Shakespeare in Portland

A Different Sort of Shakespeare

Dear Liza,

Saturday evening was warm and pleasant, so we headed out for a walk around Laurelhurst. We found a totally new (to us) group of actors putting on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

This is not the Original Practice Shakespeare, or the Portland Repertoire, or the Reed College Theater. Apparently we live in a city with FOUR Shakespeare theater troupes!

We chatted with the director, Eleanor Johnson, and decided to pull up a piece of lawn and enjoy the show. And, even as the evening got cooler and the ground got damper, we stayed. And, after years of studying Shakespeare, I understood Julius Caesar as I never have before.

Oregon Adventure Theater rehearses extensively and works to understand and present the relationships between the characters. In this production, Brutus and Cassius do not just yell at each other; they disagree, hurt each other, cry, and make up. They are human beings, doing human things for human reasons.

Julius Caesar is not an evil person, but a flawed leader who has become dangerous because he is caught up in his own image of himself. The emotions and motives felt very real in these post January 6 times.

As the sun went down and the lanterns were lit, the drama became more dramatic and everything felt wonderful and magical.

When the final bows were taken, I was stunned to see that the entire play (with a cast list of dozens) had been performed by EIGHT actors. This shows great dedication and talent. Hooray for Oregon Adventure Theatre!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Busy Summer Days

Dear Liza,

For months this past winter, we stayed inside. We did art, read mysteries, watched movies and cooking shows, baked cookies, and petted the cat. Rain and cold and remaining Covid concerns kept us home. It’s like hibernation, but for humans. Auntie Bridgett calls it Hermitting.

Blue skies and Mount Hood from Portland’s Tilikum Crossing

Now we have the opposite situation! Summer in Portland is an absolute avalanche of activities, and there is no way to attend all of them.

jasper and Kestrel at the Chinese Garden

There are Jazz and Blues Concerts, street festivals, Shakespeare in the parks, and art shows in every gallery.

Jenn Lanier stars in The Merry Wives of Windsor at Laurelhurst Park

There are Baseball and soccer games, boat races and floats on the Willamette River.

April’s giant bubbles bring fun to Books with Pictures Comic Con

Picnics in public gardens and parks make the most of summer sunshine, and evening walks extend the fun to after dinner.

It can be exhausting. But we do try to do our part.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Summer Evenings with Shakespeare

Dear Liza,

With Covid either passing or just becoming the norm (whichever you believe), most aspects of life are returning to their pre-Pandemic conditions. One of these, thank goodness, is Original Practice Shakespeare in the Park!

Our own Laurelhurst Park is hosting eight of Shakespeare’s play in July, and we plan to see all of them. We love watching the Portland world go by on bicycle and foot, walking dogs and pushing strollers, as we wait for the play to start (and after it has started, as well).

We love the informal outdoor venue, sitting in the glen as the sun goes down, allowing ourselves to be carried away by the actor’s imaginations.

We love the Original Practice, which means the actors prepare and perform as in Shakespeare’s day, not rehearsing as a company and carrying only small scrolls of their lines. This keeps the acting fresh and, sometimes, hilariously spontaneous.

The first play was one I had never seen performed, Measure for Measure. It was surprisingly timely, having a theme of government-enforced morality, draconian punishments and official hypocrisy.

All this was handled with such wit and humor, cleverness and final retribution and made for a delightful, hopeful evening.

Saturday, we got to see one of our favorite plays, Much Ado about Nothing. It is a comedy about romances gone wrong and righted again with lots of funny dialogue and side stories. The scene where the ‘lying knaves’ are arrested was delightfully slapstick.

As we laughed and cheered during the play, the sun went down behind the huge trees, making everything more magical.

I look forward to our next FOUR Shakespeare plays to be performed in Laurelhurst Park, next weekend.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Twelfth Night at Laurelhurst

Dear Liza,

Last night we went over to Laurelhurst Park for some Shakespeare. The Original Practice Shakespeare Company, which could only do Zoom Performances during the Covid Shutdown, is now back to performing its open air, 18-play repertoire in person!

