Art

How a Bad Cat and Stinky Feet got Me Back to my Beat

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Drummer boy

I was still embroiled with work the other night when grandfather clock counted a single chime, reminding me that it was 5:30 and time to quit. The soft din of homework-related questions had waxed into a blurred chorus of “Moms”, so when the words “stinky feet” permeated my brain, I didn’t know if seven-year-old Thing2’s smelly socks had prompted the thought or if someone was actually singing the words.

I looked up from my computer and glanced toward the den. There was Thing2, wearing the smelly socks and singing as he hunched over his sketchbook and writing.  

“He wanted to write a song,” explained the Big Guy. Seeing Dad’s guitar emerge from storage, Thing2 had been inspired.  No one had ever told that only he could not write a song, so he decided to try it.

At dinner, the Big Guy extolled our offspring’s achievement. “He wrote a song,” he said over and over again. I was proud, but, still frazzled from the day, I didn’t offer the encouragement I normally do.

Thing2 is creativity personified.  He sings and dances.  He has littered his desk books he has written, illustrated and assembled.  He lives for art, and this song was just his latest expression.  

I grew up hearing the phrase, “Do what you love.”   I repeat it every time I see him fly through the air or ‘publish’ a new book. That night, however, I wondered how I tell my youngest child, to chase artistic dreams when, lately, I have increasingly surrendered mine, partly to depression but mostly to work?

“Dad, I want to write another song,” he said the next night after homework.  This single was called Bad Cat. The Big Guy played back up on guitar while Thing2 drummed on a book and sang lead.

“Bad Cat, Bad Cat, sitting on the counter,” it started. There were three more verses on the sins of our chubby black cat.

I started the video camera on the iPhone, and Thing 2, sensing a hit, launched into another chorus.  My feet began to tap.  My youngest was inspiring me in spite of myself.  Most of my best posts start with antics authored by Thing1 or Thing2, and, last night every beat of his drumsticks generated a new idea.

Thing2 was reminding me of what he knows instinctively.  Art isn’t a dream, and it’s not a living.  It’s life.  When the song was over, I gave his newest opus the reception it deserved.  

“You keep doing what you love,” I said with a tight hug free of doubt.  

Last night I set the alarm for 4 AM again, and this morning, for the first time in ages, I didn’t hit the snooze button.  I had homework – to practice what I preach.  Completing the assignment quickly reminded me how much art, for me also, is life.  

Thing2 may be a bit unorthodox, but he’s turned out to be quite the teacher.

The Bookmaker

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BookMaker copy

Last Saturday, to much fanfare from my family, I clicked an upload button and published my first short story.  Fifteen minutes later, I had my first sale and, somewhat hesitantly, added the moniker of ‘author’ to my Facebook profile.

Hesitation has been the hallmark and stumbling block of my short writing career.  

I’ve wanted to write most of my life.  Only in the last year and a half – on joining the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Project – did a professional writing career seem like a realistic goal.  

Over the year as I’ve sketched and posted, seven-year-old Thing2 has written and sketched with me.  He’s filled 5×8 notebooks with trees and robots and star systems.  He’s pilfered printer paper to produce his illustrated, staple-bound paperback stories.  

The weekend before I published my story, I mentioned his endeavors as I was standing in the living room of a friend and writing mentor and his wife.  I had been working on their computers, and my friend was taking the opportunity to harangue me for my hesitation, even enlisting thirteen-year-old Jack to keep me on the hot seat until I hit ‘Publish’.  

“I think you’re scared,” said my friend’s wife.

 “You’re right,” I said and pointed to Thing2 who was hanging on my friend. “You should see the books he makes,” I said.  Thing2 smiled shyly.  I thought I was off the hook, but my friend’s wife smiled, apparently knowing her husband would not be so easily distracted.  “He’s really talented,” I said.

 “And I bet he doesn’t doubt himself,” said my friend.

 “No he doesn’t, I admitted.  

A week later, we were at Bob’s diner.  I was enjoying the glow of seeing my first royalties.  

