Red Wine with Fish

It is official. Willamette Shakespeare is now an Oregon non-profit. This summer will be our inaugural season. The production will be As You Like It. Performance dates and venues TBA. We have a new site up (very much in process), a Facebook group and a mailing list for people interested in keeping up with the company. If you would like to join the mailing list, just e-mail list@willametteshakespeare.org.

See you this summer!

As if there was any doubt, the web continually provides the greatest opportunities for lazy forms of arbitrary self-expression and ways of wasting time. To that end, I present a new form of poetry. This form is can be created by even the most un-poetic among us. It shares some attributes of like the Dadaist pick-a-letter-out-of-a-hat genre that was designed to prove that art is not art, but yet it has form and structure. Simply take a poem you have always liked… or hated… or been puzzled by, and run it through a translator (I favor translate.google.com) into a language of your choice, preferably something like Japanese or Korean with a very different grammar. Then, of course, translate it back. Take, for example, this Elizabethan era classic:

The mistress of my eyes, like the sun is nothing.
Coral far more red than her lips red.
If the snow is white, why her breasts are dun.
If the wiring is hair, black lines grow up in her head.
I rose, damasked, red and white have seen
However, her cheeks like roses that I please see.
And some of the perfume is not a pleasure
That’s more than a breath in my nephew’s mistress.
I heard her speak, yet well aware of Megumi Teru
Far more pleasing sound is the music;
I have never seen a goddess to grant;
She is the mistress of the ground I walk on the trail.
And, in heaven, I love that I rarely think about
To compare her with false as false.

This lovely poem is a co-creation of Shakespeare, Google’s translation software and the Japanese language. Now, go and try your own!

Just before leaving Seattle for LA, I purchased a couple of new pieces for my collection. The first one I have been eying for a couple of years. Abraxas Crow, as the shop is called, is the work of a guy named Gunter Reimnitz and I believe he does all the work. because it always seems like there is a story, even in the landscapes–like there experiences waiting to be had behind every archway and door. Her art makes me want to travel more than any I have seen.

Her description of the work is as follows:

Florence’s old bridge is magnificent in the night light. I loved
painting the reflections in the water - and imagining all the romantics
who’ve gazed at it like have.

It’s a well written play and we have a great cast. The Bathhouse is a great space to see theatre. If you are in Seattle, come and see it!

Here is the plot summary:

Overbearing shopkeeper Henry Horatio Hobson is used to getting his own way. Unfortunately, he has three daughters who are beginning to think for themselves. Is he ready for the battles that lie ahead? First performed in 1915, Hobson’s Choice is a wonderful study of human nature and the ability of clever women to get their own way. It is a character-rich, beautifully crafted comedy that flirts with the shifting balance of power between the generations, classes and sexes, and it ranks among the classic English plays of the 20th century.

Tickets are available at the door or at http://www.theexchangetheatre.org/productions.htm.

Here are the details:

Hobson’s Choice
Harold Brighouse

Bathhouse Theatre
7312 W Green Lake Dr N
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 524-1300

March 4th - 27th, 2005
Thurdays - Saturdays 7:30 PM
Sundays 2:00 PM

I just acquired two block prints from Marvin Hill – Blockprints. Marvin died in 2003, but his wife continues coloring the remaining prints, as she did when he was alive.

I had purchased a wonderful piece from them in 1998 or so and tracked them down again. Marvin did wonderful block-prints and Wendy does wonderful color work.

Their art is so alive and so vibrant. If these catch your fancy, check out the website. Take good look at the dimensional linocuts. They are creative and unique.

Last week I purchased an oil painting from Pam Ingalls, a local(Vashon Island) artist. She just came by to drop it off.

I just fell in love with this painting–the roughness and texture of the brushstrokes that melt away as I step back or blur my eyes, revealing a place–a real place–that I almost feel like I have seen. I can imagine what lies around the corner and the sounds and smells of the Verona streets.

I also feel a particular attachment to the subject matter. Not because I have ever been to Verona, but because Verona plays a large part in Shakespeare, not least of which is Two Gentlemen of Verona–the play in which I made my Seattle acting debut.

I have been on the lookup for art to add to my rather small collection and this one fits nicely.

Update: detail image added.