Feste, Sir Andrew and Auntie Toby have a drunken romp

Original Practice means that this talented troupe of players prepares for and performs the plays as the troupes did in Shakespeare’s day. Since there were no copyright laws and printed scripts could be stolen and performed elsewhere, each player was given a scroll with only their lines. Also, since each troupe would perform many plays on a very tight schedule, rehearsals were non-existent. Each performance was, and is, a new experience.

It is delightful!

Twelfth Night is a raucous comedy, full of gender switching and mistaken identities, pompous aristocrats and clever underlings. Performed by the talented OPS, it had us laughing, cheering, booing and swooning.

Sitting in lawn chairs under the trees, enjoying Shakespeare, snacks and wine and surrounded by people, kids, and dogs also enjoying their snacks and wine, is a uniquely Portland experience. I have missed it more than I can say and am grateful to have it back.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Shakespearean Corona Sonnet

Dear Liza,

I have studied a lot of Shakespeare‘s writings, and I love how his plays tell human stories that haven’t changed much since the 16th century. Forbidden romances, jealous siblings, and greedy politicians are all very contemporary.

Poetry has rhyme schemes and beats, called “feet”. The sonnet form I am playing with has ten feet per line, four lines in each of the three stanzas, and a rhyming couplet at the end. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. It is called the Shakespearean Sonnet.

Someone else’s take on Trump via the Bard

Many talented authors have been inspired to write parodies of President Trump, because of his personality and seemingly endless need for attention. He seems to have the same “tragic flaws” as many of Shakespeare’s characters. I have been inspired to use a Shakespearean Sonnet to write a poem about our current situation. Here it is:
**********

ODE TO A REAL TRUMP

Corona virus has us locked inside
To try and let the scientists learn more
Though some, inspired by His foolish pride
Head out to let their childish voices roar

But most of us, seeing the greater need
And following directions as we should
Allow the pace of life to go half-speed
And take it easy, for the common good

Now locked away within our cozy homes
We spend our days alone, or with our clan

Imprisoned in our stately pleasure domes
We see our leader as a worthless man

This is the lens through which we see so clear,

It’s Trump, more than the virus, we should fear.

***********

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Shakespeare Times Two

Dear Liza,

Saturday afternoon, after shopping and lunch, we headed off to Laurelhurst Park for… A Comedie of Errors! The afternoon was sunny and hot, and since the stage area was in sun, we sat in the sun, hoping the shade would get to us eventually.

This story of two sets of identical twins, mistaken identities, romantic and financial entanglements was very well done, funny, and surprisingly touching. Two women, (Shakespeare wrote them as men but women work very well), identical twins both named Antipholus, are separated during a shipwreck as infants, one with the mother, one with the father. Their boy servants (also identical twins, both named Dromio) are separated with them.

**Antipholus and her Dromio are arrested**

The play begins 30 or so years after the shipwreck, with the twins and their servants as adults. I won’t try to explain it all here, but the play is a raucous, well-written romp guaranteed to entertain lowlifes and high brows alike.

The acting was wonderful! Since Original Practice Shakespeare is a repertoire company, we get to see actors play different parts in different plays. It is fun to see a tragic queen become the Prompter, or a person with a small part in a different play take center stage and steal every scene!

It changes your understanding of acting, casting, and life in general….Even if you are really good at what you do, it doesn’t ALWAYS have to be about YOU.

**Brian Saville Allard as a slimy merchant…..**

Since this weekend is the Grand Finale Weekend of “Will Fest”, the last weekend of the OPS season, Saturday evening was also Shakespeare in Laurelhurst…Hamlet!

**And as the evil King Claudius, with Jennifer Lanier as Polonius.**

Grandpa Nelson hates the play because the main character is so indecisive, so Grandpa stayed home and Auntie Bridgett and I went over. It was also very good.

Hamlet was cast as a young woman, (played by Lauren Saville Allard) which, in my mind, changed what I expected of her. I had always wanted male Hamlet to get it over with and revenge his father, but of female Hamlet, I wanted more introspection…so I guess I like female Hamlet better!

This year we have gotten to see my favorite actor, Jennifer Lanier, in all the plays. She was Prospero in The Tempest last year, and Polonius in Hamlet, and Sir Toby Belch Twelfth Night. She is delightful.