Jack and Thing2 quickly put my accomplishment in perspective as they setup a game of table hockey, complete with salt-and-pepper shaker goal posts  and a straw wrapper puck. Fulfilling the requirements of my primary job title, I did the mom thing and barked a reprimand.   

Thing2 asked for my notebook, and I gave it to him. 

“Are you starting a new story?” I asked.  He grinned and nodded, staking out the back 10 pages for illustrations.

“Mommy,” he announced, “I want to write a book just like you when I grow up.”

“You’ll be a great writer,” I said.  There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind or voice.  The Big Guy concurred with the same confidence he expresses when he’s encouraging me.

That’s when it hit me.  Thing2 and I have the same dream.  I see his innate talent, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have his hills to climb.  Each of us will only succeed, however, if we don’t start (or in my case stop) worrying if we have the right stuff and just climb. 

October Common Thread Give-Away

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Update:  I’ll be announcing the winner tomorrow, so take a moment to visit the sites of the other artists in our group.  Good Luck!

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I am the featured artist for October’s Common Thread Give-Away and in keeping with the season, I’m giving away a signed, matted print of a mixed media drawing of Chuck, our Halloween Cat (who’s currently on walk-about).  It’s a 5×7 print on watercolor paper. 

To enter the contest, by leaving a message in the comments section, and I’ll choose a winner at random.  

When you’ve commented on my site, take a minute to visit the other artists in our group –   Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, Jane McMillan, and Kim Gifford!

 

Take Away

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Photo

Six-year-old Thing2 doesn’t like art – he lives it. There is no dragging him to an art museum, there’s only the whining when we leave. Whether it’s sauntering around a museum with his sketch pad or putting his own spin on a particularly acrobatic leap he saw in a dance routine, Thing2 throws himself into color and sensation and into life in a lot of ways. Always, his joy becomes ours, but, as we learned once again the other night at a Hubbard Hall performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, it’s not always predictable just how that happiness will spread.

Currently in a Billy-Elliot-I-Will-Dance phase, we were certain this opera – a comedy punctuated by more physical comedy – would be the inspiration for his next set of dance moves.    Every new movie or show is an opportunity to learn and create a new step. So, as we settled in, I began watching Thing2’s to see if he was absorbing the action.

He sat two seats away from me, but the stage cast enough light for me to see his rapt gaze as the ensemble of singers filled the stage.  At first he was a statue – absorbing the color and the new experience of having a play sung for him.  Then, after trying to ask if we recognized one of the singers as his former camp teacher, he began to move – but not in the way I’d expected.

I was already prepared to reign in any bursts of flair, but Thing2 had been absorbing something else besides the dancing.  In front of the stage was a lone pianist accompanying the singers throughout the show.  Her hands danced, never resting until the curtain call.  Now Thing2’s hands began to dance, following every inflection of the piano player’s wrists, ever flutter of her fingers.  Thing2 can play “Doe A Deer” on our piano at home, but, mimicking the musician in front of him, he became a virtuoso.  He became one with the music and the musician.  

The Big Guy and I smiled at each other as we watched him.  Thing2 had found his own unique perspective to take something away from the show, and there was another show still to come on Sunday.  The Big Guy and I were eager to see it.  Watching “The Barber of Seville” ten feet in front of us would be an experience in itself.  But we were also wondering what new inspirations Thing2 will bring home for us to enjoy.

Seeds

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Uncle vanya

“Tara, I hear a baby!” cried the curly-haired toddler sitting on the church lawn. Her neck stretched as she searched a far section of the audience. I  turned my head, trying follow her intent gaze to its destination on our left.  Then I saw it.  I’d seen it earlier, dressed in a unisex-colored onesie and trying to crawl over it’s mother’s knee, then wobbling like a Weebil  on a too-small picnic blanket.  I had spent a few smiling moments trying to guess if the baby was a boy or a girl, but one thing was clear.  The infant was barely old enough to sit up without help, but his or her delighted squeaks were telling on of my stories. 

