Saturday in Tewkesbury

Since Spring officially started on Wednesday the weather in Stratford has been beautiful. In order to take advantage of these nice days my friend Stuart and I spent the afternoon in the Town of Tewkesbury.

The town is dominated by the 12th century abbey. It was a lovely day.

When the abbey was dissolved under Henry VIII in 1540 (one of the last monastic groups to be dissolved) the people of Tewkesbury bought the church, claiming it as their parish church, and therefore necessary. The rest of the abbey grounds, cloisters, monastic building, etc., were destroyed.

The half-timbered, black and white building on the left is the oldest Baptist chapel in SE England, dating from the mid 17th century.

Old Baptist burial ground.

This is the eastern end of the abbey. Notice the lighter stone on the central part of the building. Before the dissolution there was an extension on the eastern end that served as the Lady Chapel (the cult of the Virgin Mary was very prevalent in the 15th century, when many lady chapels were built all over the country; the most famous being the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey). In order to be allowed to keep the church as a parish church, the chapel had to be destroyed. You can also see apsidal (circular) chapels on either side, of which there are seven.

This is the south transept. Notice the pink stone? The other, yellow stones are traditional Cotswold stone. If you have read my entry on Chipping Camden (and you are a geek), you will remember that there is pink stone there. When Cotswold stone is burned it turns pink. So these stones went through a fire before they were used in building the church.

The building is Norman (which is British for Romanesque), having been built in the 12th century. I love the round, Norman arches on the main doorway here, with the Gothic windows the arches frame.

This is a painted tympanium from a chantry chapel in the south aisle of the abbey.

Since it is Lent, and this is a very high church, all statues are covered. This is a rood loft in the abbey.

A Victorian (?) Greenman in the gate to the abbey.

PRETTY!!!!!!!!!

Funny Signs

I found some funny signs in the town of Tewkesbury today. Enjoy!

EVERYMAN

This is very late, as the play was done last August, but I just realized I had not put any pictures up.

Last summer I directed the late medieval morality play EVERYMAN for The Shakespeare Institute Players. First a little background, that way you can be bored and take a nap before getting onto the rest of the story.

EVERYMAN was first printed in the 1510s, and is either a translation of the Dutch play ELCKERLIJC, or ELCKERLIJC is a translation of EVERYMAN. It tells the story of Everyman being approached by Death, who is sent by God. Everyman does not want to die (duh!) and convinces Death to give him time to amend for his life and find someone to go with him to the grave.

Thus begins his journey (I love the word THUS, we must bring it back into common use)! Everyman visits Kindred, Cousin, Goods, Knowledge, Good Deeds, Discretion, Strength, Confession, Fellowship, Beauty and Five Wits. Medieval plays love allegorical characters.

All those who he visits say they will not follow him to his grave, except Good Deeds, who must be released from his prison through contrition and penance. Once this is done, Everyman must go through all the stages of preparation for death that a good Medieval Catholic would. In the end Everyman is taken to Heaven by an Angel, for his good deeds, penance and contrition.

(Everyman lays in her grave, watched over my Knowledge, as Good Deeds accompanied her)

That is a very brief introduction to the play. I did the play as part of the research for my dissertation on the use of churches as performance spaces in medieval and early modern England. We performed in the chancel (eastern end) of Holy Trinity Church, in front of Shakespeare's grave...it was a kind of a geeky/amazing thing.

The performances went well, with one reviewer saying it was the best production she had seen by The Shakespeare Institute Players.

(Kindred prompts Cousin to pretend he has a cramp in his toe in order not go with Everyman)

Here is a blog by a former PhD student at Warwick University, Pete Kirwan:

"August 20, 2011

The Summoning of Everyman (Shakespeare Institute Players) @ Holy Trinity Church

Everyman is a genuinely powerful text. Whether you’re religious or not, this anonymous medieval morality play gets to the absolute nub of the big questions. What can we take with us? What is the point of life? And at the end of it all, are we ultimately alone?

The Shakespeare Institute Players made a virtue of their usual performance venue being out of commission by doing a site-specific piece in Holy Trinity Church. Director Jason Burg is researching the use of churches as performance spaces, and this production drew on its surroundings throughout.

("No, by Our Lady, I have a cramp in my toe!" Cousin refuses to follow Everyman. Since the actors for Kindred and Cousin were both southern we gave them southern accents; it was fun!)

Good Deeds lay crumped under a blanket leaning against the altar, the Doctor waited to welcome people into the main space, Five Wits referred to the church’s presentation copy of the Bible, and Knowledge gestured to the glorious stained glass windows that dominated the space. It was an evocative space for a religious message, and one which the production treated respectfully.

