Rickety – Page 24 – Mostly about Utah

Utah Shakespearean Festival: Randall Theatre Backstage Tour

August 27, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

After The 39 Steps and Much Ado about Nothing but before Pride and Prejudice and The Greenshow, Jill and I toured the Randall L. Jones Theatre backstage. The building was built completely with private funds. It was named after a former Southern Utah University shop professor whose family donated funds for the theater.

The Festival website states:

The Randall L. Jones Theatre, dedicated in 1989, was designed by the firm of Fowler, Ferguson, Kingston, and Ruben, with theatrical design by the California firm of Landry and Bogan, as well as Cameron Harvey, Festival producing artistic director. It was built at a cost of $5.5 million, to expand the Festival’s offerings, especially in the area of world classics, and was featured in the August 1990 edition of Architecture magazine. The theatre is named after a Cedar City native known as the father of tourism in southern Utah. It seats 769.

On the Backstage Tour we got to see what it really takes to produce a major dramatic production. We learned about theatre sets, costumes, and lighting and the designers and technicians who bring it all to life. Our tour guide was one of the costume technicians and she was able to knowledgeably answer our questions.

Jill asked for permission to take a few photographs and it was granted. Click on the images to enlarge.

Randall Theatre backstage. In the far corner is the set for Great Expectations.

The set for Great Expectations

Randall Theatre trapdoor

Wigs ready for showtime

Next: The Adams Shakespearean Theatre Backstage Tour

Utah Shakespearean Festival: The Greenshow

August 27, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

There was more to our visit to the Utah Shakespearean Festival than The 39 Steps, Much Ado about Nothing, and Pride and Prejudice. Not only were there more plays but there were such diversions as The Greenshow. The Greenshow is a series of complimentary performances presented six nights a week, prior to the evening theatrical performances. There are also several comely “tarts” selling Elizabethan fare.

The Utah Shakespearean Festival website has this to say:

The perfect mood enhancer for the Festival’s productions can be found each summer evening on the beautiful green and courtyard surrounding the Adams Shakespearean Theatre. The Greenshow features the spirited song, dance, and costumes of Shakespeare’s day, and it’s free! Add storytelling, juggling, and Elizabethan sweets, and you’ll have a fun-filled frolic to prepare you for the main stage performance that follows.

This time I only saw a few minutes of The Greenshow — just long enough to snap a couple of photographs. In prior visits I have watched a whole show for they are very entertaining.

Next: The Randall L. Jones Theatre Backstage Tour

Rickety signature.

Free Books #1

August 27, 2010 by rickety 3 Comments

My bookshelf is overflowing so I have used books to give away. The guidelines (subject to refinement) are:

Request a book in the comments.
You must be local to Kaysville, Utah. I will not mail books.
Currently requests are limited to those who know me and/or know where I live.

The books:

The Majesty of Books Sterling W. Sill
Mormon Fortune Builders Lee Nelson
Abraham Lincoln Carl Sandburg (softcover)
The Church Years J. Reuben Clark
Gospel Ideals David O. McKay (softcover)
Halo The Fall of Reach Eric Nylund (softcover)
Children of Dune Frank Herbert (softcover)
What To Expect — The Toddler Years Arlene Eisenberg etc. (softcover)
Doctrinal New Testament Commentary (3 volumes) Bruce R. McConkie
Letters From Rifka Karen Hesse (softcover)

Update

Receiving no takers, I have recently donated these books and several others to Deseret Industries.

Utah Shakespearean Festival: Pride and Prejudice

August 27, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

The set of Pride and Prejudice in the Randall L. Jones Theatre

Having already seen The 39 Steps and Much Ado about Nothing, we were looking forward to Pride and Prejudice to finish our two days at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen. It was begun in 1796, her second novel, but her first serious attempt at publication. She finished the original manuscript by 1797 in Steventon, Hampshire, where she lived with her parents and siblings in the town rectory. Austen originally called the story First Impressions, but it was never published under that title; instead, she made extensive revisions to the manuscript, then retitled and eventually published it as Pride and Prejudice.

