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corrielleAs part of our awesome Labor Day weekend, we decided to go to the free Shakespeare in the Park performance over in Griffith Park.
It was the last performance of the season, and Rae made delicious Island fried chicken. (Basically chicken fried in coconut oil with her island spice mix she got. It was DELICIOUS.) We also packed a bunch of fresh fruit, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of two buck chuck into our picnic bag.
We metghettopeach at the park, settled down on our blanket, and ate and talked while we waited for the show to start. There were a LOT of people there, apparently. I kept hearing other people in the audience who had been before saying how crowded it was, and at some point, one of the organizers estimated that there were about 2500 people there. That's a LOT of people turning out for free Shakespeare.
The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it was really fun. They did a fun job of mixing very traditional elements (the fairies looked very Renaissance) and the modern. (When Theseus asks one of his retinue to pull out a calendar and figure out how long till the next full moon and his wedding, he pulled out an iPhone and started poking at it. It got a big laugh.) We were all out in the open air on hill that sloped upward from the stage, and we could see the moon rising over the trees as the play went on. Being outside like that made all of the references in the play to the moon and the wood much more immediate. In fact, it was so immediate that the actors' lines were occasionally punctuated by the coyotes that live in the hills behind the park, and toward the end, it got a little chilly.
As I was sitting there watching, I thought to myself that this must be pretty close in tone and atmosphere to what it was like to watch the play in Shakespeare's lifetime. There were no microphones, but the actors' voices echoed off the hill, there were people all around munching on things and getting up to go to the bathroom, and there were no assigned seats... we were all just scattered around the stage.
Definitely going back next summer when they do this again.
It was the last performance of the season, and Rae made delicious Island fried chicken. (Basically chicken fried in coconut oil with her island spice mix she got. It was DELICIOUS.) We also packed a bunch of fresh fruit, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of two buck chuck into our picnic bag.
We met
ghettopeach at the park, settled down on our blanket, and ate and talked while we waited for the show to start. There were a LOT of people there, apparently. I kept hearing other people in the audience who had been before saying how crowded it was, and at some point, one of the organizers estimated that there were about 2500 people there. That's a LOT of people turning out for free Shakespeare. The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it was really fun. They did a fun job of mixing very traditional elements (the fairies looked very Renaissance) and the modern. (When Theseus asks one of his retinue to pull out a calendar and figure out how long till the next full moon and his wedding, he pulled out an iPhone and started poking at it. It got a big laugh.) We were all out in the open air on hill that sloped upward from the stage, and we could see the moon rising over the trees as the play went on. Being outside like that made all of the references in the play to the moon and the wood much more immediate. In fact, it was so immediate that the actors' lines were occasionally punctuated by the coyotes that live in the hills behind the park, and toward the end, it got a little chilly.
As I was sitting there watching, I thought to myself that this must be pretty close in tone and atmosphere to what it was like to watch the play in Shakespeare's lifetime. There were no microphones, but the actors' voices echoed off the hill, there were people all around munching on things and getting up to go to the bathroom, and there were no assigned seats... we were all just scattered around the stage.
Definitely going back next summer when they do this again.