We left San Diego before 8 am to head up to Cedar City. We were going to "Romeo and Juliet" that evening and the play orientation started at 6:45. Given the hour time change, possible traffic and a desire to eat dinner before the show, I thought it best to get an early start. We made great time and ended up arriving around 4 pm. It was nice to unpack and have a bit of time to chill before dinner and the show.
A highlight of our trip to Cedar City was all the shows and related theatre stuff we did. A lot of this was driven by the kids, particularly Megan as she was interested in seeing pretty much all of the extra stuff available while we were there. In our four days in Cedar, Megan and Matthew went to 4 plays (Me went to 5), play orientations for all of the shows, 2 Greenshows (Appalachia and Regency England), a behind the scenes tour, repertory magic (where we saw them change the set between 2 shows), an actors talk and a prop talk. It was busy! And fun!
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| Grandpa, Grandma, Matthew, Me and Megan waiting for the first Greenshow to start. That night, we watched "Romeo and Juliet." The tickets were $4 each as it was the 4th of July and so not a lot of people had bought tickets. The play was good although I kept rooting for them to change course and NOT die. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The next day, we watched Gnomio and Juliet per the kids' request. |
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| At the actors talk on Wednesday morning. The guy in the middle played Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet and Lysander in Midsummer. The guy on the right player Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Demetrius in Midsummer. When we went to this talk, we had seen Romeo but not Midsummer. It was interesting to hear their perspectives. The actor who plays Romeo really does a lot of research on his roles. He goes through the script stanza by stanza and rewrites it as he would say it. This helps him learn his lines and internalize the play. We also went on the Behind the Scenes tour which was cool as we got to see costumes, props, sets and such. |
That evening, we went to "The Play that Goes Wrong." It was hilarious! They figure that the people who wrote the play asked all their associates what the worst 3 things were to go wrong during a play and then they included all of them in one play. It was a lot! Scenery kept falling apart (someone was on stage "fixing" the set before the show even started). One actor couldn't pronounce some of his words and kept looking at his hand to know what to say. The actors got off on their lines (the lady suspect was answering the inspector's questions and then the inspector would ask them). The set fell apart including the 2nd story falling down in stages. The lead lady was knocked out and so a stagehand took her place, reading the lines poorly. Once the lead lady came back to consciousness, both women were playing the same role and trying to outdo each other. There were missed lines, wrong music and lots of other stuff. It was a very funny show! And we got to sit in a box seat for it, which seemed very fancy and fun.
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| Matthew and Grandpa in our box seat for "The Play that Goes Wrong." |
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| Grandma, Megan, Me and Matthew |
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| We sat by the "tech box" for the play. Some interactions took place right by us. |
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| Grandpa, Matthew, Me, Megan and Grandma in the box seat. |
In the different seminars and orientations we went to, they all talked about this play and how challenging it was to put on. Generally when doing a show, the goal is to prevent things from going wrong. In this show, so much goes wrong and they have to figure out how to make it work. It's a bit of a mindset shift. They do have a lot of extra props--there are duplicates of almost everything with some pieces having 3 or more. They have a vase for every show and they had to not fire it so it wouldn't leave little shards everywhere when it breaks. They have 3 fire extinguishers--one that is getting used that week, one going to SLC to get recharged and one coming back from getting recharged. Getting the right balance between usability and functionality was hard. The phone is one example of this as it needed to stretch far and drop like a real phone, but not break. Magnets hold most of the props in place and they have to be removed by hand so the backstage folks are running around during the entire show. And after every show, they submit a list of what went wrong (that wasn't supposed to). They said the actors are very good at covering so you don't know what went wrong that was supposed to go wrong versus what wasn't supposed to go wrong.
Thursday morning, we went to the props seminar. That was really interesting. They told us about the budget for each show, how many big props there are and how many candles they use. Most shows are under budget, but not "The Play that Goes Wrong." A few interesting things we learned: "Midsummer" had a bunch (800+) of rosettes handmade from ribbon that they had in storage for the forest background. They also made a bunch of little angel figures so they can give out 6 during each Appalachia Greenshow. "Romeo and Juliet" used baby doll heads for the angel heads on the casket. They reuse a lot of props but for "Raisin in the Sun" they bought a brand new rug, poured paint in it and pounded it to make it look old and will need to throw is away at the end of the season. Each play has a monkey hidden somewhere in the scenery; they showed us pictures of where they were for each show.
Thursday morning, we went to the pioneer museum where we learned about how the early settlers lived in the area.
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| Panning for gold. |
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| We went to the temple to do baptisms (Matthew requested this on our visit in March). Megan and Matthew each did 5 names. Grandpa performed the ordinances. |
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| The English Regency greenshow. There were lots of Jane Austen references including Mr. Darcy's attempts at wooing Elizabeth ("I like you against my better judgment", etc.). |
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| Grandma, Megan, Me, Matthew, Shakespeare and Grandpa at the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre. We went to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which was good. I especially liked Helena and Demetrius (same actor as Romeo but with a wig so he looked quite different), Bottom and Puck. So much magic and fantasy! |
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| Pretty sunset at intermission. |
Friday, we went on the Hidden Haven Hiking Trail.
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| Megan and Me one of the many times we crossed the stream. |
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| Matthew peeking out from behind the rocks at the end of the trail. It was actually quite steep with loose dirt up to the rocks. When Megan tried to get up there, she caused a mini avalanche so stopped. |
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| Waterfall at the end. |
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| Grandma, Megan and Me |
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| We took a side trail on the way back where we saw some pretty flowering prickly pear. |
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| Some other pretty flowers. Megan picked a piece of tall grass that she carried with her; it came up to her nose! |
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| We ate lunch at a park and then stopped to get ice cream on the way home. Yum! |
We went to Repertory Magic where we saw them change out the set from "The Play that Goes Wrong" to "Raisin in the Sun." It was interesting to watch the process. We ate dinner at Sizzler. We looked at pictures and video from Grandpa's trip to Bolivia. We also finished a puzzle--we did quite a few while we were there.
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| One of the puzzles we worked on. |
On Saturday, Grandpa, Megan and Matthew went on a 4 hour 4 wheel drive trip. They seemed to have a good time. Some of the drive was really bumpy!
Grandma and Me went to see "Emma the Musical." It was a delightful show! It was interesting to see how they told the story of Emma through song.
After dinner, we went to "Into the Woods." It was ok. I definitely preferred the first half of the play because it ended at a happy place and because a bunch of people died in the second part. Matthew pointed out that it was all the mothers who died. That's sad!
Sunday, we went to church and then packed up and headed out to Mesquite.