We have two more plays of this season, if we are Shakespeare strong enough!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Richard III

Dear Liza,

After I got back from my bus and train adventure to visit Terry, I rested up a little before we headed off to Laurelhurst Park for another production of Original Practice Shakespeare. This is the troupe of actors that doesn’t do regular rehearsals, and each actor carries a little scroll with their lines on it. They have an on-stage prompter, dressed in a referee uniform, who keeps everything running smoothly and occasionally stops the actions to ask, “So, Richard, how’s it going?”

They do it this way for two reasons. First, it is how Shakespeare’s plays were performed while Shakespeare was still writing them. Second, it allows a small group of actors to do 6 different plays a week, because no one has to absolutely memorize a whole play…they always have their lines with them.

Because the actors haven’t rehearsed this play as a group, the performances can be uneven. Our last experience with them, A Midsummer Nights Dream at the top of Mt. Tabor, wasn’t fabulous. The staging was confusing, the costumes didn’t make sense, and the actors were not very prepared. So we were skeptical.

Still, free Shakespeare is something to see when you have the chance, so we went. And we were not disappointed.

This production of the historical tragedy of Richard III, was beautiful, emotional, and so well acted that every line of every character made sense. Brian Burger, who played the evil, scheming Richard, used his soliloquies to bring the audience in on his plans, and sort of made us co-conspirators. We knew what terrible things he was going to do, and we enjoyed watching him do them.

The costumes were well chosen and helped define the characters. This troupe does a lot of cross casting, with women playing men’s roles, but they did it so well!

One scene was even more poignant with a woman, Ariel Puls, playing Lord Stanley. She wore a costume that was military, but wore her blonde hair in a pony tail and was clearly a woman. When Richard tells her she may go raise more troops, but she must leave her son with him as a hostage against her treason (which she is indeed planning), a mother’s pain is shown with her whole body. Fortunately, Richard is defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field before he has a chance to kill the boy.

We cheered for the good guys and booed for Richard, some of us yelling advice to the actors when they seemed to need it.

It was a rousing, fun evening, and we walked home happy and exhausted.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Shakespeare and Nachos

Dear Liza,

Last night Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I got all bundled up and took the #20 further than we ever have, all the way to Northeast 17th and Burnside. Then we walked north to Glisan, where we found the Mission Theater, an Evangenical Mission Church that has been renovated and turned into a restaurant and movie and live theater by McMenamin’s. This is the same company that has saved the Kennedy School, Edgefield Poor Farm, and many other beautiful old buildings here in Portland by turning them into venues that people want to visit.

foyer mcminamens mission .jpg — **Foyer of Mission Theater**

As a restaurant, the selection is limited but tasty: Nachos, hummus plates, and pizza. The wine, ale, and beer selections are good. The theater itself is well done, with curving balconies and old posters and programs on the wall, but the bathrooms are very dark. The stage isn’t big or fancy, since it is usually used for movies.

balcony mcminamen's mission .jpg — **Balcony**

The performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was by OPS, The Original Practice Shakespeare Company. We saw them do Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It in Laurelhurst Park this past summer. Each actor only learns their own part, and carries a scroll with them. Since every performance is about half improvisation, the performances are unpredictable.

Tempest royalty .jpg — **Shipwrecked Lords and Ladies**

Last night was a mixed bag. The woman playing Prospero the Wizard was good and very gentle, which is unusual for that role. The woman playing Caliban was a very sympathetic monster. Some of the shipwrecked lords were quite screechy, but the story was well-told and pretty easy to understand.

Caliban .jpg — **Caliban the monster leading the Lords into trouble**

One thing I really like about OPS is the audience participation. When Prospero is describing how she was exiled to the island, the audience groaned in sympathy, and she looked out at us and said, “I know, lousy, right?” We got to boo and cheer and some folks even helped hold Miranda’s drawings up so the audience could see them. It is fun to be part of the show.

When Prosero had broken her staff and given up magic to return to Milan, we gathered our things and walked back down to the bus stop.What a lovely evening.

Love,

Grandma Judy

As We Like It

Dear Liza,

On Saturday we did laundry and dishes and such chores around the house, had lunch, and then headed over to Laurelhurst Park for another Shakespeare play, called As You Like It.