A few short years ago, I was the mother lying on a picnic blanket with an alternately curious and hungry infant.  A few years ago, it was my baby who crawled over his mother and brother and father as the sun began to set behind the mountains that provided much of the backdrop for the annual play put on by the Mettawee River Theatre Company.  He was the one squeaking with delight as the players in primitive masks emerged from behind the papier mache rocks and giant puppets appeared above them.  He was the one who settled into nurse for a few minutes, glancing occasionally back at the scene unfolding in front of him.

It happens at the same time every summer. This tiny company of players and producers bring their puppets and props to this sleepy Vermont village, and on the field in front of the mountains, they bring Euripides and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and the tales of poets long forgotten to life.  They touch on serious themes unlikely to entertain small children, but every summer they do even more than that.  They enthrall them.  They plant seeds of curiosity and creativity because for all the things that were seen and forgotten in my babies’ first years, these were the few moments they would take into the next.

Now their summers are littered with these moments.  We’ve found a host of free outdoor productions that introduce our kids to new thoughts and new thoughts about their parents.  Tonight, sitting with both my babies (one now bigger than I) in lawn chairs around our picnic basket, I can’t help but smile as I see another seed being planted near by. 

 

 

To Sir, with Thanks

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IMG 3031

To Sir Paul,

This is a Thank You note from a long-time fan and a grateful parent.  About three weeks ago, our entire family traveled from Vermont to Boston to see you perform at Fenway Park.  We were a little nervous – it was our first visit to Boston in over a year, and we had high hopes.  Thanks to you, they were met in ways we hadn’t begun to imagine.

We got to our seats in Fenway just about quarter to seven and not before shelling out a sinful amount of money for T-shirts.  I rationalized this was the only time we may get to see you perform.  And, even though a friend who had been to your sound check earlier in the afternoon had warned us that you were late, we decided it was more fun to wait inside a ballpark that had so many memories for the Big Guy and I than to stand around Yawkey Way.

About forty minutes after we sat down, an introductory slideshow began scrolling up the two massive screens on either side of the stage.  I’ve been listening to your songs since I was in the womb, and my husband has been a fan since seeing you perform on Ed Sullivan, and loved seeing the photos of you and the Beatles and your more recent years.  We’ve done our best to move the tradition forward to our kids, and even they loved seeing the photos of you growing up and growing your own family.

Our six-year-old, lovingly known as Thing2 around our house, waited as patiently as I have ever seen him wait for anything.  When the first song began, about an hour and a half after the scheduled time, he was just starting to want to go back to the hotel, but when the first notes began to echo through the ball park, you brought him back.  You also brought me and the Big Guy to our feet.  The three of us were singing and dancing and clapping as you belted out, “‘Eight Days a We-e-ek.. ‘Eight Days a We-e–eek””.

My older son, twelve-year-old Thing1 who is about to be thirteen and, while not your oldest fan could possibly be your most devoted one, was sitting in his sit trying to cover his face with his hands so that he wouldn’t be recognizable if pictures of his parents dancing like idiots made it onto a concert tour DVD.  But we kept dancing, and despite himself, Thing1 began to silently mouth the words to the song.

Everytime I peeked at him, he rewarded our dancing a look of mortification.  But somewhere between ‘Eight Days a Week’ and ‘We Can Work it Out’ and your soul-lifting introduction to and rendition of Blackbird (I can scarcely remember a more uplifting moment than sitting in the dark with 30,000 people singing along with your guitar), Thing1 had an epiphany that could only have happened here.

As the Big Guy, Thing2 and I were dancing and clapping, Thing1 and I glanced across the aisle and noticed another set of parents with a pair of young sons around 10 and 12.  The mother of the family was also dancing, but the dad – about the same age as the Big Guy – was lost in the music and the moment.  Clapping his hands, waving his arms, and stomping his feet as he sang along, word for word.  He looked younger than his two horrified boys sitting beside him.

