snow and shakespeare

 it was a beautiful snowy late afternoon and we took the bus uptown to meet our friends at a diner, before heading over to the pearl theatre for a production of the winter's tale. there's more to say . . but it's sunday and i need to get ready to see nycb's romeo and juliet . . ! i'll write more later.

the bus got stuck in tunnel traffic at 29th street. it took us 30 minutes to get through. thankfully, everyone was in a good humor and a woman sitting in front with her five or six year old kept us posted on the movement of the trucks and cars. the bus driver finally got pushy and just kept nosing his way across thirtieth street . . and then it was smooth sailing and we were at 42nd in less than 2 minutes. 

our friends had already ordered for us since we had texted them what we wanted from the bus . . ahh . . . cell phones . . 

i love days and nights like this with snow falling and everything all grey and white and quiet.

the theatre was just across the street and around the corner . .

it's a funny diner with a parking lot . . very unusual for manhattan.

at the pearl . . a theatre built into one of the current skyscraper apartment buildings. the pearl theatre has been around since the mid '80's when they used to be located on 22nd street in chelsea. we saw henry iv, part i, here two years ago.

we had a great time seeing the show together, and a fun time critiquing it afterwards! some of the actors we just loved and thought they were fabulous, and a few were caught up in being very dramatic. our biggest obstacle was the set: a present day dining room scene. it never changed from it's  three green walls, even when the play's scenes changed from indoors to outdoors and to another country altogether. it felt stifling, especially when the one of the main characters was opening up and undergoing changes himself. having the set stay the same felt constrictive. though we were unhappy with this aspect, we all loved hearing the words come alive with the actors. dialogue that didn't make sense in the book, set us laughing in the theatre. it was a fun night.

concerts, auditions and plays

chanda was up early for a ballet class which greg walked her to, before going uptown to look for his wallet which he found he had left at his office. morgana was up for a 10 am acting class, and korrina slept in.

the trees are still bare in the west village, and flowers have not really poked their heads up yet along the sidewalks. the weather has been consistently in the middle 30's and low 40's. compared to last year, it's been a decent winter.

the days have been primarily grey.

i met chanda at 10 am to walk cross town with her to third street.

this morning she had an orchestra concert.

they played four pieces, two of which had four movements each, so it was one of their longest concerts.

this is an excerpt from plink, plank, plunk by leroy anderson.

they also played capriccio espagnole by nikolai rimsky-korsakov, four royal dances by eric ewazen, and roisin eating ombies from outer space, by richard meyer (!)

afterwards, chanda had an audition at new york city center for a summer ballet intensive, and then we went with morgana to meet our friends and see henry the iv, part i at the pearl theatre on 42nd street.