Brush Up Your Shakespeare

First, the good news that made my Monday a tolerable, nay, a great day! (normally, monday’s are no good) My boss called me into his office, which doesn’t happen very often, so naturally I assumed I was in trouble, but heaven only would know why if that were the case. But it was really wonderful news! I’ve been up for a promotion to be an editor, and Clint just got the go-ahead to switch me up! I’ve been doing editor work now for close to a couple of months, so it’s all a lot of the same stuff I’ve already been doing, but with a change of title . . . and more “importantly”, a raise! (we all like to hear that)

Now for the rest of the news that made my weekend fun. I, along with a couple of friends, went down to Cedar City for the Utah Shakespeare Festival! I’ve never been to the Utah festival, and I’ve only gone to the Oregon one in Ashland once, so this was a pretty cool and fun excursion for me, especially since it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision for me to go. But go I did, and it was totally fun!

Megan and I spent the entire drive down to Cedar gabbing and catching up on a bunch of stuff, considering we haven’t had a good talk in a few months, so the drive went by fairly quickly for me. The six of us met up, set up camp (we slept in tents at the KOA), then immediately headed to SUU to see Cyrano de Bergerac. Talk about cutting it close. The play began almost the instant we sat down. Good timing. And, wow! Out of the three plays we saw, Cyrano was my favorite. It was hilarious, touching, sad, exciting, etc., etc., etc.! The actor who portrayed Cyrano just owned the part, and it was awesome! I spent a good portion of the play crying, and fortunately I wasn’t the only one who did.

After Cyrano, our group headed over to the Wal-Mart so Megan, Jenny, and Mashell could pick up the latest “Twilight” book, since it came out that night. It was funny to see how excited they got about it, and we were thinking of reading it out loud with each other once we got back to our tents (megan was especially excited to do voices) because we were all just being silly. That didn’t exactly work out, considering we didn’t get back to the site until close to one, and we would have all been giggling and laughing and making too much noise for the other people around us.

On Saturday, we spent quite some time being silly in the souvenir shops and taking pictures with Mr. Shakespeare, but we went to Fiddler on the Roof in the afternoon, which was very excellent. Once again, I cried. (big shock) The musical numbers were just fun (when they were supposed to be, that is) and I really enjoyed the production. We watched the green show, which was sufficiently entertaining, before going to Othello. No crying in that one. It’s not really the kind of play to evoke a lot of sympathy from me because I feel like Othello doesn’t behave like a person you should feel sorry for, not after he becomes crazy-obsessive-scary man. But I still maintain that Iago is one of the smartest villains ever written.

After Othello came the drive back to Provo in the middle of the night. Megan and I did a good job of keeping each other awake and alert by playing music and singing along at the top of our lungs. First came Queen (which we sang along to a bit, but not really loud), and then came Wicked, which we started belting and didn’t stop, even when our voices became incredibly hoarse. (and what was joe doing the whole time he was in the back seat? Not sleeping, that’s for sure.) That was probably the most fun part of the night. After Wicked came Abba, which we again sang along to, not quite as loud as to Wicked, but still fairly loud. I was really glad I went in Megan’s car for the trip, because Jenny’s car was probably not nearly so . . . musical. Anyway, got home at about 3 am. A whirlwind trip, but a totally fun one, and I was really glad I went. Friends, food, fun, and awesome plays! Who could ask for anything more?

Quote of the day: “The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good—in spite of all the people who say he is very good.” –Robert Graves

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow!

-Me