For me it was confirmation that we had all found the fountain of youth for a night.  For Thing1, it was something different.  Watching the other two boys trying to obscure their own faces as they tugged at their dad’s sleeve, begging him to dance less effusively, it dawned on my twelve-year-old that all kids have the same problem.  They have parents.  And they can’t get rid of us until they get out of the house.

Any other night that knowledge might have been depressing.  He might have thought about his future independence, but that night, Sir Paul, that knowledge became freedom.  And for the first time ever, I saw my son begin to sing along – out loud – in public.  For the first time in a long time, I saw him shed the inhibitions he had begun to take on with his adolescence, and, as he did, he began to find his way back to himself.

So, not only for the unrestrained joy I got to see on the face of my six-year-old, but the serenity Thing1 got from accepting the parents he can’t change, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Abbyroad

Sincerely,

Ma Barlow

Save

Magic Reclaimed

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boysathubbardhall

About a year ago – almost exactly a year ago – I wrote a piece about a very special place not far from our house.

Hubbard Hall, a community theatre and art center in the one-traffic light town of Cambridge, NY, had been on our radar for a number of years. My husband became involved with their theatre company and returns at least twice a year. Then I got pulled in by a writing workshop/group that is moving into its second year. My sons are the most recent members of the flock, and it was their experience at summer theatre workshops that prompted my piece last year.

Jack, my oldest, was already navigating the self-conciousness that comes with early teen years and thought he had no interest in being in a play.  Thing2, my six-year-old, never had much of a shell, but, like a lot of kids his age, he sometimes takes a few minutes to get used to a new classroom before letting go of my hand. In the presence of the Hubbard Hall Magic, however, Jack came out of his shell, and Thing2 discovered new worlds.  Both kids came away from their camps with new friends and new outlooks, and every subsequent workshop begins with Thing2 exclaiming, “Oh I LOVE this place.”

Over the spring we got a little disconnected from this magical place. I’m still at the Ministry of Encouragement hosted by author Jon Katz, but our little group has been going in different directions for a few weeks. It’s been temporary, but disconnection can morph into discouragement if left to fester.

So now, a year after I first wrote about this magical place, I’m sitting under the same oak tree on the same rotting picnic bench watching the same kids emerging from the murderously hot buildings as they scamper from rehearsal to craft projects. Thing2 and two of his friends become involved in a very sophisticated game of make-believe, laughing and waving their arms and looking like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Parents go in and out of the nearby Battenkill Books, seeking company and relief from the heat.

The scene is completely ordinary and completely magical, and in that moment I’m reminded of the things that inspired me last summer when I couldn’t stop writing. I’m still a big believer in the Ministry of Encouragement, but this is the perfect way to be reminded that I found it at the Church of Possibility here at Hubbard Hall.

The End of a Year, Beginning of an Era

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Closing piece for reading

A little over a year ago I stumbled into a writing workshop at Hubbard Hall, our local community theater and arts center.  The Hubbard Hall Writer’s Project was led by celebrated author Jon Katz, and, as with almost every other class or event our family has experienced at Hubbard Hall, it was life-changing event for me  – and for every member of the group.  

There was an application process for the workshop, and getting that acceptance letter felt like winning the lottery.  I hadn’t shown my work to anyone outside my family and had only been prepared for rejection.  That letter was a thousand times more valuable than any lottery ticket.  

Jon, our guru, later told us that he wanted to find a group that not only wanted to write but that would work well together.  He chose wisely.  Over the last year our group has become a family of sorts.  We’ve become sounding boards and safe havens for each other, and everyone in the group has flourished.  What began as an artistic exploration of rural life became a search for authenticity in our creative and personal lives.  Jon encouraged us all, and, recognizing our strengths, we began to grow and to encourage others. 

Last Friday night, we met to celebrate the impact of the last year.  The unseasonably steamy evening started with a reception which allowed all of us to display our work and continued with readings by each of the writers.  The evening was warm and encouraging – just as the year has been.  

I like public speaking about as much as I like shopping for a new swimsuit.  I wasn’t nervous when it was my turn to read, however.  Working with the video portion of the presentation kept me busy much of the day and evening, and I didn’t have time to feel nervous – at least not about the reading.  

