Been a few weeks, get ready for a lot of words. But first: My partner is using she/her pronouns again, a fact which could not be more insignificant to basically anyone on here. I only mention it so that there's less confusion if I say "my girlfriend" - still the same person I've been dating for 6-ish years (give or take a few months), just using female pronouns again. Anyway. I've been doing an insane amount of knitting recently. I bought a small garbage bag full of yarn from a Goodwill recently, and have been working my way through it. I've also been doing a little bit of bookbindin, which I haven't done since college. I've decided that it's just not possible to sew in my tiny apartment with my neurotic dog around, so i'm keeping busy making other things. ---------- I'm moving back east again in June. Portland is great, and I may very well end up in Oregon again later on, but there's a lot I need to deal with on the other coast. I'm staying here through the end of the school year, then going home. I'm going to try and fix the Shakespeare program my parents run, save some money, and move to VT or Maine with my partner, puppy, and a roommate from college. We're hoping to move to a suburb of a smaller city and rent an actual house. I need more than 500 sq. ft right now. I'm gonna try really hard not to move again for a few years after this. We'll see.
Sure! I grew up right next to a Shakesperean theater in CT. It's massive, I think it housed about 2000 or so audience members in its prime. Its shows starred Katherine Hepburn, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Walken, and a whole bunch of other folks throughout its many years of theater. As a side note, the house my family lives in now used to be an inn that the actors at the theater would stay at during their residency. Probably some interesting ghosts futzing about. The theater shut down for good the week after my family moved next door to it. It's been closed ever since. There's always been a big community push to try and have it re-opened, or at least to have theater done on its premises. My brother's big passion in life was acting, and my parents (and some real rich friends) made a memorial non-profit theater academy in his honor a few years ago, and have been doing theater every summer on the grounds [EDIT FOR CLARITY: the literal grounds. as in the grass outside] of the theater. This summer will be the 5th year it's been around. The gist of it is that 14 or so college-aged actors live in our house for 6 weeks, go through an intensive series of classes on theater-making and put up 2 shakespeare shows in repertory at the end of the program. Other buzz-words include "site-specific" (meaning we usually put up shows in the woods) and "ensemble-based". Basically, the goal is, by the end of the program, to teach students how to go out and make theater on their own, from acting and directing to booking spaces and getting publicity. As you can imagine, putting 14 college-aged students into one house for 6 weeks can lead to some problems. My job, for the first three summers, was to take care of those problems. I was the cook, cleaner, therapist, bike-fixer, and general handyman for the company. Additionally, I was asked to write, perform, and record music for the shows (which I actually had a lot of fun with), and helped construct the stages and do whatever general work needed doing. Last year was the first summer I wasn't around to help. It was a slight disaster. The shows went up, but the students were constantly fighting and discontent, and spent almost every night getting completely trashed. We rely pretty heavily on previous students' word of mouth to get prospective new students interested, but I suspect that may not work so well this year. I'm coming back this summer in part to make sure things get back on track, and also to figure out what exactly my job was, and how to hire another person to do it permanently. I'd be happy to PM you a link to the program's site if you're interested!