Say it with a British accent if you will.

The UM Residential College is doing Much Ado About Nothing as their annual Shakespeare in the Arb production this year. This morning, somebody on NPR was talking about the character Dogberry and I just about spit my orange juice out. Oh my god. I remember when YAG did that play way back in, hmmm, 2000? All theatrical productions have their own challenges. YAG’s productions usually had more than most. It still amazes me that we made so many high quality productions happen as a non-profit organization with a shoe-string budget. An organization that cast any child who wanted to be in the play (often children with various disabilities) and relied on an ever-changing force of parent volunteers to get the grunt work done.

Much Ado About Nothing. The Green Room, early in the morning before the “school performance”. Dogberry is lolling about on the couch. The director, after some discussion with Dogberry, utters the phrase in today’s title. Dramatically. KW and the [volunteer] producer (a parent) look at each other with shock and awe in their eyes.

The producer had spent most of “tech week” getting a “fountain” built down in the bowels of the Lydia Mendelssohn. The evening before this little green room scene, the director decided we didn’t need the [damn] fountain. I was tasked with telling the [wonderful] producer that we didn’t need the fountain. Was it a “huge shock”? Yes. Of course, throughout the entire run of the play and for *years* thereafter, any time anyone said, “There’s been a huge shock?” you know we all doubled over with laughter.

It’s Thursday night and we are heading to HL tomorrow, so we hoofed it over to Knight’s Steakhouse for dinner tonight, just to try to de-stressify a bit. I was *ecstatic* to read this morning that none other than Knight’s is going to open up a new restaurant in the old Border’s (and once Jacobson’s) space downtown! This is a *good* thing for our city. I would *much* rather see a successful local restaurant business fill that space than some national chain restaurant or useless trinket shop. I think the downtown Knight’s will be successful and I also think the existing Knight’s will continue to succeed. I think the downtown place will fill a different niche. Already, twitter friends who live downtown and have to *drive* to the Knight’s on this side of town are saying things like, “Now I can have more than one cocktail because I won’t have to drive home.” Yes! aka, we’ve been doing that for *years* over here on the west side!

P.S. The photoooo is a file photo. I believe the actress was actually playing Bianca from Taming of the Shrew in the photoooo, not Hero. Disclaimer: even though I lived through the production of both of those plays, I had to do quite some bit of google-spark-noting to make sure I had the characters in the right plays. I’m still not sure if I got it straight…

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