Bored By The Bard

First, I want to wish a very happy 21^st birthday to my friend and comrade, robertrabbits. Have a great one!

For the rest of this week, I will probably be a bit quiet and hermit-like, as I need to put together a one hour talk on experimental searches for dark matter, which I will present on Saturday at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education's Dark Side Of Astronomy weekend. The target audience is an educated general public. Should be able to do a reasonable job of this, I expect.

Meanwhile, cheshcat and I went into Summertown last night to see the Creation Theatre Company perform Shakespeare's Measure For Measure at the new North Wall Arts Centre. The set and the performance was good, though I have to say that I was less than impressed by the play itself. Definitely not one of my favourite works from the Bard. Nonetheless, I intend to see every one of his thirty-seven plays performed on the stage, so it had to be seen.

Before moving to England, I had only seen four staged Shakespeare performances: Hamlet, MacBeth, Henry V, and Richard III -- although I had, of course, seen other plays (e.g., Othello, Romeo & Juliet) performed on film). Since crossing the pond, I have increased that number from four to twenty and, indeed, I have seen here all of the plays that I had seen there except Hamlet (for which I have tickets to see RSC perform in August). Definitely much more Shakespeare going on here -- can't think why! Anyway, ( twenty down, seventeen to go. )

Five of those seventeen will be performed this summer by either the Royal Shakespeare Company, at Shakespeare's Globe, or by Creation... so I will be moving ever closer to my goal.

Meanwhile, all three of the above companies will also be performing A Midsummer Night's Dream this summer. If I were a particular fan of this play, I could gorge myself on a surfeit of it! However, I did see the Oxford Shakespeare Company perform Midsummer last summer, and cheshcat saw both this and a performance at the Oxford Playhouse. So I suspect that we will be giving this particular show a miss -- or, rather, three misses -- this year.

Tonight, aside from working on my talk, I will be taking a break to ring bells at Mary Mag. We are still out of term, but a few of us are getting together for some extra practice. Other than that, though, I expect to be chained to the desk, producing slide after slide on dark matter searches. Wish me luck!

Bored By The Bard

First, I want to wish a very happy 21^st birthday to my friend and comrade, robertrabbits. Have a great one!

For the rest of this week, I will probably be a bit quiet and hermit-like, as I need to put together a one hour talk on experimental searches for dark matter, which I will present on Saturday at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education's Dark Side Of Astronomy weekend. The target audience is an educated general public. Should be able to do a reasonable job of this, I expect.

Meanwhile, cheshcat and I went into Summertown last night to see the Creation Theatre Company perform Shakespeare's Measure For Measure at the new North Wall Arts Centre. The set and the performance was good, though I have to say that I was less than impressed by the play itself. Definitely not one of my favourite works from the Bard. Nonetheless, I intend to see every one of his thirty-seven plays performed on the stage, so it had to be seen.

Before moving to England, I had only seen four staged Shakespeare performances: Hamlet, MacBeth, Henry V, and Richard III -- although I had, of course, seen other plays (e.g., Othello, Romeo & Juliet) performed on film). Since crossing the pond, I have increased that number from four to twenty and, indeed, I have seen here all of the plays that I had seen there except Hamlet (for which I have tickets to see RSC perform in August). Definitely much more Shakespeare going on here -- can't think why! Anyway, ( twenty down, seventeen to go. )

Five of those seventeen will be performed this summer by either the Royal Shakespeare Company, at Shakespeare's Globe, or by Creation... so I will be moving ever closer to my goal.

Meanwhile, all three of the above companies will also be performing A Midsummer Night's Dream this summer. If I were a particular fan of this play, I could gorge myself on a surfeit of it! However, I did see the Oxford Shakespeare Company perform Midsummer last summer, and cheshcat saw both this and a performance at the Oxford Playhouse. So I suspect that we will be giving this particular show a miss -- or, rather, three misses -- this year.

Tonight, aside from working on my talk, I will be taking a break to ring bells at Mary Mag. We are still out of term, but a few of us are getting together for some extra practice. Other than that, though, I expect to be chained to the desk, producing slide after slide on dark matter searches. Wish me luck!