Murray Ross

"Be cheerful, sir. . .

says the magician Prospero, after his son and daughter have witnessed his violent dispersal of theatrical masque he had arranged to celebrate their engagement.   He continues, famously,

Our revels now are ended.  These our actors,

As I foretold you were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud capped towers, the grogeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;

And leaqve not a rack behind.  We are such stuff

as dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."

So it goes in life, and so it goes in the theatre---and in the theatre the ending of revels is almost always followed by a spasm of violence as the scenery is cleared, making way for the next new show. Here is what our theatre looked like 24 hours after our last performance.  The remains of a dream.

 

But no such violence will follow the end of our next show in the Bon Vivant.  That's because our next show is set in Grover's Corners, where there are no no cloud capped towers, no gorgeous palaces, no solemn temples, no white woods; not even a patch of green astroturf.  In Grover's Corners there is no set at all.  BBut it is quite a place all the same.  Here is it's address:  Grover's Corners, Sutton County, New Hampshire, United States of America, continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, the Earth; the Solar System, the Universe; The Mind of God.

working girls

Today's post is a little tribute to a few of the working girls ofTHEATREWORKS-- mostly the ones you'll see soon lost in a forest or on a planet near you.  Right now they are all works in progress.

Here's the lovely Melissa Scher, playing Hermia, saying a fond girl farewell to Helena, her best friend (not for long), before running off to the woods to get married (or so she thinks):

 

And here's that best friend, the beautiful and baffled Sofia Lauwers, wondering why she has been so unlucky in love (there's no good reason as you can see):

 

Here's the fabulous Adrienne Kapstein, Queen of the Fairies, and her estranged husband (the fairy in the fur hat--we're losing that hat).

 

And here she is with her hot new boyfriend (some would say he's an ass):

Meanwhile, over on Planet D'Illyria, Amy Sue Harding is a Science Officer you'd better be wary of experimenting with (though you kill to get into her laboratory):

 

 Carrie Clark (the blond on the left) is a spaceship crew member and a doo-wop girl (she looks like she's from Disney, and she is, but she has a wicked side too, thank heaven). Kayla Rae Jackson (on the right) is our teenager in love.  She doth teach the torches to burn bright, or, as another not so Shakespearean teenager says, "Jeepers, what a hon!"

 

And lest you think the working girls of THEATREWORKS only light up the stage,consider the fair Molly Earle (grrrr) and the adorable Amanda Eno, Planet's stage and assistant stage managers respectively.

And these are just eight reasons why THEATREWORKS is the best place in America to go to work and play.

Rude Mechanicals

As most of you know, this is Puck's name for the group of amateur thespians who are rehearsing a play in the woods.  They to please their Duke with a performance on his wedding day at night.  "Rude" means "crude," and "mechanicals" refers to those who do manual labor.  The Athenian gang includes a master carpenter, a weaver, a specialist carpenter (a "joiner'), a tinker, and a bellows-mender.  There's is a name, like so many in Shakespeare, that sticks in the mind--especially in the minds of theatre folk.  The Rude Mechanicals is the name of at least three working American theatre companies: one in New York, one in Michigan, one in Austin.  Of course the Rude Mechanicals can''t compete with THEATREWORKS--a friend tells me there are 17 of those right now.  We weren't the first when we came up with the name over 30 years ago, but we thought we were.  A group of us were sitting around our kitchen on Tejon street thinking about starting a theatre company.  We had no idea what to call it, and rejected any number of possibilities before THEATREWORKS flashed up and took us all by storm.  Straightforward, industrial, hardworking, reliable, profitable and necessary as the Colorado Springs Utilities.  Almost as soon as we had our name we had our first image: Shakespeare in a hard hat. No doubt this kind of spontaneous combustion occured nearly simultaneously in 17 other kitchens in America in 1975.  If we had thought of the Rude Mechanicals we might have gone there too.  Our production meetings often raise exactly the same questions as Shakespeare's gang: How are we going to make moonshine?  How can we bring in a wall? Wouldn't a real lion on stage be too scary? Well, actually the lion hasn't come up yet. I won't say our mechanicals look exactly like our staff though they are about the same size and some would say they bear a famiuly resemblance--but I think the mechanicals are far too alert and enterprising a group to pass for a regional theatre company, don't you? 

And believe it or not, this gang puts on a really good show, too.

The Cradle of the Fairy Queen

Titania's miniature bedroom is Shakespeare's masterpiece of garden decoration.  Capability Brown could not have done it better. It is beautifully situated on "a bank where the wild thyme blows"

And "where oxlips and the noddding violet grows." 

 

It is protected from the hot sun by a canopy of "luscious woodbine, with sweet musk roses, and with eglantine."

  

In this delicate and ultra feminine bower, the fairy queen sleeps, "lulled in these flowers with dances and delights."  And when she sleeps, she's wrapped in the "enamelled skin" of a snake, just wide enough to wrap a fairy in"---something like this, perhaps:

Titania has a bedtime routine.  She issues orders to her fairy  servants, then bids them sing her now asleep.  This they do, with an enchanting lullaby.  If you could bottle this routine and sell it, ambien would be out of business.

 

Their duty done, the fairies take their leave -- "one aloof stand sentinel."

 

Alas, the sentry is overpowered and someone approaches.  A man. A husband.  Beware!