Hard to get tickets at this point, but go here. It's not impossible. What a fantastic performance! I don't know that I've ever heard a more enthusiastic standing ovation.How often have you gone back to see the same theatrical production? I can only think of 2 other occasions, both in this theater (the indoor theater at APT).
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uh…a bunch of times, mostly because I had access, friends in the box office, family in the performance, I worked on the campus of the performance pavilion- stuff like that. I took two different dates to Noises Off! on consecutive evenings. That worked out well…
George Strait on line one.
Zero times.
But I've only seen three live plays in my life--Amadeus with Langella in NYC (very good), Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (local theater, OK) and The Good Women of Szechuan (college production, not so good).
I don't really have a theater mind, though I was stage crew in HS and had a starring role in a play put on by a local Catholic girls' school.
I'd rather go to a concert than a play.
Well, not counting if you worked in the theater or had a family member in a show. Assume you are completely just a theatergoer, paying your own way, unrelated to cast members.
…okay. Then twice…
I see most shows more than once. I have a 'Complete Works Pass' at the local Shakespeare theater, Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, which means I can see every show for $275 a year. I believe I bought the last CWP in 2008, since they stopped selling them soon after that, but they have a grandfather clause for holders, and haven't even raised the price. I was surprised to hear there are only 8-9 left of 30+ when I first got mine. Who would ever give up such a deal? Playgoers trend old, but they can't all have died or moved away.
Anyway, my first season in town I saw Twelfth Night 11 times, King Lear 4 times (you really have to be in the right mood for that one), Richard II and Measure for Measure something in between. The season that just ended, I saw As You Like It 5 times, Our Town twice. Well-acted and properly-spoken Shakespeare can bear the repetition, modern authors much less so. I already have tickets for the first two (back-to-back) performances of their next three plays: The Tempest, an adaptation of Frankenstein, and The Witch, an adaptation of an Elizabethan play.
If you're anywhere near the Shenandoah Valley, you should know the first night, always a Thursday, is 'Pay What You Will', and they're not the least bit offended if you pay nothing. Come on by on 9/3, 10/1, or 10/8 to see the plays mentioned, and say hello: I'll be in a 'gallant stool' on-stage, like an Elizabethan gallant.
Been to Pink Poodle on Bascom Avenue San Jose several times.
“I went back to see the APT production of "The Chairs" again.”
I can’t imagine sitting through it once. Although I thought Clint Eastwood’s use of an empty chair to represent Obama at the Republican convention was pretty cool. I’ve never been to the indoor theater at APT. Seems to me the outdoor theater there is the cool thing about it.
One of my favorite childhood memories is playing in Bixby Park in Long Beach, California, right across from the ocean. We were on vacation, and every late afternoon we would go to the park to play.
They were rehearsing Li’l Abner at the outdoor theater. My parents would watch the rehearsals while we played, but we could hear everything in the background and would often join them to watch the musical numbers. The cast members were community players, but they were top-notch - excellent performers.
We watched the dress rehearsal all the way through, and then we saw the actual performance as well. The dress rehearsal was better than the performance, but we enjoyed both.
The first time I saw Noises Off, I went back at least once (maybe twice, I'm not sure). It was Pegasus Players in North Chicago in the late 1980s. That was a great theater group. Saw The Frogs performed in a swimming pool, a German Expressionist staging of Anyone Can Whistle, and many others. Good times.
The regular lunch group at my job in Pearl River NY made plans to go see 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' (1988) again, on our own. I think one person made it and it wasn't me. Same with 'The Last Temptation of Christ' (1988).
We would go see a movie, discuss it, and as with 'Unbearable' we need it to see it again because someone got hang-up on something and seeing it again was a way of finding a resolution.
Another movie we saw and discussed quite a bit was 'Unforgiven' (1992). In truth, I was mostly a listener in these discussions.
Seeing a play again is not quite like seeing a movie. It's always slightly different - sometimes a lot different, if there's an understudy. Last spring I saw Twelfth Night when my upstairs neighbor, a grad student in Shakespeare Studies, was filling in for Viola/Cesario. She did a great job in a starring role.
I should add that I saw it several times, before and after, without the neighbor as understudy, and didn't know she was going to be in that performance. A pleasant surprise.
Was the play that good or is life just that boring in Madison?
American Players Theater. I went to see the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford CT. It was a big thing in the Fifties and Sixties. It was closed and abandoned when I took a look at it. Then local teenagers burned the thing down. Canada still has its Shakespeare and Shaw Festival theaters, but we can't have nice things here, though there still is a Eugene O'Neill Theater Center on the other side of CT.
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was a truly unbearable picture. Maybe the book was better.
In Opera is it dommon to have a production in the repertoire, which can be staged from time to time with whichever cast is available. The cost of mounting an opera can be so huge that sometimes a production can be shared among several houses.
When I was in HS, I volunteered as an usher at Houston’s Music Hall. I typically saw every musical run two to four times over the course of three years. Basically, I traded showing up 2 hours before it started and showing people to the seats for free entry.
My mother and her sister were usherettes at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee during the 1930s. They got to see all the greats. Then my wife did the same in the 1960s, for a different set of greats.
Gallant Stool would be a great name for a punk band. CC, JSM
For some reason, live theater gives me the willies. But I have, over and over, watched and taught many plays made into movies. Many Oedipus Rex, though I like the William Shatner version best; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Burton and Taylor at their magical peak/nadir; You Can't Go Home Again (1979); Suddenly, Last Summer; The Cherry Orchard; A Man for All Seasons; and the best modern adaptation of Macbeth: Scotland, PA, with Maureen Tierney and Christopher Walken, set in a fast food restaurant. I highly recommend watching it right after the Orson Welles version. That is fun.
I’ve watched The Dining Room three times. Two different college productions and one community theatre. It must be an easy play to do as all three productions were better than OK.
“ Seems to me the outdoor theater there is the cool thing about it.”
Yes, it is very cool, but I appreciate the indoor productions which are often smaller casts, more intimate things. And also I don’t like to be outdoors in the sunlight so I would have to go to an evening performance at the outdoor theater, and I’m always afraid I’ll get tired and it is a long drive home an hour drive.
But I do go to many of the outdoor plays. This year we saw Uncle Vanya.
“ Seems to me the outdoor theater there is the cool thing about it.”
Yes, it is very cool, but I appreciate the indoor productions which are often smaller casts, more intimate things. And also I don’t like to be outdoors in the sunlight so I would have to go to an evening performance at the outdoor theater, and I’m always afraid I’ll get tired and it is a long drive home an hour drive.
But I do go to many of the outdoor plays. This year we saw Uncle Vanya.
The other night we saw 'Barefoot In the Park (second night). It was so well done, we may see it again before it closes.
Wow, Tina, thank you for telling me about the Shatner Oedipus!
Not what I was expecting ("I killed...my father! I MARRIED....my MOTHER!...Must...blind...self..."). Young Shat is just a chorus member, and the entire cast wears masks and shapeless robes in an attempt to recreate how plays were put on in ancient Greece. But incredibly wild. The sort of highbrow black and white stuff that was commonplace in the 50s and early 60s. Just great. CC, JSM
I saw ...
Meryl Streep famously starred as Katherina alongside Raul Julia as Petruchio in a 1978 production of The Taming of the Shrew for The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
And recognized her in kramer vs. kramer (1979)
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