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Play Index & Help
What a wonderful way to spend Easter – to discover a 'new' theatre company with wonderful productions of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'The Comedy of Errors'.
The company is 'Propeller' which is new to me, even though it has been going since 1997. If it's new to you, and you're interested in Shakespeare, you need to know more about them. They were in Edinburgh over Easter and we were lucky enough to see both productions on Easter Friday, and Easter Saturday.
In this post, we'll talk about both productions and then a little about the company and why we think they're important.
Let's start with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. When we get to our seats the stage curtains are open, and one or two males dressed in white are onstage, looking out with interest at the gathering audience. The set is quite simple. At the back of the stage there's a white net curtain, and above it, and all three sides of the stage, there's a 'shelf' of chairs about nine feet off the ground. On either side of the stage, there's some scaffolding which connects up with the shelf of chairs. The side walls also are white. The whole thing is a little reminiscent of Peter Brook's famous 'Dream' (which I've never seen, though I've seen the photos, and some videoed extracts). The effect of the set is a slightly surreal empty space, so plenty of space for the actors to act, and plenty of options for magical stuff. Anticipation grows!!! As the audience gathers, so do the actors on stage. There's a cast of fourteen of them, mostly dressed in white.
A quite high-pitched piping sound starts up, grows in volume, the actors start moving, and we're off on a magical dream which is only briefly interrupted for the interval, and then carries us right to Oberon's blessing of the house and all within it, and Puck's call for the audience's applause, which is given with vigour and gratification (six curtain calls) by an entranced audience.
What to say about the play? Only a few, brief impressions. The text was taken much faster than most productions. It demanded (and got) the audience's full attention. That was helped by the physical movement which complemented the text so the players (particularly Puck) became like dancers. To keep the rhythm, the dance and the words were complemented with a range of mysterious sound effects all made by the players onstage using a variety of instruments, from ridged wooden blocks scraped by wooden batons (for me, an effective cicada) to cellos, and bells, and mouth organs and on and on and on. The shelf of chairs became another playing space with players crawling along them, dropping down onto the stage, or disappearing through an exit. The scaffolding too was used throughout the show, notably for the fight between Titania and Oberon over the Indian boy. Onstage the fairies (far more than usual) danced and whirled and waved their legs in the air and gave the audience the most enormous fun. And really magical use of floating drapes and smoke. And the rude mechanicals? It's the only production I've seen where Thisbe's death upstaged an already outrageous death scene from Pyramus!
We went home after the show in a happy daze of Shakespeare's and the production's magic!!!
The previous night we had been to see 'The Comedy of Errors' at the same theatre with the same company. Again we arrived to find the stage curtains open, with some musicians on stage in festive holiday gear: sombreros, sunglasses, and musical instruments. Is it Greece? Is it Mexico? It doesn't really matter – it's holiday party time – in the 80s. Now I have to confess that this is not my favourite play or setting. The Comedy of Errors is a farce, and farce is not my favourite style, even when Shakespeare weaves his magic over it. I'm a child of the seventies. I 'dropped out' in the seventies, and then dropped back in again in the eighties, and was far too busy catching up and working hard to have any holidays in the eighties, so most of the eighties cultural references went straight over my head (apart from the Billy Graham-like revivalist preacher song by Pinch).
The audience however loved it. They roared with laughter throughout the show, and the end of the show was greeted with the same enthusiastic applause as 'The Dream'.
My slight distance from the performance allowed me to explore how the show was constructed. Again, the pace of the verse-speaking was very fast This is a high-risk strategy. If you take the audience with you, they have to give the performance a level of attention they are not used to giving. If you lose them, they're probably gone for ever. However, in farce, the physical slapstick can complement the rhythm of the verse, as the dance did in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', so long speeches (and short) were punctuated with physical slapstick: kicks and punches; plates broken over heads, etc. Each punch was emphasized by some sound effect, always from members of the cast, so again we have the mix of verse, movement and sound coming together to create a rhythm which the audience irresistibly followed. These effects can be used for additional comic effect – in the argument about the purchase of the chain, each occurrence of the word 'chain' was echoed by a bell, with increasing comic effect.
Although not moved by this production as I was to be by 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' the next night, I was awestruck by the technical competence of the cast and the high-energy approach to the production, which created such a hugely enjoyable show.
There are other aspects of the productions and the theatre company which are out of the ordinary:
an all-male cast of fourteen, touring two Shakespeare plays around Europe for almost a year!!! (In 2016 they hope to tour five plays – their version of 'The Wars of the Roses' with Edward III, Henry V, Henry VI [in two parts], and Richard III).
the all-maleness of the cast is worth commenting on further. Female roles were played straight, with none of the usual giggles from males playing females. In an after-show discussion, the actors said that their approach to female roles was through their characters and never their gender. From an audience perspective, it worked well.
The scripts of both plays did not eschew long speeches. Indeed they, and the audience, seemed to delight in them. Antipholus's (I"m not sure which one) very long explanation of what had been happening to the Duke, brought loud applause from the audience. There were some cuts (e.g. Philostrate had disappeared from A5S1 in 'The Dream') but they were few and far between, and did not seem to be driven by a desire to shorten speeches.
There seems a real commitment to creating a company: each actor is signed up for a full year's run, and each one is offered a role the following year. Of course some actors move on, but this creates a nucleus of a company with some new people joining, most staying, some old members re-joining, and a general continuity.
Perhaps the most important thing that Propeller are doing relates to their commitment to the primary text. Here in the UK, the RSC in the glory days of Peter Hall, John Barton, and Cicely Berry et. al., created a 'naturalistic style' which influenced a generation of actors: Judi Dench; Sheila Hancock; Alan Howard; Ben Kingsley; Ian McKellan; David Suchet; etc; etc. That generation is beginning to pass, and with it that 'naturalistic style'. It was great whilst it lasted, but it's now time to move on. The RSC seem to be moving to a more mannered style which I find less effective.
Propeller's approach of returning to Shakespeare's texts, and adopting a more Elizabethan approach to performing those texts – mostly by playing them faster seems a more positive way forward.
This year, Propeller are not visiting the United States. They have in the past, and for those of you who live there, it might be an idea to encourage future visits from them. 2016 and 'The Wars of the Roses' looks like a good opportunity.
The Director


