I have two strong memories of that show. The first was a student matinee that we performed, and we did a lot of student matinees for that show. It was intermission and we were sitting in the dressing rooms and it was taking longer than normal for them to call us back for places for the second act. We kept being told we were on a hold. We were wondering what was going on. Then a call came backstage saying that we could all go home. While the students loved the show and responded to it with the usual huge gales of laughter, it was a religious school, and the teachers had decided that it wasn\u2019t appropriate for their students to hear the substance of this play. The theater was told that had we done the show in doublet and hose, they might have stayed. But you have done the play in contemporary dress making it too accessible and easier to understand by the students. In particular the jokes about religion, Malvolio being a Puritan and being constantly made fun of, they did not find appropriate. So at intermission, the entire audience was packed back into the buses and taken home. It was so hard to understand this decision given that all of the students had been taught the play in school before coming to see it.<\/p>\n
Teachers\u2019 guides had been given out and the theater had sent instructors to discuss the production. So they knew what the play was about. But the teachers didn\u2019t understand just how irreverent and dirty Shakespeare could be. And the occasional use of fart bags might have made them think we had created a diminishing of the master\u2019s work. But when you have a drunk character like Toby Belch saying a line like \u201cmake water but in a sink-a-pace” (meaning he is pissing while dancing) … It\u2019s not us, but Shakespeare who is the dirty rowdy one and we were just showing him off to his full excess.<\/p>\n
\nThe last couple weeks of the show on Sanibel island I wanted to go out for a nice dinner at a good restaurant. I hadn\u2019t been out in weeks. The boys would all go to the bar and drink, and I didn\u2019t want to do that anymore or spend my money that way. I was saving for dinner at this beautiful restaurant between Sanibel and Captiva Island. The problem was I couldn\u2019t find anyone to go with me. Fellow actors said it was too expensive. I never liked sitting in a restaurant alone as a woman. But this time I decided to be brave. I\u2019d go early before the crowds go there. At 5 pm, I figured there would be fewer men sitting around the bar that might come and hit on you. As a younger woman, I was subjected to this constant obnoxious behavior and I\u2019d grown too tired of it. <\/p>\n
When I got to the restaurant, there were only two other women there. One was in her late 40s and one in her late 50s. We were all sitting alone at our small tables. While I was waiting for my order, the older woman started a conversation with me. I then asked a question of the 40-year-old. Before long the three of us were chatting away. The older woman was a diplomat who lived in Washington DC but had grown up in New York. The 40-year-old was a native New Yorker, and I lived in New York, so we had much in common. Once I mentioned I was an actress, they did what most people do: asked me a million questions about where I had worked, if they might have seen me in anything, what famous people I knew, and how I learned all those lines. As we were leaving, they were making arrangements to see my play together before it closed. The older woman invited me the next day to have lunch with her at her home on Captiva.<\/p>\n
When I arrived I was astonished at the beauty of this modern architectural mansion she lived in. Four stories and an indoor\/outdoor pool. We had drinks there, and then she took me to see another house that was on the bay. A smaller house that she also owned and sometimes rented out. We had a catered lunch there. I remember telling her that I needed to be braver more often because you never know what you can find when you venture out. After lunch, she drove us back to her home where my car was parked. An older man walking by us, stopped her car to say hello. She introduced me to him, his name was Bob. They chatted for a while, and then he invited me to walk down to the end of the street with him. I was hesitant. I thought, here we go again. But my new friend said you should go into the barn and see his work. So before I left I walked down to the end of the road with him. His home faced the water. His barn was across the road and the doors were open. There were several people inside working on art projects he showed me around a little bit, and then one of the workers came up to him and asked, \u201cIs this what you wanted, Mr. Rauschenberg?\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, some days it pays to be brave and venture out. You never know who you might meet.
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I have two strong memories of that show. The first was a student matinee that we performed, and we did a lot of student matinees for that show. It was intermission and we were sitting in the dressing rooms and it was taking longer than normal for them to call us back for places for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memories"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1735312011:340"],"_thumbnail_id":["195"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n