Personal Note: Arts in the Park

[nebroadwe]

Friday night I attended a local Arts-in-the-Park performance: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, presented by a group of local professionals and sponsored by the Friends of the park in question and a number of other community organizations. I love arts in the park -- I once dragged some people into a neighboring state to see a concert version of Mozart's Don Giovanni out under the stars. (They forgave me eventually.) Thunderstorms were forecast but held off; it clouded over just enough to take the edge off the heat while the sun was still up. A good thing, because the performance area of this particular park is simply a big ol' natural depression with no shade and no permanent stage: the set was a bunk-bed-frame affair accented by cinderblocks set at the bottom of the bowl. (Small children ran back and forth behind it on their way to and from the playground across the way.) They slimmed down the play to a lean, mean hour and a half, cutting a lot of the funny business (e.g. the opening argument among the Capulets' and Montagues' servants; some of Mercutio and Benvolio's teasing of Juliet's nurse), but leaving the melodrama intact. I'd forgotten how much of the play besides the balcony scene has passed into Bartlett's -- also how incredibly, hormonally young the lead roles are. I nominate this for Phineas Nigellus's least favorite play. Mind you, I enjoyed it: good acting, reasonable fight choreography, a responsive audience and the language of Shakespeare. Outdoors. Accompanied by chocolate chip cookies. What more could anyone desire?

And tomorrow I shall visit a local aviation museum and investigate the history of the helicopter -- that vehicle which "approaches closer than any other to fulfillment of mankind’s ancient dreams of the flying horse and the magic carpet," as Sikorsky has said. Of course, he would ...

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I still remember watching a video recording of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" performed in Central Park and being so amazed at what they did with it...I SOOO wanted to be there for it. The closest I've come is "As You Like It" put on in St. Augustine right after I graduated from college. It was an open air stage, absolutely NO background/scenery whatsoever, just these concrete blocks of various sizes the characters ran up and down on and costumes. It was fun.

[lyricnonsense.livejournal.com]

I just got back from an outdoor production of Love's Labour's Lost! Our park company is alternating between that one and R&J, and since I've seen R&J in many forms, but never LLL, I figured that would be a better choice. Gotta love free Shakespeare in the park. I don't even mind the players wandering through with donation buckets when it's Shakespeare. When it's some sappy silly musical, I'm a little less inclined to drop anything in the bucket.

Sikorsky's helicopter design drives me up the wall. It's the most inefficent for most uses, but since he was so successful in production, 70% of helicopters nowadays use it. Also, a little bit of trivia: Sikorsky shot his demonstration videos for the Navy in slow motion so that the helicopter would look a lot more stable than it was. :)

Personally, my favorite of the early commercial helicopters is the Piasecki Flying Banana. It really does look like a banana, and they even painted it bright yellow.