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Tag Archives: musicals

What to do this week-end: go to events, watch television

So, I’ve got a lot to do this week-end, on top of the regular stuff (laundry, grocery shopping, all the stuff I don’t have time to do during the week.)

Tonight is the play session of A Match Made in Austen at l’As des Jeux (the Game Buff). eta Make that was, because I’m finishing up this post having returned from the event. It was amazing. There were so many players that neither Caro nor I needed to play ourselves, we could simply explain and moderate and let the players make their own fun. They got over the timidity that comes from playing with a group of strangers pretty well, and everyone had a great time. Some players had suggestions as to how to improve the game, which is awesome because it means they are invested in it (we might even implant some of those ideas.) They also all promised to back us on the Kickstarter. (Perhaps you could do the same, if you have not already done so.)

Saturday is the inaugural Prose in the Park. As it is a new event, I have no idea what to expect, but the concept sounded really cool, and Renaissance committed to rent a table for the day, which I’ll be manning with my friend and co-Renaissance-author Caroline Fréchette. I only hope that it doesn’t rain, because the event is outside. Yes, we have a tent, but rain would decrease the traffic exponentially, and sitting at a table in the rain waiting for people who are unlikely to come because of said rain is a very unpleasant experience, even if one doe shave a tent. The weather app on my tablet does promise sunshine and a high of 20 degrees Celsius tomorrow, so let’s hope for that.

Saturday evening is the Belmont stakes, the last race of the Triple Crown. The Test of the Champions. I don’t always watch the Belmont. I only really get invested when there’s a chance that a horse will win the triple crown, meaning that the same horse wins both the Derby and the Preakness. This is what happened this year (good job American Pharaoh) and I think the horse really has a good shot at Belmont, so I am genuinely excited about this. And, doesn’t it just figures, I probably won’t even be able to watch it live. According to the Belmont website, the call to post is going to be at 6:49, so I might make it, depending on how long it takes to pack everything up and on the kind of traffic we hit on the way back to town. I made arrangements to record the race, just in case.

Sunday, on top of being the “get caught up before the week starts over again” day, is the Tony Awards. This one televised event actually puts me in a pickle. I am super invested in the Tonys this year. Of the plays I went to see in New York this Easter, two were new plays and potentially eligible to Tony Nominations. And they both got nominations: three for The Audience (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for Helen Mirren, Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for Richard McCabe, Best Costume Design of a Play for Bob Crowley) and twelve for Fun Home (Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical for Lisa Kron, Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre for Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Michael Cerveris, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Beth Malone, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for Judy Khun, Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs, Best Scenic Design of a Musical for David Zinn, Best Lighting Design of a Musical for Ben Stanton, Best Direction of a Musical for Sam Gold, Best Orchestrations for John Clancy). And on top of that, it’s hosted by Kristen Chenoweth and Alan Cumming, who are two of my favorite performers.

The pickle, here, is that it’s a Sunday night. I have work on Monday, and this will likely last until eleven or so, much later then I usually go to sleep. I don’t want the experienced spoiled for me, especially not this year, but I know that if I don’t watch it live, it will inevitably be spoiled, because something like half the blogs I follow on Tumblr are musical blogs, and they are going to talk about the winners and GIF all the funny/touching moments. So I have no idea what I’m going to do. I may very well end up sleeping much too late and be a zombie on Monday.

(Maybe if I take a nap Sunday afternoon, and another nap Monday afternoon after work…)

Anyway, that’s my week-end. It’s a busy one, but there are worse kinds of week-ends to have.

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Posted by on June 5, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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Things that happened during the hiatus: I travelled, a lot

Actually, it occurs to me that I’ve traveled a lot for the last few years as well, and that I just didn’t talk about it.

I’m not a big traveler; really, I’m not. When I think about a “big traveler” I think about my grandmother who had an RV with her boyfriend and went to Florida to see the space shuttle launches, and who traveled all across Europe and most of Asia, and even bits of Africa. I think about my siblings who are always taking camping and biking trips, who both went on organised relief trips and immersion programs with their high schools and colleges, who between them have been to England and Cuba and Peru and Senegal and Burundi.

My family goes to places for the fun of it, for the adventure. I used to go to places for two reasons: family obligations and conventions. Until 2012, I’d been to Montreal twice (that’s not true, I’d been to Montreal a lot more then that, but for the sake of this discussion, I’m defining travel as “I spent at least one night there”), to Quebec City twice, to Toronto once, to Orlando (Disney World) once, and to Melbourne, Australia. That is 7 trips in 27 years of being alive, and with all of them, except for the Australia trip and one of the Montreal trip, I was with my family for part or for all the of the trip. I don’t like to explore, to do the tourist stuff for the sake of doing the tourist stuff. But I also don’t like traveling to do nothing. The idea of spending hundreds of dollars to lie on a beach seems ridiculous to me: if I’m going to do nothing, I’m going to do it at home, for free. So I didn’t travel much.

But then, I something changed. I discovered musical theater again, and that gave me one more reason to travel. Since then, I have been to Toronto three times, to New York three times, to Chicago, to Pittsburgh, and to London. That’s nine trips in three and a half years, six within the last eighteen months, most of them by myself. My mother came with me to London and to Chicago, and those were the two trips I took for conventions (though I did manage to convince her to see a West End show with me). Many of other trips were quick, overnight affairs, and they all followed the same pattern: get to city, get to hotel, check in, eat dinner, go see show, go back to hotel, sleep, get up, check out, come back. If I have some more time, I might take some extra time to walk around town, maybe go to a park or a museum. Over those nine trips, I have seen 12 shows.

I still say that I’m not a big traveler. Travelers, especially big travelers, travel for the fun of it, and I do not. I travel for some very specific reasons, and the shorter and more efficient the trip, the better. Still, I have to admit that I did travel a lot during the hiatus.

 
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Posted by on May 3, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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