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Well, good morning to you all. I may or may not be here when this appears but if I'm not here (I live on the West Coast) you go right on without me untill I get here.
I might as well reveal one of the many quirks to my personality---i'm a Shakespeare fan. I had to keep this in the closet for many years of my life but I'm out about it now. One of the biggest plesures in my life was getting to the hometown of The Bard
I couldn't go to GB and not go to Stratford Upon Avon, I mean what would a trip to The Sceptered Isle, this Engand, be without paying homage to the Bard? It'd be like not seeing 221b Baker Street!! So of course I had to go there.
It was not what I expected ( is anything ever?) They were having a carnival when I got there but it wasn't a Renaissance Faire type of carnival it was with ferris wheels and kewpie dolls. Kind of spoiled the effect of the half timbered houses.
I did see a Shakespeare play there, The Taming of The Shrew, which I'd seen like 8 times before, all the movies and the play too. Still and all one couldn't go to The Mecca of Shakespeare Lovers and not see a shakespeare play.
I'm lucky in that I live close to the best ongoing Shakespeare Festival on the west Coast, maybe anywhere. This is in Ashland Oregon. I drive by here every 6 weeks or so as I drive down south to the SF BAy Area to see family. So of course you know I'm going to be stopping to see some Shakespeare.
As you can see from the playbill there's more than just Shakespeare. They have 4 different venues, 4 different theaters, so there's somethig going all the time
here's the Elizabethan Stage
Ive been going to this Shakespeare Fest since the early 70s. (Its been going for 100 years) My goals is to see all his plays enacted and Ive seen all the comedies, most of the tragedies and most of the histories. (There is a lot of controversy over whether Shakespeare actually wrote his plays so let me just say that, after years of study and investigation, I am convinced that Shakespeare's plays were written by a different man with the same name.)
Ashland is a really cool place to stay, it may be the hippest town in Oregon. Very pretty park and downtown. Its right across the border from CA so we get a lot of Californians there. I like to go camp out in Emigrant Lake campground in the summer but there's some really good hotels and bed&breakfasts too. Some really good restaurants.
Anybody who comes to see Oregon shouldn't miss this place, especially any lover of the theater
OK, so with that I'll open for comments from the floor