The crowd dispersed quickly after the presentation, and the writers returned to the reception room to clean up their displays.  We all milled around a bit, even after our families had left, and I think I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want it to end.  Even though the group is going into its second year, when we started our goodbyes, I began to feel nervous.  

I’ve been working on a collection of short stories that should have been done last month.  Dealing with some mental health issues has slowed down progress, but there’s been a part of me that feels this project is part of my workshop experience.  I know I’ve been a little afraid that when it’s done, so is the workshop.  I felt a little of that on Friday night as I climbed into my car. 

When I got home I made sure the kids were in bed and then turned on the computer and checked messages, intending to sign off quickly and visit with my visiting sister-in-law.  Unconsciously, I clicked on the link to  our group’s Facebook page.  There, like a beacon in the soupy heat of the evening, were celebratory posts from one, then two and then a third writer.  A post from our guru suggesting a get-together appeared.  I didn’t know what to post that could add to the conversation, and I closed my computer. 

The next few days I didn’t go near my computer much.  We had a guest and baseball and garden to occupy us, and I like getting away from the screen.  For the rest of the weekend, however I took with me the knowledge that while the year of writing un-dangerously may be ending, it’s okay because it’s really part of an era that’s just begun.

I’ve posted and reposted links to the blogs of most of our members below (one author is currently keeping her blog private).  They are growing, breathing proof that some of the best work comes from an atmosphere of encouragement.  

Pugs and Pics by Kim Gifford, Vermont writer, photographer, artist and pug lover.  Whether she’s writing about her beloved pugs or her distinctive photographs, Kim’s work is humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes heartrending.

http://www.pugsandpics.com/

 

 A real life milkman-turned-writer and poet, John Greenwood’s blog Raining Iguanas is a journey of discovery and nurturing of his own talents as a writer and artist and of his native Upstate New York.  It combines the best of pleasurable escape and motivating inspiration.

http://rainingiguanas.blogspot.com/

 

Bedlam Farm by the venerable and always affable Jon Katz, was the inspiration and benchmark for each of our blogs.  Honest and fearless, Jon’s blog is living, breathing proof that the most important thing in life is to never stop growing.

http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

 Merganser’s Crossing by Diane Fiore, follows her journeys with her father and his dementia at the end of his life.  Diane’s blog is intensely personal and incredibly relevant at the same time.  Hopefully she will give us a book out of this, but, for now, it’s worth not only visiting, but going to the very beginning and reading it straight through.

 http://merganserscrossing.wordpress.com

 

Coordinated Mayhem by Rebecca Fedler. A recent college graduate and a poet, Rebecca is prolific and powerful.  Sometimes funny and always intriguing, her poetry is as insightful as it is entertaining.

 http://coordinatedmayhem.wordpress.com

 

One Step to the Side

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Forest lake 1

Our family is headed off on a mini vacation to Massachusetts this weekend. It’s primarily a family reunion, but it’s also an excuse for a brief but much-needed change of scene.

I don’t bring my laptop on vacation anymore.  The temptation to check on work is too strong, and I’m getting too lazy to bring anything that won’t fit in a suitcase and my purse.  I do need to write, however, and when my boss gave us all iPads a couple of years ago, I decided it was the perfect vacation writing tool.  It’s turned out to be a lot more.

Sometimes I’ll take a drawing pad and pencils, but because scanning sketches for posts is a bit of a pain, last summer I experimented with drawing right on the iPad.  The sketches from the iPad were simple scrawls at best.  It was a lot like finger painting, and I wasn’t always happy with the results.  I was happy, however, with the experience.   Forced not to work but to create and to do so outside of my comfort zone, I started trying new things that never would have occurred to me if there had been a convenient way to scan sketches into posts.  

Tomorrow I’m leaving work and my current favorite tool (colored pencils) at home.  We have three days.  I can spend that time carrying and organizing my working and writing tools, or I can spend those days living – even if it means traveling a less familiar path.  The sketches will be scrawls for a few days, but I think they’ll have their own rewards.

