These Beguiling Days
I saved the detailed account about our final show (a huge hit in spite of a bad shuffle), for another post. I'm sitting here in my dorm room, listening to one of the Military Bands practice for the Tattoo, since they are all staying in other dormitories in our complex. last night they were sing/shouting loud choruses of "American Pie," "Ysterday" and "Shook me All Night Long" until 2:30am. Today they are a force of precision and beautiful music. Anyway, here are the highlights and pictures of yesterday.
In the morning, a group hiked into Holyrood park with me and Tim for more views, vigorous exercise, and a look at St. Anthony's chapel.
We had a great time, and the weather continued to co-operate. We've been beyond lucky with such little rain and mild temperatures. At the chapel ruins, there was a lot of rock-climbing and posing for selfies!
We came down out of the hills after about 3 hours of hiking, and turned our attentions toward our final show.
The obligatory bus-stop picture. Poor Lydia has been very sick, and we were all very worried whether she would rally. Everyone is running a little ragged at this point, and we smiled when another director casually mentioned that "we've reached the point where everyone just wants to murder everyone else all the time." It's not so dire in our crowd, but we're starting to see sickness crop up and our introverts are losing steam (myself most of all.)
At the Venue, we were missing our dodgy alley. Standing on the street next to the audience is a little unusual. Fortunately, Brian was dolling out backrubs to the cast.
Here's a glimpse inside our beloved Venue 45, which is one of the oldest venues at the Fringe, in the basement of an Episcopal Church.
The urn is in and we're ready to go.
I never tried to take pictures during the show because the shutter is distracting to the audience, but did snap these two (one during laughter, the other during applause). Just a little something to say "we were there. We did this."
After the show, we had some funny moments where our AHSTF tech folks said a fond goodbye because they were going to be missing our closing ceremony...because they got confused and thought we were part of the college festival, not the high school one. I can think of no bigger compliment to the kids' behavior and quality of work. But we'll see Marianne and Edwina again after all. Yay!
After we changed out of costume for the last time, we gathered in the grass behind the dorms for our company Closure. It is the last time we will ever sit together with that group of kids, and a chance for them to express their appreciation for each other and acknowledge the amount of growth and the depth of the experience they've just had.
But we're here to see shows and experience being a part of the world's largest arts festival, so we broke into small groups and headed out into town to enjoy shows, hang out with friends, and witness unexpected fireworks.
Goodnight, Edinburgh!
