The Ides of April are approaching quickly, so I finally started working on our taxes this afternoon. I didn’t have enough time to finish them because we had tickets for Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s 8th annual 48-Hour Play Festival – live and in-person at Foothill College!
This year’s theme was “Shakesbinge” – each team chose a Shakespeare play and a TV show and had to combine them, along with a required line of dialog (“That’s all, Folks!”), the use of a remote control as a prop, and some kind of commercial, producing a short (and generally funny) play. The process started at 7pm Friday; the script was due at noon on Saturday, and then the director and actors took over.
There were six plays this year:
• StreamSpeare Pitch Meeting (The Merry Wives of Windsor + Friends)
• Star Rich III: The Search for York (Richard III + Star Trek)
• Slay All Day: A Midsummer Night’s Binge (A Midsummer Night’s Dream + Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Chapter VII: The Bounty (As You Like It + The Mandalorian)
• Tempest/Battlestar Galactica (The Tempest + Battlestar Galactica)
• Diced (Titus Andronicus + Chopped)
The audience votes for their two favorite plays – this year, Diane and I both voted the same way, and the audience agreed with us: Diced won, and Star Rich III was second.
It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the three plays in Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s season: Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, and Sense and Sensibility.