This is one of my favorite plays, and one that my momma liked very much, too. It is about people who, because of a big fight in their family, leave their fancy castle and go live in the forest. There, they meet other people and find out that they can be happy wherever they are, as long as they are with the people they love. There is wrestling, and cross-dressing, singing, people falling in love, and lots of puns and jokes.

The play was great, but what made the afternoon perfect was the lovely park. On the little rise in a clearing of linden trees, dappled shade keeping us cool, every breeze shook tiny leaves down, we sat on our comfy lawn chairs and loved every minute. Not far away across the grass a wedding party was setting up (more about this later).

This play had a Prompter, who did the usual job of reminding actors of their next line, but also wore a referee’s striped shirt and whenever she felt the need, would blow her whistle.

When the wedding party got loud because of a pinata, she blew her whistle. “We’ve got quite a pinata party happening here behind me, can you repeat that line please?”

When Orlando was confused about who he was falling in love with, she blew it again. “Orlando, how do you feel about this? What’s going on here?”

This made everything fun and friendly, and also cleared up some points of the play that I have never understood….like why the old Duke was in the forest to begin with, or that there are, indeed, two characters named Jacques.

We watched the play to the end and even got to talk to the young actor who played one of the Jacques, then we headed home because Grandpa Nelson and I were having dinner with Gary, who was best man when Grandpa Nelson and I got married, and his wife Carol. We drove to get there because the restaurant, Seasons and Regions, is over on the southwest side of town, on SW Capitol Highway. They serve mostly seafood and it is absolutely delicious.

The four of us talked for 3 hours, catching up on our jobs, kids, parents, and the trials and joys of life. And of course, I forgot to take pictures! Then we drove home, talked about our day until we were sleepy, and conked out.

Love, Grandma Judy

Cousins and Shakespeare

Dear Liza,

Yesterday was hot again, but we had fun anyway. Grandpa Nelson’s cousin Sara and her husband Jim were in town visiting their new grandson, and they came by to visit. It was too hot to be comfortable at our house, so we drove across town to Genie’s, a cool cafe across Division Street from Auntie Katie’s store, Books with Pictures. The food was very good and the service was chatty and quick.

After lunch, I went across the other street to Gordito’s Mexican restaurant to get Auntie Katie a burrito for her lunch, since she was working in the store and needed to eat standing up. After lunch we went back to our house and talked for hours about family history and all the cousins…there are a lot of cousins in Grandpa Nelson’s family!

Grandma Judy, Grandpa Nelson, cousin Jim and cousin Sara

Sara and Jim left to beat the rush hour traffic to Lake Oswego and Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I went out to see some art galleries for First Friday. They are all within three blocks of us, so it was a short, but very warm, walk. Side Street Gallery is closing but will re-open as a co-op, a gallery run by the artists who display their work there.

Wolff Gallery was mostly collages from photographs. True Measure Gallery had really modern, interesting paintings by Jesse Reno, Jesse Narens and Melissa Monroe.

When we were tired of the heat we went back home and watched the Giants lose on TV. And I took a nap. About 8:30 I woke up and we decided it was cool enough to go for a short walk through Laurelhurst Park. We didn’t hear the hawks, but quite a ways into the park, we saw lights and heard shouting, and there was a Shakespeare troupe, (different from the one we saw in Lone Fir Cemetery) called “Original Practice Shakespeare”, performing a history play called Richard III.

It is a very good play about a very bad king.

“Original Practice” means they do the plays as they were done in Shakespeare’s time (he worked from 1590 to 1613). What is different from modern plays is that each actor is only given their own lines, not the whole script to the play, and they do almost no rehearsals with the whole troupe. This means that the actors make some mistakes, and are sometimes surprised by what is happening, but it is so much fun to watch!

The audience was sitting on fold up chairs and having snacks and water. They were even heckling, which means booing or cheering, during the show. In “Original Practice”, this is totally polite, because the audiences in Shakespeare’s time DID heckle! I guess you could tell if you were playing a bad guy really well, because the audience would yell at you!

Once the play was over, we walked back home. Far off across the park we heard an owl hooting, which made us happy. We had heard that the owls weren’t in Laurelhurst Park anymore, but if we heard them, they still are. They were awake and hunting, but it was time for us to sleep.

1200501Barn Owl_IMG_8712_2000pxl_0.jpg

Love, Grandma Judy