Stuff of drama

Coming home last night after the game, the quiet streets feels like a ghost-town, one full of people.  The storefronts dark, but people everywhere, the occasional  random out breaks of "SEA" "HAWKS" chanting, and the odd Patriots shout out, but otherwise relatively silent.  Like the Fourth of July, or New Year's Eve, but without the joy.  The burger joint empty, but one, of customers, the employees leaning, disconsolately, on the counters.  Bus ride home almost silent.  So close.  (They had to shoot the fireworks off of the Needle; light and smoke quickly dissolving into the night.)

Saw Seattle Shakespeare Company's "Measure for Measure", directed by Desdemona Chiang, earlier in the day.  A solid ensemble piece (great casting, and connection between the actors.)  Standing out for embodiment of character were Scott Ward Abernathy as Pompey, and Tim Gouran as Lucio, both of them having a wonderful agility and mastery with the language, the latter speaking Shakespeare's words like a skater, and bringing an immediacy to it so that I never got lost in what he was saying, and I was ever drawn further into the story.

Saw Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths," by Theatre Machine and directed by Melissa Fenwick, the night before.  A play about those who have lost and been tossed out by society as useless.  About finding the humanity in one another, and the hope that breeds a longing to be something better, to find a purpose in life, even if those hopes are shattered in the end.  Another show where all parts worked seamlessly together (sound, set, lighting, staging, acting) to tell one story.  Had a kick-ass ensemble, with the actors always alive and connected on stage.  There was singing, and I liked that it was normal people singing, in every day life, nothing fancy.  Also, had both humor and pathos flowing into each other, never feeling false, always feeling like life.  Fantastic.

I'm hoping the rain will let up, it's dumping.  I'm not in the mood to get soaked.  The week ahead, rainy and mild, no chance of snow.