Learning to Look

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Mountain

Just about a year ago, I began drawing again.

Once upon a time I drew all the time.  I thought I would draw for my life at one point.  But, like so many adolescent fantasies, it surrendered to reality. 

Last year I joined a writing group at Hubbard Hall, a local community theatre and art center in Cambridge, NY and woke up to a different reality.  Initially intending to focus on writers in rural areas, the group has evolved into a search for authenticity in our work and our lives.  For me that meant making the choice to follow more earnestly my lifelong dream of being a writer and, simultaneously, to revive a dream that made art a part of my life again.  It’s been life changing in many ways, some of which I’m still discovering.

Thanks to my primary inspiration – my family – I’ve found my own drawing groove over the last year.  Perspective and landscapes were never my strong suits, but when the small towns are covered with snow or the hills are drenched in green, Vermont kickstarts my creativity, and I get more adventurous.  Learning to draw them has taught me the need to truly see them, but it’s also taught me to look.  

Trying to capture the snow-covered mountains meant studying them first thing in the morning when the powder dusted the evergreens, but it also forced me to consider the naked maple trees, thrown into relief against a dusky pink winter sky when the wind had swept their limbs clean.  I got comfortable scribbling craggy branches in my sketchbook and began seeking out the silhouettes during the often fiery sunsets.  I even learned to find beauty in the overcast grey that colors most of our winters.  Now, as spring coaxes tiny green buds from tree branches and the longer days turn thatch-colored fields into green and yellow meadows, I’m trying out a new set of skills with my pencils.  And I’m learning, yet again, not just to see the details in the everyday inspirations.  I’m also learning to find inspiration in everyday places and moments.

Fab, Four and Going to Fenway

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Abbyroad

We don’t take many vacations anymore.  Most of our holiday time is spent at relatives’ homes, so when we find time and opportunity for a trip that involves seeing something new, it’s an event.  So it was Serendipity Sunday this afternoon when the Big Guy stumbled on the ultimate humdinger (or hum-hummer in this case) of a family summer vacation.

I can’t remember a day when at least a bar of a Beatles tune hasn’t sprung from the Big Guy’s lips or emanated from his Martin guitar.  An excellent musician, the Big Guy has most of the Beatles songbook programmed into his fingers, and our kids have grown up listening to their Dad serenade them at all times of the day with Blackbird or Ticket to Ride.  It’s no accident, obviously, that twelve-year-old Thing1 and six-year-old Thing2 are avid fans, and, aware of the possible alternative musical fixations, neither the Big Guy nor I have discouraged their affection for a band that disbanded over 40 years ago.

Living in Vermont, the only other entity that could claim that kind of loyalty from our boys is the Boston Red Sox.  There are a few Yankee fans around here, but having parents who met, married and lived in Boston, Thing1 and Thing2 were Red Sox fans before they knew what baseball was.  The irony of their afflictions (being a Red Sox fan is an affliction, condemning one to a lifetime of heartbreak) is that, until two years ago, neither of them had been to Fenway.  Ticket prices are not what they were when the Big Guy and I were living six blocks from the Green Monster, so even Thing1 has only seen it as part of a school tour.

Enter Sunday afternoon.  The Big Guy was sitting on the couch, quietly browsing the web for car parts for an ongoing project when a soft ‘Huh’ escaped his lips.  I waited a few minutes before asking ‘What?’

“The Stones are coming to Boston this summer,” he said.

“Really?” I was cautious.  We’d seen the Rolling Stones years ago at the Boston Garden, and we both want to see them again before they throw in the towel.  The kids love the Stones too, so I asked, “How much are the tickets?”  I held my breath.  They hadn’t been cheap 15 years earlier.  The Big Guy scanned through the ticketing site.

“They’re not on sale yet,” he said.

“I heard cheap seats were selling for $600 someplace in Cali-” I started, but the Big Guy cut me off.

