Slug-A-Bed Sunday

The only problem with evening performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is that the curtain does not go up in the summer until 8:30 p.m., and normally does not go down for the last time until nearly midnight. For us Geezers, that means we're not shuffling off to bed until Cindarella's coach has turned back into a pumpkin.

So today (Sunday), we didn't get our lazy butts out of bed and off to breakfast until nearly 10 a.m. After a short walk in Lithia Park, we took in another of the Festival's noon lectures. Today's presentation was by Anthony Heald who put on a splendid performance in the title role in "Tartuffe" last night. Heald was returning to Ashland after a seven year absence. He is an accomplished stage actor who has won Obies for Off-Broadway shows and two Tony nominations for performances on The Great White Way. He has appeared in a number of TV shows, including "Cheers" and "Boston Public", as well as in films such as "Silence of the Lambs"and "The Client". One of his more unusual "acting" jobs has been to create the voices of all of the characters in the Star Wars stories that have been made into audio books.

After lunch, we drove north about half an hour to the little hamlet of Eagle Point, north and east of Medford, to visit the historic 1872 Butte Creek Mill which is still in operation turning out various products such as stone ground flour, cereals, and grits.

Tonight will be our final night in Ashland and we'll see "Tracy's Tiger", a musical based largely on a William Saroyan novella of the same name. We both read the Saroyan novella and are curious to see how the writers (which include one of the actors who performs in "Tartuffe"and who has a role in this play, too) have managed to portray the tigers who are basically imaginary characters, or "spirits", in the Saroyan story and normally cannot be seen by the other characters

Tomorrow: Off to The Coast, Off with The Shorts, and On with The Fleece!.