(The chorus takes Everyman's coffin out of the chancel)

The staging was simple, and made the most of the episodic structure of the play. Harriet Laing's Everyman entered the choir from the nave surrounded by the rest of the company, who voiced God collectively, standing round the edges of the space. Helen Osborne's black-clad Death swaggered into the space shortly thereafter, addressing God with a deferential yet slightly mocking tone, emphasised by a quiet chuckle as she prepared to claim Everyman's soul. Formal patterning organised the progression of characters: Victoria Mountford's Good Deeds was huddled up under a blanket at the altar, Cecilia Kendall-White's Knowledge strolled around the altar space, and the assorted kindred and flaky qualities passed from the choir into the nave of the church as they forsook Everyman, returning to worldly places - where the Doctor finally emerged from, as well as Everyman's wicker coffin.

Everyman was played as a woman (Chaka Khan jokes were restricted to the programme), a decision which saw the company use obvious materialist stereotypes to comic effect - Everyman was entranced by the pair of beautiful shoes that John Curtis's Goods held up for her, slipping into a longing voice even as she admonished Goods. The obsession of this Everyman with appearances and possessions was made obvious from the start, as she appeared adjusting her bright red top. She was gloriously oblivious to Death's intent, and her initial selfish shock progressed through the piece to anger and panic, and finally to something approaching transcendent acceptance.

(Death circles Everyman, waiting to take her)

The play is powerful in itself. The gradual forsaking of Everyman by her kin, her Fellowship and her Goods was a straightforward series of vignettes, made comic by the Texan drawl of Red Smucker and Drew Hippel as Kindred and Cousin, and the fey performance of Curtis as Goods. It was with the appearance of Knowledge that the play began to take on its more forceful and harrowing aspects. The scene of penance, presided over by the clerical Confession, saw Everyman kneeling and flogging herself hard with a quite nasty-looking piece of rope, while Knowledge looked coldly on. The subsequent emergence of Good Deeds added an impression of safety to the subsequent scenes, framing Everyman's journey within an instructive context, but this made the second set of abjurrations all the more hard. Beauty, Strength, Five Wits and Discretion were presented as a formidable set of companions who Everyman placed her faith in. As they began leaving, one by one, her terror was moving. The fear of death, prompted by the appearance of the coffin, was effectively captured in these scenes; and, as Laing lay down in the coffin, one felt the import of the issues that the text was confronting.

The experience of seeing a secular production of a didactic and Catholic-inflected theological piece in an Anglican church was an unusual one, and in some ways it feels odd to put on such an instructive play as a piece of historical interest when it still holds such a powerful vernacular message about the importance of good deeds and of recognising one's own mortality. A thought-provoking evening, and one that left me wishing I had a chance to see Mankind in the near future too." (blogs.warwick.ac.uk)

(All those who say they will go with Everyman to the grave, except Knowledge and Good Deeds, are about to abandon her and leave.)

The play went well and so did my dissertation, on which I got a distinction (translation for Americans: very good!).

(Good Deeds, in front of the high altar, is unable to move, weighed down by the bad deeds done by Everyman)

(This is me and Shakespeare's grave. UM, WOW!)

(We received an email from this woman, saying she and her husband were in town and had to leave the day before we opened. They tried to extend their hotel stay an extra night just to see our show, but where unable. She saw a production of EVERYMAN about 50 years ago in Oxford, and had always wanted to see it again, but never had the opportunity. They asked if they could watch a rehearsal, and we obliged. They were so cute to watch)

(The cast and crew in front of the Shakespeare monument)

Thus endeth this blog, imprinted on Rother Street, by me, Jason. (If you have ever read the play, this should be funny to you).

Life is too short to wear boring socks!

I was sitting with some friends the other day, eating lunch, while wearing some amazing yellow, blue and red argyle socks. My friend noticed the small amount of color showing from under my jean cuff and said "While do you always wear such bright socks?"

"I'm just impressed that they always match; I can never find a matching pair." My friend Zelda said.

My response, which is the same when asked this questions, was "Life is too short to wear boring socks."

When I first moved to England I had English friends make fun of my boring"white American socks." One time at the gym, I was even identified as The American with American [white] Socks. So my first Christmas in England I decided to use some Christmas money to buy my first, non-boring socks for daily wear. I now rarely ear the "American socks."

Since then I have bought more and more colorful (dare I say fabulous?) socks. Above is a picture of my sock-mobile that hangs above our fridge (see previous post for a picture of it in my garden). The pair on the right are those I was wearing when my friend asked the above question.

To the left is a picture of my socks. Since summer is coming, the cheap store in Birmingham (Primark) has all their new bright socks out. I am looking forward to buying the neon-argyle they have in.

