April 8, 2018

Covered new plantings last night against temperatures rumored to drop to the 20's.

Attended a rehearsal of Antigonus in the UNCA theater rehearsal space. Q is an excellent director, perceptive and patient beyond his years. His actors were another story. He was like a lightning bolt darting into a bank of dark and unformed clouds, all of his actors meaty and sleepy and resistant and grumbling, as actors do, about something.  I remember why I turned from the theater in school, though part of my heart was there. The best of the actors is also quite beautiful. Things are never fair, never equal. He came late, and I gathered he had no reason to, other than to establish himself as “he who comes late.”They play interesting theater games, but the enthusiasm thus generated  doesn’t seem to bleed over into the work. When they were actually saying my lines, it was electrifying.

Mention of Shakespeare sends these actors into howls of derision, as if they had discovered some great fraud that fooled the rest of history. Are they taught that by the Drama department? It is almost an article of faith that contemporary practice is better than Shakespeare’s by reason of. . . well, I have not heard the reason, merely the brave declaration.

Found Minos the turtle dead beside the pond. Maybe the bears had dug him out of hibernation, but they hadn’t eaten him. I was sad, but I also learned that he had dwelt stealthily in my pond since I put him there, boding well for future reptile plantations.