Shakespeare!!!!!

Cedar City, Utah

Some months ago when we were laying out our plans for the summer we determined that after we dropped off Noah and Amik at school, and before we picked up Erin in Colorado Springs at the end of her mission, we  would spend a whole month just chilling in one place. There was a time when we had thought we would continue the road tripping life and head to the east coast, but when it came down to realistic plans we just knew that one month wasn't enough time to see and do half of what we wanted to in, and on our way to, the east. Also, our pre-BYU I plans had been rearranged to get us back to Boise in early August for a quick family reunion weekend and so we had missed seeing some of the National Parks we had hoped to see. And that is how we ended up in a house in Cedar City Utah for the month of September. Where we could rest a little from so much moving about, where Ronan could more seriously study for the SAT (hopefully), and where we could get to and from a few of Utah's national parks. I was just disappointed that we were too late for the Utah Shakespeare Festival that Cedar City hosts every summer. Except guess what? We weren't. They have plays going into October, and this year, one Shakespeare play would still be playing while we were here; A Midsummer Night's Dream. This became one of our exceptions to cheap and free activities and we bought tickets to a matinee performance. Wednesday was our scheduled play. I had given the kids a brief synopsis of the story of the play, but when I asked them if they wanted to read it or watch a version Liam was adamant that his 'first experience' with it be seeing the play itself.

The Shakespeare Festival is held on the SUU campus here. Its a relatively small university I think, but it appears to have a pretty amazing arts complex, including a Globe Theatre! Sadly our play was not in the Globe, but the little theatre it was in next door was very nice. As we approached the doors we were greeted by an older lady who asked if we already had our tickets. We explained that they were on our phones and she questioned if they could be scanned from phones. Yes they could (we had actually called way back when we first bought them to be sure that this was a possibility since we travel without a printer), she looked doubtful and said "we are all old here you know." Despite her doubts she was very intrigued by this technology and personally escorted us in the doors and around to the other side to explain to a handful of other white haired ladies that "these people have their tickets on their phones and they say you can scan them from there!" This generated quite a bit of excitement and momentary panic from the woman with the scanning device when she couldn't get it to turn on because she "really wanted to be the one to do this!" But, no worries, she got it to turn on and then it did indeed successfully scan the tickets right off Kris's phone and there was much rejoicing among her comrades. Haha.

We were seated next to what appeared to be at least three middle school classes on a field trip. My reaction when we run into school groups while out on an adventure is complex; on the one hand I am annoyed that they are invading my happy homeschooling world, but on the other I am impressed by the school that is doing something so cool as to hike through a national park or attend a Shakespeare play in the middle of a school day. They were loud. So, so loud. And Liam was seated right next to them, he has come a long way from the days when we had to put noise blocking headphones on him to keep him from crying when a family game of charades got to be too much, because he was able to just block them out and read his book until the lights went down. And, to their credit, they ceased to be noisy once the play started.

The play was fantastic. The words were pure Shakespeare, the costumes and mannerisms were American jazz age. The actress who played Helena gave me an appreciation for the character I have never actually had before and Puck was, of course, absolutely brilliant. I had assured my family before we went that seeing the play would make the words so much easier to understand and they did indeed laugh in all the right places and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I would love to return next summer for The Merchant of Venice. Or Othello. Or both.