The play is adapted by Joseph Hanreddy and J. R. Sullivan and directed by B. J. Jones. The Utah Shakespearean Festival website has this to say:

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are desperate. With no sons, they are determined to arrange profitable marriages for their five beautiful daughters. However, when two eligible young men arrive in the neighborhood, excitement and passion begin to rule; and the Bennet household is in danger of being tipped firmly on its end. Fully capturing the spirit of the classic book, this adaptation is delightful, romantic, and fun for the entire family.

My wife owns the notable 1995 television version produced by the BBC starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. Also the 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. She also has the book. So it was destined that she would see the play.

For me, already knowing the plot and the ending, didn’t spoil the play. The interest now is not in what happens but how the story is told. It seemed to me that all the story was covered — I did not notice anything that was left out. But I do not think I would catch omissions anyway as I have not read the book.

Wikipedia has an interesting Pride and Prejudice Character Map showing the relationships between characters.

Next: The Greenshow

Utah Shakespearean Festival: Much Ado about Nothing

August 26, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

For our 30th anniversary Jill and I spent two days in Cedar City this week. Monday afternoon at the Utah Shakespearean Festival we watched The 39 Steps. In the evening it was time for Much Ado about Nothing, a comedy by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero.

The play is directed by B. J. Jones. The Utah Shakespearean Festival website has this to say:

Meet Beatrice and Benedick. To them love is a game of wits. Then meet Hero and Claudio. To them love is, well . . . just love. This vibrant and comic celebration of life and romance will introduce you to these opposite lovers, and to a host of villains, clowns, and eccentric characters. And you will cheer when these lively couples finally learn realities about life, love—and themselves.

The play is shown in the Adams Shakespearean Theatre, dedicated in 1977. It is patterned after drawings and research of sixteenth century Tudor stages. Experts say it is one of a few theatres that probably comes close to the design of the Globe Theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were originally produced.

I found watching Much Ado about Nothing in an open air theater just adds to the experience. The play was very entertaining and funny. Sometimes, watching Shakespeare drags for me, being the uncouth man that I am, but I enjoyed this play and the time was gone all too soon.

Next: Pride and Prejudice
Rickety signature.

Utah Shakespearean Festival: The 39 Steps

August 26, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

For our 30th anniversary Jill and I spent two days in Cedar City. Our first stop was the play The 39 Steps showing at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The original was the 1935 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the adventure novel The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. The film stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.

The play was adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel and is directed by Eli Simon. The Utah Shakespearean Festival website has this to say:

What do you get when you blend Alfred Hitchcock with Monty Python? A hilarious mystery spoof that will keep you guessing! Murder, betrayal, and espionage intertwine with sly and hysterical nods to many of Hitchcock’s films, resulting in one of the funniest plays to ever hit Broadway. See if you can figure out whodunit as this cast of four transforms into over 150 farcical characters!

It took me awhile to catch on but there are only four actors in the play. This is where a lot of the humor is involved as characters, at times, are switched at a frenetic pace. There were an amazing amount of costume changes as there are over 150 characters.

It was clever (and funny) how the train and car rides were simulated. At one point, one of the actors was so funny that the other actors had a great deal of trouble keeping a straight face. This set off the audience laughing anew.

This mystery spoof is intertwined with sly and hysterical nods to many of Hitchcock’s films. Most of these had gone over my head before I finally caught on.

Really, my theater ticket was wasted on me.

Next: Much Ado about Nothing
Rickety signature.

Missionary Dan Email #20 from Vancouver, Washington

August 25, 2010 by rickety Leave a Comment

This week was just as great as last. We were extremely busy and were doing all we could to teach, find, and help people come to church. We were blessed with success and had eight investigators come to church. We are excited for a baptism in about two weeks. It has been quite the effort to find people that are ready, but we should be having more here in the future.

