Snowy Friday Night

Dragged harrock, tirinian, justom, and Katya to dpolicar's Murder in the Cathedral. I saw it once a very long time ago when the Shakespeare Ensemble put it on in the MIT chapel; I think it fit better with this more old-fashioned church space. And wow, are churches ever designed for pageantry and reverberating voices in a way that La Sala just isn't.

I found it reminded me somewhat of many of the ART's shows, in that the dialogue (especially the chorus) is not talkative, does not convey the plot forward so much as paint layers of poetry over and around the plot. (Though it wasn't as incomprehensible as many of those ART shows, for which I give it credit). There is the more normally talkative bit of the Knights Explaining Themselves, though, which just went to contrast the rest of it.

I think we were a very quiet audience - we forgot to clap for the first act - but perhaps being in a real church inhibits reaction. I am still very impressed with the guy who played Thomas (who I was impressed by as the Player King in R&G are Dead) - he has a lovely variable expressive voice, and could speak in rhyme without sounding at all forced about it. In addition to the Knights, the Optimistic Priest (the second priest) was a lot of fun to watch, too.

In other news, we continue to acquire more furniture. There are still the dining room chairs and the daybed for the guest room/library left to arrive, and theoretically tirinian will also be doing the bed -> sofa conversion, but we're close to done. Except lamps. And maybe another chair. :)

Posters and Programs

So, I did the posters and programs for Iolanthe. This time it was zacheiss who made puppy dog eyes at me, instead of mister_nick, but I'm usually pretty easily convincable. And usually it's pretty easy (though the number of people who say "I'm not writing a bio because your threatened fake bio sounds better" is going up. "I'm going to write you all as vegetables" was supposed to have been a threat!). This year, though, it's a disaster.

First, I waited too long for the MTG ad and only gave Copytech two days. Which meant that they only said "We can maybe get them done by Friday" instead of "Yes, by Friday." And maybe is really no better than no, for a deadline. So I spent Thursday xeroxing, folding, and stapling. I don't feel too guilty about this, because while I used the copy machine at work for it, I replenished twice as much paper as I took, which surely must sort of cover toner and wear and tear and staples. But it took longer than I had planned to spend at work on Thursday, certainly. (I guess I can't complain much, everyone else had to go to work for real. And had it not been a holiday, I would have had to spend all those hours in the middle of the night instead).

Second, apparently I've illicitly put staff into the medium price bracket on the posters as MIT Community, when it was supposed to be MIT Alumni and staff are supposed to fall into General Admission. I suppose I don't have to feel too guilty about that either, because the 300 programs I printed would have cost (I think) $120, so that covers thirty staff who are getting in with a lower price than they should. rifmeister tells me I'm "boojum9000 nionized edition", a modern day Robin Hood. (I think maybe working for a Japanese company is rubbing off on him, because I'm really not sure about the "nionized" part there). Right! I was sticking up for staff rights, not just messing up.

Sigh. :)

Next show they can make puppy dog eyes at chanaleh. Her programs are prettier than mine, anyway.