Oregon Shakespeare Festival Versus Final Four

The picture above is the entrance to the OSF's New Theatre on Friday afternoon, 1 April, in preparation for an excellent version of Julius Caesar. When I read the play in high school and when I saw it on several occasions since then I was never all that unhappy at Caesar's assassination, but in this version I cried when it happened. Perhaps that is a function of age, I'm not sure, or perhaps because Caesar was played by a woman. Yes, that is correct, Vilma Silva, a veteran at OSF, played the part of Julius, not Julie Caesar. In any event, we cheered when we were supposed to and had a great time thinking about when and if we should change our political leaders. It was great fun talking this over with my grandchildren too.

When I was making plans for our usual Spring visit to southern Oregon to take in some plays at Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) I'm pretty sure I reckoned that March Madness would be over and done with by the end of March. Of course I was wrong as the first night of the Final Four in Houston was on Saturday, 2 April, 2011 and the championship game was to be on Monday, 4 April, 2011. So we had tickets for a performance of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird at OSF on Saturday evening and we were scheduled to fly from Medford to Seattle on Monday afternoon and from Seattle to Billings on Monday evening. Because there were two games on Saturday we actually got to see the first one late in the afternoon, and because we were lucky, on Monday evening we managed to snag a couple of seats at the Alaskan Lodge or maybe Lounge at SeaTac to watch most of a very disappointing championship game between Butler and the University of Connecticut. The picture above right is part of the Mueller/Mazzuca clan after breakfast at Brother's restaurant, one of the best in Ashland.

If I read the papers right, the game we missed on Saturday, UConn v Kentucky, wasn't that good, but the earlier game, the one we saw, i.e. Butler v VCU, was pretty good and a very close call. I am still amazed at the physical nature of professional, college and often even high school games these days, and the jumping ability of nearly everyone.

As you can see in the picture to the left, Spring has arrived in this valley in the mountains of southern Oregon. Lots of flowering trees and shrubs. We had good weather. If you go, the Plaza Inn is a good place to stay as you can walk to the theatres and a fair number of restaurants as well. Plus they have some nice snacks late afternoon and evenings as well.