The Spirit has helped us so much it is the greatest feeling. We were traveling down the street on our bikes and we weren’t sure what to do with an extra thirty minutes we had before dinner. Then I had the thought to go to Eric’s house, a media referral we received two months ago and hadn’t been able to contact him yet. We went and he was home. He has a testimony of the gospel and has been going to church with the person who referred him. He is about to move, but plans on being baptized. There was a good spirit about him and I could tell he had made big changes in his life. It was great to meet him.

Our weeks this transfer have been so full of those experiences it has been so great. We got transfer calls and both Elder Hardy and I are staying. Yea! We plan on working just as hard as we have been. I really enjoy being with Elder Hardy.

We had some Nerf Wars last week on Preparation Day. I was well equipped.

It is exciting to hear about the SBOs in the ward. I think we have a long record of them now. Happy anniversary Mom and Dad. Thirty years is ten years longer than I’ve been alive so it seems like that’s been awhile. Thanks for all the support!

Love, Elder Willoughby

Elder Daniel Willoughby is serving in the Washington Kennewick Mission. If you want to communicate with Daniel, write in the comments or use one of these addresses.
Rickety signature.

This Is What 30 Years Of Marriage Looks Like

August 22, 2010 by rickety 2 Comments

The time has flown by and in the process we have produced five children and they in turn have given us three grandchildren — so far. I don’t really have too much advice for newly married couples except to tell you to make sure you go to church together often. In my church on a Sunday the men meet separately for part of the time and quite often we will be reminded to honor and respect womanhood and to tell our wives that we love them.

And over the pulpit a couple will hear how debt is worse than the plague, how they should work hard, that they should nurture and provide for their family, and not rely on government.

So while most of the credit goes to Jill for making our marriage great, the Church and its supportive members have to be recognized for the great contributions they have made to our marriage.

Our favorite daughter-in-law honored us on her blog today over at Ada Shot Me.

Update

At the year of writing (2010) we had only one daughter-in-law. But now we have two more, also favorites.
Rickety signature.

Hugh Nibley on Religion

August 22, 2010 by rickety 5 Comments

Science without religion, like philosophy without religion, has nothing to feed on. . . . It is my contention that any branch of human thought without religion soon withers and dies of anemia. (“Science Fiction and the Gospel,” The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 12:519)

The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism. (“What Is Zion?,” The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9:54)

Religion becomes magic when the power by which things operate is transferred from God to the things themselves. . . . When men lack revelation they commonly come to think of power residing in things. . . .

In time the Bible became a magic book in men’s eyes, conveying all knowledge by its own power, without the aid of revelation. So also after a fierce controversy on the matter, priesthood itself acquired the status of a thing that automatically bestows power and grace, regardless of the spiritual or moral qualification of its possessor — it became a magic thing. (“Some Fairly Foolproof Tests,” The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 7:261)

Humanism is very ancient. It turns up regularly as an Ersatz for religion when religion goes sour. The settled tradition is that while humanism and science represent straight and honest thinking religion is a primitive, prerational, emotional, wishful type of thinking, essentially superstitious, that humanism and science represent bold new thought while religion represents traditional, hide-bound uncritical thinking. What this view overlooks is the fact that the bold original thinking of today inevitably becomes the hide-bound authoritarian tradition of tomorrow. So that the theory itself, the belief that we have a body of study that is fresh and forward looking and that we can easily spot it and give allegiance to it, is itself a hoary superstition. (“Humanism and the Gospel,” 1)

So universally is religious ritual today burdened with the defects of oddness, incongruity, quaintness, . . . mere traditionalism, obvious faking and filling in, contrived and artificial explanations including myths and allegories, frankly sensual appeal, and general haziness and confusion, that those regrettable traits have come to be regarded as the very essence of ritual itself.

In contrast we find the Latter-day Saint rites, though full, elaborate, and detailed, to be always lucid and meaningful, forming an organic whole that contains nothing incongruous, redundant, or mystifying, nothing purely ornamental, arbitrary, abtruse, or nearly picturesque. (“What is a Temple?,” The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 4:369)

Rickety signature.