The past summers we have watched Kentucky Shakespeare Festival "Free Will" free Shakespeare plays in Old Louisville's own Central Park, in an amphitheater near where I also helped out with a Brown School PTSA walkathon. Hours before I was arrive and two days before Vincent was to return, Stephanie went for a pre-play picnic with our friend Sarah and a friend of hers. The picnic went well, but rain intervened and the play got rained out (but not before Stephanie got to talk with a creative writing prof at Western KY - where Vincent wants to go, but where we did not get to talk with people in the department he was most interested in - although unfortunately the busload of people had to go back to Bowling Green, KY having seen no play).
Friday night Sarah called back and asked us if (the now two of us) would like to see just the play (since the weather was OK). Stephanie and I missed the start but made it for most of a Japanese-themed version of "Julius Caesar." Stephanie has taught this play, and she and Vincent had watched an old black and white version of it as she prepared to teach. My high school Latin club each year on the Ides of March (March 15) had - in togas - killed Caesar in the cafeteria, then had someone playing Marc Antony read the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech from the top of the stairs (usually, Archie territory). Plus junior year our certamen team - including me - stumbled on the famous Latin line, "Et tu, Brute." (In Latin 2, we also read Caesar’s commentaries of the battles armies under his command fought in what is now France. And, of course, to study for certamen I learned that other famous Caesar quote: “Alea jacta est” – The die is cast – which is what Caesar said when he and his armies unlawfully crossed the Rubicon River, heading back to Rome and the greeting that awaited him in “Julius Caesar.) In addition, the first time I ever saw a Shakespearean play was a brilliant Japanese black-and-white version of “Macbeth,” on Saturday afternoon on TV in Tokyo – around the same time my sixth grade class started reading “Macbeth.” I was quickly sold.
Kentucky Shakespeare Festival productions typically only involve about eight or nine actors, and so some people play more than one role. But the actors are professionals, coming from theater schools and faraway cities. The sets are not lavish, like a Broadway production, but the beautiful outdoor setting – in the amphitheater half a block from St. James Court, site of the St. James Court Art Show, is beautiful. The Japanese outfits and swords and – as the night set in and the ghost appeared – a little Japanese-ish ghoulish, not unlike that movie in Tokyo. The combination of a good, relatively quick Shakespeare play with the Japanese motif may draw us to come back with Vincent later in the summer. Good play. Great production – even worth going a second time for Stephanie and Sarah.
Friday night Sarah called back and asked us if (the now two of us) would like to see just the play (since the weather was OK). Stephanie and I missed the start but made it for most of a Japanese-themed version of "Julius Caesar." Stephanie has taught this play, and she and Vincent had watched an old black and white version of it as she prepared to teach. My high school Latin club each year on the Ides of March (March 15) had - in togas - killed Caesar in the cafeteria, then had someone playing Marc Antony read the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech from the top of the stairs (usually, Archie territory). Plus junior year our certamen team - including me - stumbled on the famous Latin line, "Et tu, Brute." (In Latin 2, we also read Caesar’s commentaries of the battles armies under his command fought in what is now France. And, of course, to study for certamen I learned that other famous Caesar quote: “Alea jacta est” – The die is cast – which is what Caesar said when he and his armies unlawfully crossed the Rubicon River, heading back to Rome and the greeting that awaited him in “Julius Caesar.) In addition, the first time I ever saw a Shakespearean play was a brilliant Japanese black-and-white version of “Macbeth,” on Saturday afternoon on TV in Tokyo – around the same time my sixth grade class started reading “Macbeth.” I was quickly sold.
Kentucky Shakespeare Festival productions typically only involve about eight or nine actors, and so some people play more than one role. But the actors are professionals, coming from theater schools and faraway cities. The sets are not lavish, like a Broadway production, but the beautiful outdoor setting – in the amphitheater half a block from St. James Court, site of the St. James Court Art Show, is beautiful. The Japanese outfits and swords and – as the night set in and the ghost appeared – a little Japanese-ish ghoulish, not unlike that movie in Tokyo. The combination of a good, relatively quick Shakespeare play with the Japanese motif may draw us to come back with Vincent later in the summer. Good play. Great production – even worth going a second time for Stephanie and Sarah.
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