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January 31, 2025

AFD#7

It’s Date Night, and shortly before seven we walk to the nearby Rogue Theater I stumbled across yesterday walking down University on my way to the streetcar. It’s a big one, the first live theater performance we’ve seen since before Covid, and possibly since we went vagabond.

And, we have something to celebrate: the completion of an entire week of Adversity-Free Days, none of which had enough of a setback to rise to the level of a good or bad story day.

Before that though, let’s ride together to lunch at Locale. Let’s take the long way - north up Mountain Avenue to the Loop, west on the north side of Rillito Wash to nearly its end, and then back to Treat Street and down to Reid Park.

A simple script for the day then: in the morning a joint bike ride, with a business stop at Locale for an outdoor lunch. In the early evening we’ll walk to the Rogue to catch that play I was thinking about.

The ride

Off script, and ready to go! Ere, maybe not. How many things are wrong with this picture? Where ar the helmet and gloves, doe three examples? And what about her wrist brace? This shot was the nudge I needed to finally build her indoor script.

Yes, that does look like unique home furnishing.

Eastbound on the north side of Rillito Wash.

Sound track: Tanya, by Cal Tjader

So maybe I should have tried the salmon too?

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Ok. Back to the theater. Has it really been seven years since Rachael and I attended a live theater performance? maybe not, but certainly not since before Covid. In any case, we sure picked a fine one to return to. The Rogue is an excellent regional theater company that’s been staging plays here for the last 20 years. It surprises me that it’s so close to where we are staying now, and that two years ago we were staying literally around the corner from it, staring at the murals on its east wall when we left our airbnb each morning. In terms of character, quality, and talent, it makes me think of Third Rail and ART in Portland, or that theater in Pitlochry in Scotland we attended about 20 years ago.

The play

Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge is a play I first read in my Modern European Literature class in 1965 in my freshman year of college. Written in 1907 in the traditional, story telling language of coastal Irish peasantry, it’s a work that really begs to be seen and heard performed live. If you’re unfamiliar with rhe work, this performance review of a revival in London gives a good sense of what a remarkable work it is. It feels like a real gift to finally get to see and hear it live after all this time.

The stage: a public house in the Aran Islands in western Ireland, about a century ago.

The publican sings a tune alone as an opener, and is joined for the next number by a widow with her eye out for the second song.

The doors to the theater opened at 7, and for the half hour before the performance started we enjoyed a set of traditional British/Irish folk songs performed by members of the cast.

Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 446 miles (718 km)

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