Yes, I am a sock weirdo! :)

VIVAN LOS CALCETINES FABULOSOS!!!

The Flu Has Ended, Bring Forth The Garden!

After suffering from the flu for two weeks I felt pretty damn good this morning. That, coupled with the recent good weather (it was 64 degrees somewhere in the southwest the other day), made me aching to get in the yard. I haven't done much in the yard since Fall, so there has been a bit of pruning and clearing away of random crap, along with planting (the best part).

All in all it as very productive. I planted my onions next to the garlic I planted in the Fall. We had a strangely warm Fall (one day in October was 80 degrees), causing the garlic (the spindly looking green shoots in the back) to begin growing too early. I hope the garlic turns out, it is my first time Fall planting it. It may look like a small plot, but I put 18 onion sets into the area in front of the garlic

I started my tomatoes, melons and cucumbers indoors, in order to get a jump on them when it warms up enough to plant them out in a few weeks. I planted five varieties of tomato: silver fir tree (from Russia, and known to produce REALLY early), hillbilly potato leaf (big, orange fruits), Jaune Flamme (small, orange variety that dries well, I hear), cream sausage (a pale yellow, almost white, roma tomato; I am looking forward to white-tomato soup), and a currant tomato (very small, very sweet). I also planted a cucumber called Crystal Apple that looks like a pale green and white apple. The melon is a small melon called Queens Ann Pocket Melon. It is very small and yellow with orange stripes. It is supposed to have a 'lovely fragrance,' which is where it gets its name: women in Victorian times used to carry them in their pockets, in order to smell nice. I am growing them for their smell....they supposedly have no flavor.

Above, you will see some pots, along with my panty-mobile. I planted arugula (which the Brits call rocket, because the French word 'roquette' is what they try to emulate), cress, lettuce mix and spinach in these pots. I plan on salads in about 4-6 weeks! The site they are sitting on now will eventually be the home of two large tomato bushes, but not for a few more months. Since it was such a nice day I decided to dry my laundry outside for the first time since October. I like the difference between my colorful socks and the drab underwear hanging behind them...I will have to work on changing that.

You can see the two green bags full of yard waste from my tiny garden in this picture. For some reason I am now writing underlined, I have no idea why or how to change it, so enjoy the underlined goodness. To the right is my octagon of death...I mean of drying. I found that joining my two drying racks into an octagon prevents them from falling over, a common problem I had last year. The camellia tree is in bloom. Two notes on that: 1) I am not sure if that is a camellia, but I think it is, and 2) I like that tree from now until next week, when it will start to drop leaves and dead flowers faster than a than is humanly possible to clean up after it.

Another view of my backyard. While I was working today our new neighbors were moving in. I didn't talk to them, but from what I gathered (by eavesdropping), they are a young couple who will be getting married soon. I think they may have a dog! While I was gardening I listened to my audio book of THE BUCOLIC PLAGUE: HOW TO MANHATTANITES BECAME GENTLEMAN FARMERS, AN UNCONVENTIONAL MEMOIR. It is the story of the two guys from the TV show THE FABULOUS BEEKMAN BOYS: a gay couple buys a farm in a small town in upstate New York, and hilarity and heart ache ensue. I kind of love that show.

And finally, my laundry/strawberry line. I strung this line up last year when I needed more room to hang out clothes to dry; it now does double duty as a line for my strawberry baskets. That wall gets a good amount of sun, so I figured suspending the berries from the line made good sense. To the far right of the picture, on the fence is a netting I strung up today. It is too fine to see, but trust me, it is there. I planted peas at the foot of it and hope the little buggers will climb the netting, thus thriving and providing me with a delicious accompaniment to my mashed potatoes.

I will be adding zucchini, beans, more peas, more lettuce, cabbage and whatever else I see for sale at the garden center, into this garden. I am so excited.

Like usual, please excuse spelling and grammar errors: I am in a rush and don't have time/don't feel like going back over this. Love everyone!

Mustafa

Here is the publicity video of the show I am working on as a dramaturg in London. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv2EzRpb1Oc

Ok, I am not smart enough to add the video on here, instead you get the youtube link. ENJOY!!!

A repost from my friend's blog

This is what my friend Emma did when she was getting stressed from writing assignments. She is a PhD student at the University of Warwick. I feel that I may just have copy this idea in the future. This is also the friend that once said to me "I guess I should through this cardboard [from putting together Ikea furniture] away, instead of building a fort. It is a sign that I am maturing into a real person [read adult]."

"When the going gets tough...

...the tough build blanket forts.

Yepp. This is how I deal with feeling down....and you know what?

It worked.

To the Writing Cave!"

from epbandj2.blogspot.com