at first, but then I heard it chittering and realized! The actors did an amazing job and never missed a beat or a line despite some of the audience flinching. I saw the stage manager watching it from the back of the room like " :| "; I hope he got ahold of animal control and safely rescued the bat before the evening show. Kudos to the actors and crew again for keeping the show on track despite the bat chirping accompaniment to the music.

Since we see a good bit of college and community shows, we end up at a lot of black box productions! Personally I adore the flexibility for movement and audience integration into a show that type of space gives. Excited to see more from this school!

Hello! New blog space!

I've been poking at setting up a blog on here for ages, but I kept getting stuck on how I wanted to decorate it and arrange it to the point that I started procrastinating. However, I want to have somewhere to put my thoughts, record theatre I go to, talk about my projects, etc, and decided to just set it up halfway and make it prettier as I go instead of trying to make it perfect from the start. Please bear with me for any really ugly stages this page goes through! It will NOT always look this horrid.

Intro, I guess, since the rest of my site doesn't really have that:

Hi! I'm Lee. I'm a student, vet assistant/pharmacy tech, and I'm obsessed with performing arts and theatre. I also draw (see my poorly upkept gallery page), bake, buy t-shirts for my dogs, occasionally dabble in fanfiction writing, and read a good number of books (when my classes allow me the time). I plan to use this blog to review books and plays, to record my several-year-long Romeo and Juliet performance history review project, and whatever else I might want to use a blog for. I don't know how to write intro posts. Tune in (or don't) for more later!