A Midsummer Night's Dream

I have not stuck to my diary of posting dates to publish all the best photos from my Tasmania trip as I've been busy rehearsing for:

STAG presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream By William Shakespeare Directed by Ian Tweeddale at the Strathmore Community Centre, corner of Loeman and Napier Streets, Strathmore (Melway Reference: 16 H 10)

Thursday 3 March to Saturday 5 March @ 8pm
Sunday 6 March @ 2pm
Wednesday 9 March to Saturday 12 March @ 8pm
$20 adult $15 concession $2 discount off full price tickets for groups of 10 or more
BOOKINGS 9382 6284 www.stagtheatre.org/reservations

HELENA: I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.


HERMIA: How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak; How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.


EGEUS: Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung, With feigning voice verses of feigning love.


LYSANDER: You have her father’s love, Demetrius; let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him.


FLUTE: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman: I have a beard coming.


QUINCE: You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.


PHILOSTRATE. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long, Which is as brief as I have known a play; But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, Which makes it tedious; for in all the play There is not one word apt, one player fitted.


LION. You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,


STARVELING: He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.


PUCK. If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumb'red here While these visions did appear.


MOON. All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the Man i' th' Moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.


OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania


TITANIA. Not for thy fairy kingdom


SNOUT: Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?


BOTTOM: I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom;


HIPPOLYTA: never did I hear Such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.


THESEUS: Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword, And won thy love, doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

Photo of the Day - 20

Benalla - 2007

Camera: SONY

Cockle Creek and Recherche Bay

Southern Tasmania is beautiful. Recherche Bay, Cockle Creek… One of the many places that I would love to visit again…

Recherche bay is the site of the first scientific experiments on Australian soil. The French explorer Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (what a groovy name) landed in 1792 and made a garden and observatory and mapped and named parts of Southern Tasmania, which has resulted in Tasmania having some beautiful French names mixed up with Indigenous and English names. Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s ships included the Recherche and the Esperance.

One of the goals of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s voyage was to try and find the explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de La Perouse who was last seen in Botany Bay in 1788 heading off towards New Caledonia.

Recherche Bay

"It would be vain of me to attempt to describe my feelings when I beheld this lovely harbour lying at the world's end, separated as it were from the rest of the universe.”
- Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux

Beach at Cockle Creek

Cockle Creek is the southern most point that is assessable in Australia. The beach is beautiful, and when I was there the sky and water were beautiful shades of blue.

Cockle Creek is also host to a sad period in Australia’s history being a centre for whaling in the 1830s. A bronze statue of a Southern Right Whale Cub mourns for all the whales killed in the area. The whalers used to kill the cubs and when the adults heard their cries would run in to see what the matter was and then be killed as well.

Whale statue at Cockle Creek - sculptured by Steven Walker

“The next stop is Antarctica. And it’s not that far away. Standing here, you are closer to Antarctica than you are to Cairns.”
- Australian Government – Department of Resources Energy and Tourism

The southernmost point that you can buy food is Ida Bay. Where naturally I had a Devonshire Tea.

Photo of the Day - 19

White Poppies in East Tasmania - December 2010

Camera: Nikon D3000

Graffiti at Launceston

Tim Minchin's Storm

This blog has had a lot of photos as I post my Tasmania adventures. As I haven't written the next chapter yet, here are some WORDS on something completely different.

I received a CD from my friend Julian and on the CD was a particular track that I enjoyed – ‘Storm’ by Tim Minchin. Tim Minchin is an Australian singer/comedian, and a number of his songs promote science over religion. I think there is room for both viewpoints, and Storm is enjoyable and has some interesting points. Storm argues science over naturopathy, alternative medicine, and hippy culture, and is also derogatory about astrology. But it is the rhythms and the poetry of the yrics which makes Storm appeal to me.

Storm is a ‘nine minute beat poem’ where the beat, the tone and the words combine to create the setting.

Inner North London, top floor flat,
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,

Tim Minchin uses both words that rhyme and words that sound and feel like they should rhyme, but actually don’t, which allows the listener to ease himself into the story. The words give the listener a figurative comfy chair and a glass of red-wine as if:

to dinner we've come.

Imaginative combinations of words create fresh images within the listener’s head.

And when she says "I'm Sagittarian"
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form...
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.

And every day references continue to create mood and understanding and sympathy towards the character as we think, yes, I’ve been in that (or similar) situation before.

And across the room
My wife widens her eyes,
Silently begs me, "Be Nice" –
A matrimonial warning
Not worth ignoring,

And try as hard as I like,
A small crack appears
In my diplomacy dike.

Using words in different combinations keeps the listener spell bound wondering what linguistical feats will follow, whilst enjoying the humour in the language and situation.

Storm to her credit, despite my derision
Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision,
Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition.

And of cause I’m a sucker for Shakespeare.

There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy.

Lend me your ear:
'To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet... is just fucking silly.'
Or something like that.

From Hamlet and King John, but not only these passages felt like Billy the Bard, so I searched and searched and the only hidden Billy the Bard reference I could find was:

And if perchance I have offended,
Think but this and all is mended:

From A Midsummer’s Night Dream. But the sweetest parts of the poem is original Tim Minchin:

Twice as long to live this life of mine.
Twice as long to love this wife of mine.
Twice as many years of friends and wine...

I want to laugh

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down.

Have you heard about that online origami store? It folded.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. Really it was just a play on words.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Photo of the Day - 18

Launceston Church - December 2010

Camera: Nikon D3000