13-16 March, 1997

Well, we've wrapped the first week of the run.

Two valuable lessons for future BakerShakes:

• When someone tells you that your lighting system draws enough power to overload the cables, replace the cables before the cable connector sparks and smokes at the beginning of the show. Alternately, make sure the set isn't placed such that it messes with the connector. Failure to follow these cautions may result in, at best, having to perform under Baker Commons lights.
• When you have a matinee performance, have the stage manager and/or house manager call everyone in the cast and crew at 11:30 am, so that wakefulness puncutality of cast and crew can be guaranteed.

That said, it's been a good opening week, and ther performances just get better every day. We could certainly use a somewhat bigger audience, however. Also, many of the audiences have been displaying the Can't Laugh at Shakespeare Syndrome. The only times, it seems, that the crowds have thought it safe to laugh, are the obviously comic ones in the second half. Of those, though, the Autolycus/Mopsa/Dorcas trio and the Autolycus/Florizel clothes-swap get 'em every time...

But apart from one staggeringly...well, I'm not going to say anything too libelous...let's call it, questionable review (the reviewer, not taking into account that we were using an audience-on-two-sides arena stage, made the memorable comment that "Lockett attempts so intensely to show each side of the dramatic activity, [that] the actors constantly turn their backs to the audience"), the overall reception has been very good. Even people unfamiliar with this play, or indeed with Shakespeare in general, have enjoyed it. So we must have done something right.