lauradi7dw

I like going to live theater. At least I think I do, but as an easily distracted person in general I find live theater full of distractions, and rarely manage to get fully absorbed. An example is "Take Me Out" which Florence and I saw on Broadway in 2003 (?). There is a scene where a baseball team is showering after a game. Instead of being able to focus on the dialogue (or on the fact that I had taken a 15 year old to a play that had naked men onstage), I slid very far down the "where does the water go if there are no drains on the stage" tangent. I still wonder.

nineweaving and

dreda both posted about their admiration for the Actors Shakespeare Project's production of "The Duchess of Malfi," so I went. Blood and guts and veins between the teeth.
Distraction #1 I just could not stop thinking about John Webster, the bloodthirsty teenager in "Shakespeare in Love," who was clearly meant to be that same JW.
Distraction #2 The occasional background music & sound effects, which seemed so loud and inappropriate to me that I spent a while thinking "how loud and inappropriate" whenever they appeared.
Distraction #3 The cardinal's high heels.
Distraction #4 Brief thoughts of Captain Underpants.
Distraction #5 The stage was a long narrow rectangle in the middle of the room, with doors at each end. This is theater in the round, except for the rectangleness of it, so one could clearly see the other half of the audience on the opposite side of the stage. At times there would be a dialogue between characters at either end of the stage, and the heads of the people across from me would be going back and forth in unison like the stereotype of people watching a tennis match. I was much amused, even though it sometimes happened at a very serious moment.