Sean's here, yay! He got in really late on Thursday, and then came to school with me on Friday, He went to gallery talk given by Dr. Silk on communism and the arts in the 1950s while I was teaching my section, and then we went to get lunch from one of the trucks on campus. The proprietor, a very friendly old man with a Greek accent, must have seen our rings and seen us kissing, because he congratulated us on 'committing to each other for life,' and then told us about his grandchildren and showed us pictures on his cell phone before handing over our (delicious!) wraps. That was some good feta, I tell you. I think I've made a new friend.
Friday afternoon into the evening we volunteered to help Dr. Bolman set up for the reception she was hosting for the attendees of the Byzantine Studies Conference at Penn to celebrate her exhibition on the conservation of the Red and White monasteries. This is a pretty big deal, not only because the exhibition is awesome and is going to travel to museums around the world, but because it raises Temple's profile in the Byzantine studies community considerably. Many of the people who came told her they'd never been to Temple before but were quite impressed, and I know that the vast and delectable spread, catered by Whole Foods, was a crowd-pleaser. One guy actually took a photo of one of the tables before leaving. We didn't leave until 8:30, and Dr. Bolman insisted we all take a bottle of wine (with strict instructions not to tell anyone she gave it to us) as well as whatever food we could carry; Sean and I opted for an entire fruit tray, because that was some of the best-tasting fruit I've had in recent memory. She was really pleased that so many non-medieval students were there to help out, and she was doubly pleased that I managed to volunteer my husband at the same time!
Saturday morning we went to the PMA, where I had an appointment with the art librarian, and then walked around the collections for a couple of hours. We were both pretty exhausted from the night before, so we weren't at the optimal level of enthusiasm for a museum tour, but it was still nice. Generally in museums we wander around arguing about what pictures we would and wouldn't hang in our future house. Sean's always worried that I would want some "nightmarish" modern art piece. We did agree on a few select items, including Frederic Edwin Church's Pichincha, but we disagreed on a lot more! Oh, and he tried to embarrass me in the Abstract Expressionist room by making fun of the art. Sigh.
Last night we went to see Henry V at the Sedgwick Theatre, down the street from my house. It's in a beautiful Art Deco building from the 1920s, and although the interior has been really ravaged by time, there are echoes of the original mural decorations on the walls and ceiling. The actual theater portion of the building was sectioned off a long time ago, so the performance took place in a huge oval-shaped room that was once one of the lobbies (the theater group's website has a picture of the ceiling in this room, with a chandelier and the remains of the painted decoration).
The play was done pretty old-school, with bare stage, largely normal lighting, and almost no props. The costumes ranged from historical (for the foppish French nobles) to recent-historical (WWII uniforms for the soldiers) to contemporary (tuxedos for King Henry's court when they were being formal). Men also played the women's roles--and played them disturbingly well, considering the amount of movement in high heels that was required. The performance was really good, but the play itself was a little odd; immediately after the dramatic victory at Agincourt, the tone switches to comedy with Henry playing a trick on one of his soldiers. Then there's an extended courtship scene at the end between Henry and the daughter of the vanquished French king, which, while funny, made me lean over and whisper to Sean "when did this turn into a romantic comedy?" Then it ended a couple of minutes later on a totally down note, showing the king's future death and the accession of his young son, who would lose everything that his father had just won. It was kind of uneven, but overall extremely enjoyable. Oh, and student tickets were $10! Win.
No comments:
Post a Comment