And I’m back. Wow. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and I’m definitely feeling it. This weekend is the first that we’re in Calgary with almost nothing going on since… oh, Father’s Day, give or take. I’m looking forward to it. Of course, when I say that we’ve got “nothing going on,” I mean that our schedule includes two Fringe shows tonight (both of us), a workshop tomorrow morning (me), an appointment at the bank tomorrow afternoon (both), coffee with a friend sometime this weekend (both), mixing the Passion Play recordings (Colin), and a date night tomorrow night (we still haven’t used a gift card that Colin’s parents gave us for Christmas in 2007, and it’s going to expire soon if we don’t use it!).

I have at least three entries rolling around in my brain, bumping up against each other and refining themselves as I continue trying to get them down on paper. Screen. Whatever. For now, though, I’m going to do a “Weekly” update. In other words, I’m going to try my hardest to remember what I’ve watched, listened to, read, experienced, and been working on in the past few weeks. It may not be the most complete list I’ve ever put together, but I’ll see how I do.

Reading:

• Thursday Next and Nursery Rhyme Crime books. I’m in a bit of a Jasper Fforde phase right now, so I’ve read through the last few Thursday Next books (The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels) and the first two Nursery Rhyme Crime books (The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear). I’m discovering that I’m not quite as big a fan of the Nursery Rhyme Crime books as I am the Thursday Next books, but they’re still worth the read. Fforde is definitely an author for people who love books — not just for people who love reading, but for people who love the worlds that the books create, and who love inhabiting that other world for a while. The Thursday Next books play on that aspect of reading better than just about anything else I’ve read recently.
• The Soloist, by Steve Lopez. A friend (thanks, Molly!) got me this book for my birthday (actually, she also got me one of the Thursday Next books, too!), and I’m just now reading it. I’d wanted to read the book before seeing the movie, and given how few movies we’ve seen this summer, that was no problem.
• Performing the Sacred: Theology and Theatre in Dialogue, by Todd E. Johnson and Dale Savidge. Another thesis-related book, and one that I’ve just started, but am definitely looking forward to digging into. Within the first few pages, the book offers this fantastic quote:
  

  The theatre, of all the arts, uniquely embodies the central tenets of the Christian faith. The fact that live human beings embody the characters of a play speaks of the incarnate nature of God in Christ. The fact that the actors perform for a live audience highlights the communal nature of theatre and reflects the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in relationship. The fact that the relationship between audience and performer allows for interaction and influence between the two speaks of the presence of God transforming the world through nature and grace.

  Colin read that, and commented that it’s either absolutely brilliant or incredibly heretical. I’m going with brilliant, and I’m excited to keep reading. This is, I think, going to be another of those books that takes me a while to get through, just because I only want to be reading a chapter at a time so that it has time to sink in.

Listening:

• Christmas music, mostly. Really, what else would I be listening to in August? No, seriously. I’m dating a choir director, and this is cantata-choosing time. What else would we be listening to? Colin has the first draft of his concert chosen, and I write the narration, so I’ve listened through the demo a few times to start getting an idea of the direction that the narration is going to take. We listened on the way down to Denver last weekend, which, of course, lead to listening to the recordings of the 2007 and 2008 cantatas, discussing their strengths and weaknesses and critiquing the performances. Again. Which, of course, lead to us putting in some Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Because how can you go wrong with that?
• Aside from Christmas music, I’ve just had my iTunes on random, so I’m listening to a bit of everything right now, just enjoying it for what it is and not listening to anything in particular for any particular reason. It’s nice.

Watching:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the last movie we saw in a theatre (and my thoughts on it (sort of) are here). We’re planning to go see something this weekend (yay for gift certificates!), but we’re not sure what yet. I really want to see either (500) Days of Summer or Julie and Julia, but we’ll see.
• Bones, season 1, is our latest TV-on-DVD pick. I’ve been meaning to watch the show for ages, but hadn’t started watching it in real time. Colin picked up season 1 quite some time ago, and he’s watched it already, but I hadn’t, so there we go. My mom (who is notoriously very conservative in her TV/movie choices) asked if she’d like it, since she’d enjoyed the books, and we think that she will. She enjoys the mysteries and the crime-solving aspects of the stories; the thing that would put her off would be graphic violence. The show is slightly gory sometimes, but there isn’t really any graphic violence depicted. Probably a pretty good choice for my mom, actually.