“And Paul McCartney’s playing at Fenway!” He exclaimed.  “And the tickets are cheaper.”

It wasn’t much of a toss-up.  In the end, we quickly decided our Fabulous Four would have its first Fenway experience with one of the original Fab Four.  It’ll be old and it’ll be something completely different.

Something Wicked

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I am not a theatre critic, but I am a fan of live theatre. I am particularly a fan of community theatre and it’s not just because I’m married to a guy with skin in the game. By its very nature, live theatre is intimate, but something about the smaller venue, the often inventive sets born of small budgets, and the casts comprised of commingled amateur and professional actors, intensifies that intimacy for me. For our family, this has been especially true at Hubbard Hall, a theatre company making its home in a small Victorian opera house in the ‘one-traffic light town’ of Cambridge, New York. This small venue with its eclectic, talented cast was the perfect place to introduce my twelve-year-old son to something truly wicked and wonderful – William Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

My date for the evening was not a willing victim, despite the numerous performances he has attended and enjoyed at Hubbard Hall (another Shakespeare play among them). It wasn’t terribly late for a school night, but he was happily ensconced on the sofa watching TV with his dad and brother. Knowing I couldn’t bring the Big Guy – our midweek babysitter lineup is non-existent, and MacBeth is not six-year-old friendly – I opted for the Because-I-Said-So card (rather than the pricking of his thumbs) and forced him into a clean shirt before ushering him out the door. He was offering to do homework as we got into the car.

He was still quietly protesting the interruption to his studies (me thinks he protested a bit too much) when we sat down.

Then the first of a trio of mischievous witches entered. Knowing the cast at Hubbard Hall also acts as stage crew, we watched as she toiled and troubled over a basket. We soon realized, however, that she and her sisters were setting the mood, and, as they scurried about the minimalist and starkly lit set, I watched them reset my son’s mood. The silent reproach became reluctant attentiveness and then intense focus. His focus would not change for the next hour and a half, and neither would mine.

We have been wowed by most of these actors in other performances, so even on the ‘Pay What You Will’ night, I pay full price, knowing it will be worth the price of admission. Thursday night was no exception. It is no small tribute that this talented, eclectic ensemble was able to communicate not just the gist, but the intensity of this story of betrayal and recrimination to an initially disinterested twelve-year-old.

An extra slot in my schedule senior year combined with my mom’s firm ideas about how school hours should be spent, resulted in my picking up a Shakespeare class for a semester. It had its moments, but for the most part, its main attraction was that it wasn’t a math or science class. And, while I was ultimately glad circumstance had me forced into a working knowledge of the bard’s works, I was hardly an aficionado. It wasn’t until years later when I caught an impromptu performance of As You Like It that I was able to get past the language and into the essence of the story. Remembering that these plays had been written for the benefit of penny-a-cushion illiterates (and philistines like me), I began making it a point to catch performances of Shakespeare’s works whenever I could find the modern equivalent of a penny-priced cushion. In the end, it wasn’t just the play that was the thing – it was the playing of it wherein the imagination became king.

So, I did hesitate a moment before dragging said twelve-year-old out on a snowy school night. And, even though biology and sleep forced us away too early (I will go back for another performance), when the hurly-burly was done, I knew something had been won. The close quarters stage combined with the cast’s intimacy with their parts and the poetry of the play may not have created a full-blown convert, but when my first-born walked out into the snow MacBeth wasn’t just some play written by a dead guy 500 years ago. It was a really cool show about murder and betrayal and guilt. It was the ultimate reality show. It was, as my eldest put it, wicked good.

The semi-biased facts about the show:

MacBeth is playing at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY from March 8-24 (full schedule is on their site). Directed by John Hadden, it is performed by the incredibly entertaining Colleen Lovett, Catherine Seeley Keister, Myka Plunkett, Christine Decker, Renzo Scott Renzoni, Robert Francis Forgett, Doug Ryan, Betsy Holt, Gino Costabile, and Reilly Hadden and (fact) should not be missed.