All the World's a Stage!

This week has been quite a whirlwind of theatrical enjoyment. I have seen 5 plays in 5 days! Whoa! That's a new record for me! I thought I'd share what I've seen and what I thought of each.

I started out the week by going down to the Cedar City Shakespeare Festival with my roommate, Emily. We saw three shows in two days: Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and Pride and Prejudice. I have wanted to go to the festival since I moved to Utah eight years ago, but this is the first opportunity that I've had. It was marvelous! One of the most fun parts for me was seeing the actors in multiple shows: Beatrice in Much Ado was also Lady Macbeth, and Macduff in Macbeth also played Mr. Darcy. There were tons of actors that crossed over between shows and it was a great reminder of how versatile actors have to be!

Much Ado About Nothing

Macbeth

Pride and Prejudice

Thursday, Graham asked me to accompany him to an Ernst and Young recruiting event, but when he came to pick me up, he said he needed to pick something up at his house and gave me an envelope with a "small gift" inside. As it turns out, it was a BIG gift: two tickets to see The Lion King which is on tour in SLC right now! I have wanted to see this show for years, but the tickets are always SO expensive and hard to get. So he whisked me off to a wonderful evening of fantastic costumes and music during which I think I wore out my smile! What a great surprise!

Friday, I came back to reality, but I still got to enjoy some good quality community theatre at Rogers Memorial Theater in Centerville. Some might think that a local production of The Music Man would be disappointing after such a stellar week, but I actually think that community theatre carries a lot of charm. It's not better OR worse than Broadway, it's just different. Actually, they did something really clever: at first, all the River City residents were dressed in black and white, but over the course of the play they added color to their costumes bit by bit. It was a really clever symbolic move.

All I can say is WAHOOO! What a week!

Why Punctuation Matters

School is just around the corner, and this will be the newest addition to my classroom decor.

A New Book to Love

Once and awhile, a book comes along that melts my heart and inspires my soul. The newest book on my heart-melting, soul-inspiring list is...Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Sommerset Sisters. It's a simple, YA read in the style of E.L. Konigsburg (of The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler), and I loved it! A student of mine recommended it last year to me, and I finally got around to reading it this week. I am SO grateful for students with good taste in literature.

The story is about Cornelia Street Englehart, an eleven-year-old bookish girl living in New York City with her famous concert pianist mother. The novel follows the dual stories of Cornelia's life as well as the stories told to her by the eccentric lady who lives next door (with whom she forges an unlikely friendship). I would tell you more, but I hate it when people give too much information about a book. It's so much more fun to discover it yourself.

Instead, I'll just say this: it's a feast for the imagination that found me both laughing and crying by the end. In a word, it's simply CHARMING!

Bon Appetit!