something to cheer about!

From yesterday's Ann Arbor News:

Royal Shakespeare Co. to return for 3rd residency

 

Patrick Stewart will play the lead in 2 productions at U-M Wednesday, December 7, 2005 BY JENN MCKEE News Arts Writer  

Santa Claus isn't the only one coming to town.

The University Musical Society announced today that the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company will return to the University of Michigan for a much-anticipated third residency in the fall of 2006.

An ensemble cast will stage three Shakespeare plays - "Julius Caesar,'' "Antony and Cleopatra'' and "The Tempest'' - with seven performances each at the Power Center in October and November. The shows will be U.S. exclusives, and renowned stage actor and "Star Trek: Next Generation'' star Patrick Stewart will play the lead role in the latter two productions (Antony and Prospero).

This should be welcome news for those who were disappointed - after the RSC's U-M residencies in 2001 and 2003 - that the third planned visit didn't happen this year.

"Michael Boyd, the person with whom we have the most deep, long-standing relationship with the RSC, is now in charge (as artistic director),'' UMS President Ken Fischer said. "We felt it was really important that we be able to deal with Michael directly - the person that understood us better than any other.''

UMS - an independent, nonprofit performing-arts presenter housed at U-M - aspires to re-create the magic of the first RSC residency, which showcased history plays directed by Boyd.

Ralph Williams, a professor in the U-M Department of English Literature and Language who has become instrumental in the connection between the company and U-M, said this morning the RSC is "arguably the best classical theater company performing in English'' today.

"What they bring to Ann Arbor is precisely that excellence, that inventiveness in taking classical works and making them fresh and relevant to contemporary times,'' Williams said. "They bring to our students an imagination and an excellence to which they themselves might aspire. The plays they are bringing this time are ones which focus on the deepest problems of social order and personal life.''

Beginning in April, Boyd and the RSC will kick off a year-long Complete Works Festival, which will feature the entire Shakespeare canon - 37 plays, plus sonnets and long poems - at Stratford-on-Avon in England. During this program, the RSC will produce 15 plays itself and bring in theater companies from around the world to perform others.

"Ann Arbor is getting the only work from the Complete Works Festival crossing the Atlantic,'' Boyd said in a prepared statement. "That's a measure of the uniqueness and exclusiveness of this relationship.''

According to Fischer, one of the reasons for the successful partnership between U-M and RSC involves the give and take between the two entities. Williams, for example, has been invited to England five times to work with the RSC.

RSC residencies offer many unique experiences for U-M students and faculty, and the larger Ann Arbor community, including special learning opportunities and interaction with company members. But UMS has also worked to make the partnership mutually beneficial.

"We took a lead in introducing them to a number of other great universities in the United States with distinctive presenting programs - where, in the future, they can consider taking the company on tour,'' said Fischer. "And that meets a real need for them, because they've got to close two of their theaters between '07 and '09.''

Indeed, the company has faced many challenges in the last few years. In 2002, former RSC director Adrian Noble stepped down amid controversy about wilting attendance, staggering debt and no longer staging any RSC shows in London. While Boyd may not have all the problems solved yet, Fischer believes that Boyd is providing the company with a much-needed, imaginative vision for the future.

Said Fischer: "There's so much talk about the depressed economy, the troubled autos (industry), challenges in state funding - and I think it's really fabulous that next fall, when things may be even worse in the state - they're predicted to be - we have, in Michigan, the opportunity to lift up the arts in this way and show the rest of the country we are alive. We've got some real distinction here. It's an exciting time to come to Michigan if you love the arts and you love theater.''

Jenn McKee can be reached at (734) 994-6841 or jmckee@annarbornews.com. News staff reporter Chong Pyen contributed to this report.

 

The thought of Patrick Stewart - with that voice of his - giving Prospero's lines about breaking his staff and drowning his book of magic - gives me chills up and down my spine.

The other time the Company came to Ann Arbor, I was not able to get tickets. Perhaps this time I will be luckier!

Steven is home from school today. He slept about twenty hours and feels a lot better today, but still has a low grade fever. I am still not feeling all that great, and am getting nothing done other than filling up the bird feeders and taking care of the pets and Steven. Maybe I will feel better after work and can get some things done at home after I get home tonight. Of course, since I will be driving home in half a foot of fresh snow, that might get my adrenaline going.

The sun actually peeked out this morning, but it is starting to cloud up now in preparation for this afternoon and tonight's snowstorm.

Midweek Blues

Still not feeling well, and having a very unproductive day. I did get some of the Christmas decorations up, and sorted the mail so I can pay the bills when I get home from work tonight. I got a large trash bag filled with catalogs and junk mail. Why do trees have to die for such things? When I get home tonight I will be up until the wee hours paying the bills for tomorrow's mail. Tomorrow if all goes well, I will get started on those cards and gift certificates (though I might have to run to the post office for more stamps). Of course, the snowstorm we'll be getting tomorrow might have upset any post office plans...

And then I can still sleep in late and have my tree decorating party on Friday.

Today I had to go get Steven from school. He is running a fever , has a horrible headache , and a sore throat. Poor little guy. I always wish I could sick or hurt in place of my children.

