Date Night: Wacky Wiener Festwochen

Last night we had our first event, called I Went To The House But Did Not Enter (you might be able to see a trailer of it here)  I don't know if I can do it justice. 

It was a performance in three acts, based on the poetry of four of the 20th century's great poets: Kafka,  Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot and Maurice Blanchot, and their work had been set to music. Imagine, if you  will, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" being sung by a barbershop quartet as they set out tea, and you'll be pretty close to act one (John, I thought you would love it, and Allen, you'd have thought at least that part was pretty spot on). 

Act two took Blanchot's "Madness of the Day" and divided it up so that the four men were each saying parts of the poem -- as a conversation, on the phone to each other, in musings as they went about their daily rituals (Rob said "That's what should happen! You should pick up the phone and people should be asking deep philosophical questions!"). I wondered what Heather A. would have thought of the set, and of the stage crew, who changed the scenery in the dark with the curtains up --  some of them wore Grandpa Shumway-style headlamp flashlights.

Act Three took place in a hotel room and was Beckett.

 The staging was cleverand there were interesting themes about technology and self and alienation and the modern man. There's a talk on it at some point that Rob wants to go to. I'm not certain I'm up for more. But I looked over at him last night and I could just see him soaking the whole thing in. I knew that it would all come back tenfold in  ideas for ORCA projects and thesis topics and research and cub scout skits and Primary song leading. Watch out, world, Rob is getting tanked up on his  brand of happy!