Performing and Visual Art:

• Kreskinned at the Calgary Fringe. I saw that one last night, and it was cute. Not the greatest show I’ve ever seen, and it didn’t really break any new ground, but it was a fun story, and worth seeing. We’re going to see two more Fringe shows tonight—unfortunately, since we were out of town for the first weekend of the Fringe, we’re only able to do these few shows, but it’s better than nothing, right?
• I saw a warm-up for the Summerstock production of RENT last night. I just saw them doing the opening number, but was actually fairly impressed with the kid who played Mark. The staging seemed to be a bit boring (although I’d have to see the entire show to judge for certain), and the kid playing Roger was decent, but nothing exciting, but I was definitely impressed with the voice on Mark. The show only runs through tomorrow, so we won’t get to see it, but I was glad to have caught at least that much.
• The Canadian Badlands Passion Play was several weeks ago. I wasn’t in it this year, but I was onsite for one weekend and watched the final dress rehearsal and closing night. It’s definitely worth seeing, and it was interesting to actually watch it from the audience, which I don’t think I’d ever done before. It takes a certain kind of artistic vision to create a live stage show on a 4-acre set, and to maintain the flow and intimacy of the show with a 200-person cast, but the directing team does it very well. In many ways, it combines the particulars of both theatrical and cinematic direction, working with the grand scope and scale, but choosing how to direct the audience’s eye in very specific ways through motion and sound. Story aside (and it’s a very moving portrayal of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ), it’s worth seeing just for the ways that the team uses the benefits and challenges of the space.
• Calgary Folk Music Festival. We only made it to the first night, and didn’t actually sit down and watch anything. Instead, we wandered through the Arts Market, ate dinner, and took in the atmosphere, letting the music be almost a background to everything else that was going on. That was, actually, a really cool way to experience it. Had we been able to go to some of the other evenings, we might have tried to make it more of a concert experience, but as it was, it worked really well.
• All kinds of visual art exhibits. I’ve been wandering through galleries and looking at the exhibits in the +15 windows, and I can’t even remember how much I’ve seen in the past few weeks. A lot. We’ll just leave it at that.

There’s more coming up in the next few weeks. We’ve got the Fringe tonight; we still need to try and get to both Shakespeare in the Park shows; we’re going to see Lion King in a couple of weeks; Mom and Dad want to take the family out to Rosebud to see Man of La Mancha—and those are just the big, already-planned things. Arts events have a way of creeping up on us and filling in the cracks in our schedule in unexpected and very cool ways. We’ll see what the last few weeks of the summer bring—and then we’re into fall and the launch of a new season!

There could be a “things I’m working on” category, too, but mostly, right now, it’s boring stuff like starting to catalogue our entire DVD library (oh, what a job!), writing interview questions for my thesis and making a list of people and companies to send them to, starting to think about getting Coffeehouse stuff ready for September and sending that off the the rest of the committee, projects at work, and suchlike.

And finally, in lieu of an “experiencing” category, check out some photos of the last two weekends:

Some pictures of the Weekend to End Breast Cancer -- walking, dying hair, and the whole team after we finished.

Pictures from our weekend in Denver for Dean and Becky's wedding.

(Pictures L to R, top to bottom: Colin and I at a pre-wedding brunch hosted by one of my second cousins; Colin, me, Carl (brother), Esther (sister), and Justin (BIL) before the wedding; the immediate family with my grandma and two aunts at brunch; Colin and I dancing at the reception; our side of the family at the wedding (the groom is my first cousin, and this all the cousins, aunts and uncles, and my grandma—we were missing about 6 cousins and a couple of uncles); Justin, Colin, me, and Esther; the bride and groom during the ceremony; Colin dancing with my grandma; the bouquet toss.)

So what are you up to? What are you seeing, reading, watching, listening to?

Tags: calgary, choir, christmas, film, good books, Music, pictures, Television, Theatre, things I've seen

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