I am still looking at the looming holidays with a visceral sense of dread, given the last two years.

Please, please let no one I love get sick and die this year at Christmas. Please, please let no one I love get seriously hurt, or be in pain or be suffering at Christmas. Please, please let no one I love tell me I am unimportant and worthless this year at Christmas...

Trying to Hang in There

Still not feeling well today. This is getting old.

But I did have a productive day anyway. Besides going to work, I did finish my Christmas shopping. So I am doing very well.

Rather than order gifts for people Dan suggested I just get gift certificates, so that's what I did. So one afternoon of addressing cards and getting them in the mail should take care of things.

So that leaves:

*decorating the tree - I plan on doing this on Friday, and taking my time doing it while drinking hot chocolate and playing Christmas carols and relaxing and enjoying myself

* addressing the cards and getting them (and their gift certificates) into the mail - I can get started on this on my work breaks tomorrow night, hopefully can be done early next week

*wrapping the gifts for the kids - I can do this anytime before Christmas day, and will probably do a little bit at a time

Maybe having an enjoyable and virtually stress free holiday is possible this year after all.

Tomorrow I am planning on doing as little as possible other than going to work. I need to start feeling better. Perhaps I can finally find time to finish reading the French history book I have been reading for months!

I was listening to Mahler's First Symphony today and had to go to another part of the house part way through it. Since I haven't been feeling well, I have also not been mentally sharp lately. I was in the front room and suddenly heard what I thought was distant thunder. I really wondered at that, since it is winter, and a very cold day, not a day to expect a thunderstorm. I laughed my head off when I realized it was the  brass section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, blazing away in a show of musical pyrotechnics on my bedroom stereo!

Monday, Monday

I'm still not feeling well, but I am trying to have a productive day. Boxed up two Christmas gifts for people out of state and got them to the post office and mailed out. Read another chapter of the French history book. Made it into work, despite another day of feeling icky. I did figure out this afternoon that I can use an overnight pad on both the inside and the outside of my underwear (with the sticky wings feature) and that seems to help keep my clothes from being stained by the heavy blood that goes along with this time of month. I can get more than a couple of hours out of a pad that way. I feel like a baby with a very full diaper, but hey! So far it seems to be working!

I could not believe it this morning when Bill's box of gifts I had ordered from a store in France arrived on my front porch. I only ordered that stuff last week! It got here faster than it would have from pretty much any American store!

I need to get serious about getting my holiday stuff done, so I can relax and enjoy the holidays. Getting those two boxes out in the mail today was a good start to the week.So, as feeling icky allows, this week I want to:

1. finish Christmas shopping (one trip to a hardware store and a trip to a good bookstore should take care of that)

2. order gifts for out of town family members on the Internet (might do that tonight when I get home) -- also must order booties for the poor elderly dog!

3. decorate the tree -- Bill brought it upstairs and set it up for me, I just need to put on the decorations

So I need to find three chunks of time this week. Decorating the tree I can do on Friday when I am off of work. I can do the gift ordering one night when I get home from work...which leaves the shopping trip. Perhaps I can integrate it with grocery shopping, which would be very efficient.

I think I will skip cards and outside decorations this year. We already have a lot of snow on the ground, so it would be a pain to get the lights on the bushes unless the snow melts. I will do cards if I can find extra time, but I will not punish myself if I do not find that time.

The last two years were nightmarish at the holidays. This year I wish to get some joy back into them!    

another busy weekend

Well, it was another busy weekend. Friday I wasn't feeling so hot, but managed to go grocery shopping. Made dinner when everyone got home. Watched a great little movie, a nature documentary, called March of the Penguins with Steven. We both loved it, and the extras on the dvd, showing what they went through to film it and scientists attaching a camera to the back of a wild penguin to see what it did when it dives under the ice were really cool as well.

Saturday Dan headed to Dundee with Steven. I wasn't feeling very well, but headed down to Blissfield in the early afternoon to join Bill. I got there and discovered no one had brought any drinks for the kids. So I headed right out, found the town's grocery store, and bought a bunch of bottled water and athletic drinks. I also bought some plastic dish pans and bags of ice to put the drinks in and try to get them cold. The poor kids were very thirsty and all immediately started drinking water.

Enjoyed Blissfield, It's a well run tournament in a pretty little town and Bill always wrestles well there. He has now earned a medal there in all four years of high school.

It snowed Saturday night. I do not know if they are related, but my work called at 7AM this morning and wanted me to come in and work a double because half of day shift had called in. The ones who called in sick are people who do not call in sick very often, so they probably really are sick, as opposed to just "snow wimps".  I'm still not feeling well today, so only went in and worked my own shift. It was very quiet, or I do not know if I could have made it through the entire shift.

One of my friends told me that he thinks someone was killed on his road last night or this morning. His road was very icy from the snow. He said someone wiped out and hit a big tree head on with their car. The hood was smashed back into the car and the air bags had deployed. When he stopped to make sure no one was trapped in the car in the cold (something you have to do if you live in the country - if someone is trapped in a wreck they could freeze to death rather rapidly) he said no one was in the car, but there was blood everywhere.

One good thing about being woken up from a deep sleep (if you can even say that about such a rotten thing) was that I had some time to read some more of my history book about France. I have been reading that book for months now. But I managed to make it all the way from Napoleon III to World war I this morning. I did well.

Mahler's Fifth Symphony

For those who are curious, here is some background on this particular symphony (gets more into the hardcore analysis stuff): http://inkpot.com/classical/mahsym5.html

And this is the version I listened to:
Quote: Conductor: Leonard Bernstein
Ensemble: Wiener Philharmoniker
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: #23608
Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
Number of Discs: 1
ASIN: B000001G9F


Now for my own impression of this rather wonderful piece of music:

I first heard this piece of music in February of 2005 as played by the New York Philharmonic on a concert tour. While I have long been a fan of classical music, particularly that of Beethoven, I am a latecomer to Mahler.

This piece of music blew me away.

At the time I first heard it, I was in heavy grief. My father had died just a little over a year before, and the anniversary of his death in mid-January stirred up my feelings of mourning again. I had also just (as I thought at the time) lost a friend who meant the world to me over a misunderstanding of great magnitude. I was in a pretty rough place emotionally.

From the opening muted trumpet solo of pure sorrow through the opening movements of the symphony, Mahler depicts the emotions of grief and loss perfectly in the language of music.

Listen for the horns in the opening movements. The horns equal loss. They cry and rage and quietly sob. The orchestra sometimes sobs and rages along with them, and sometimes the horns briefly play one melody while the orchestra plays another -- just as a person deeply in grief can be so confused. At times there is quiet contemplation, just as you sometimes sit down and quietly remember the person you loved so much. At one point the orchestra even breaks into what I call "demented carnival music". And yes -- when deep in grief sometimes you try to run away from it and lose yourself in either work or in forced play -- in frantic activity.

Yet in the third movement there are hints that happiness can still happen -- that there is still love and beauty in the world. But in the end, the grief still prevails.

The fourth movement is the famous adagio (slow movement) with the soothing and lovely harp music. Mahler wrote this as a love song, a courting gift, for the woman composer who captured his heart and whom he later married.

That love transforms the symphony.

I have always thought that the adagio represents not only love but also


acceptance.

You have accepted that the person you love so much is gone. And with that acceptance you realize that, even though you will always love that person and will never again receive their love in this lifetime -- you are still alive. You can still love. That there is still so much beauty in the world. Perhaps you can no longer share it with your lost one, but the value of life -- love -- beauty -- still exists.

The final movement, the fifth, begins with horns once again. But these horns are not sobbing with grief. This is the horn music Donaldson uses in Mordant's Need. These are the horns that Teresa Morgan hears throughout her story -- the horns that call her to life, to adventure, to duty to others -- to love.

And a work of profound, passionate grief has been transformed through love and acceptance into a work filled with life and with joy.

Fridays are sweet :-)

We have made it through another week. YAY! Well, I have. The kids have one more school day, and both have wrestling on Saturday. But they will be fine, too!

We had snow tonight. It was one of those dangerous little snows - not enough to make any real accumulation, just enough to form a nasty little icy glaze on the road. Yuck. But I made it home from work just fine, though I had to drive very slowly.

Bill's first official high school meet was tonight. They had a quad meet in Tecumseh against the usually pretty good Brooklyn Columbia Central and the two perennial power houses Tecumseh and Dundee. Dundee reportedly played with the other teams (including Tecumseh) like cats with mice. Bill had one match, against a kid from Tecumseh, and won with a pin.

On Saturday Steven will wrestle in a Border wars tournament in Dundee (his school season won't start until January) and Bill will either be in Blissfield or Birch Run (they are splitting the high school team in half and sending one half to each tournament). I am so hoping for Blissfield, as it is in the same direction as Dundee and a lot closer to home. And Birch Run might have terrible traffic with that huge outlet mall up there!

Bill is nearly done (finally!!) with his admission essays to the University of Michigan. He is on something like the fifth draft. I was his final proof reader, making suggestions for better word usage and sentence structure. But 99% of the work is his, and he will stand or fall on his own.

When those are done he can get going on his essay and portfolio for the College of Architecture at Ball State University.

Work remains crazy. We had to get an expensive drug drop shipped to us by Northwest Airlines last night. One patient needs it, and we had already borrowed and cleaned out the supply of that drug from all of the other Ann Arbor hospitals. A big truck shipment will be coming in tomorrow and we should have enough to get through the weekend and repay the other hospitals for what we had borrowed.

I have been trying to listen to Mahler's Fifth Symphony every morning this week. I love that particular piece of music, with its journey through grief and anger to acceptance and then a return to life and possible happiness. But every time I get to the adagio, with its lovely soft harp music, I fall asleep. We're talking almost instantly. I think to myself "Oh, here's the movement with the beautiful and relaxing harp music."and literally the next thing I know, I am waking up completely befuddled two hours later. Tomorrow I will try again, this time after drinking some serious caffeine.

I guess it just shows how stressed out I have been lately!