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This is fun - though I find it quite difficult to figure this tool out. The world database of happiness: http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/. But never the less - a local paper interviewed the guy doing the analysis. Concluding from the analysis - that the Danes should be the most happy people in the world. With a scale from 1 to 10 - Denmark scored 8 together with Malta and Switzerland.
"Click around. It'll either make you think about happiness in new and revealing depth, or it will make you happy to discover that even if you never study happiness, you can still experience it."
Friday, October 14, 2005
We are the worlds "happiest" people!
Posted by René Crone at 15:08
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subset: commoncrawl


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Jeff Bezos breaks ground on $1.5 billion Amazon air hub near Cincinnati
Amazon.com. Inc. broke ground on construction of a $1.5 billion air hub outside Cincinnati on Tuesday as part of a plan to deliver packages to consumers faster.
"Let's move some earth," Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said as he climbed into a John Deere front loader and scooped a pile of dirt. "If you're wondering, that's fun," Bezos said.
The new hub near Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport was announced in 2017, and is scheduled to open in 2021. Amazon expects about 50 of its planes will operate from the facility, which will employ around 2,000 people.
"This hub is going to let us get packages to customers faster. We're going to move Prime from two days (delivery) to one day," Bezos said Tuesday, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier.
Amazon AMZN, +0.96% announced last month it was cutting its Prime free-delivery times in half, from two days to one, and the e-commerce giant said it expects to spend $800 million this quarter to make the change.
The northern Kentucky air hub is part of a long-term Amazon plan to expand its own transportation and delivery network, so in the future it will be able to rely less on third-party carriers such as United Parcel Service Inc. UPS, +0.41% , FedEx Corp. FDX, -0.26% and the U.S. Postal Service. Amazon expanded its cargo fleet to 50 planes — all Boeing Co. BA, +1.68% 767 models — in December.
Read: Amazon offers its workers $10K if they quit their jobs — and start their own delivery services
Amazon shares are up more than 21% year to date, compared to the S&P 500's SPX, +0.80% 13% gain.
Source: Read Full Article


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The European labour market is under more pressure than ever before. The challenges include the pressure on the economy of the EU to be competitive in a globalize world which requires more flexible labour markets. Employers demand the effective deregulation of the economy in order to make them more competitive in the global market. In contrast with the modern flexible economic aspirations is the principle of the European Social Model. The Nice Summit concluded that the European Social Model is characterized by systems that offer high levels of social protection and at the Lisbon Summit, the Member States envisaged that Europe must become the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 while at the same time remain committed to solidarity and equality.
The European social model emphasizes increased labour security and social cohesion. Workers are demanding more employment security in a climate of rapid structural change and job reallocation. Europe is also confronted with low population growth and an ageing population.
In industrialized countries it is believed that waged employment hinders flexibility and the flexibility is proposed as the remedy against rising unemployment. According to De Gobb(1) the strategy is the lowering of hiring and firing costs by the introduction of flexible work arrangements. The labour market is becoming more flexible primarily through relaxed conditions for the termination of the employment relationship and the introduction of limited term employment.
Flexicurity as a strategy is effective to jointly manage the inherent insecurities of the employer and employees. Employers must manage their risk in a globalize economy by matching a weakening market position due to increased competition and new technological progress with the quantitative and qualitative change in the labour market. The employment security of workers is at risk due to the response of employers to adapt to the requirements of the global market.
The revised Lisbon Strategy of 2005, balanced increased economic growth, productivity and competitiveness with job creation. This can be attained by improving labour market flexibility, while combining it with increased social protection for workers. The Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs highlights the importance to improve the adaptability of workers and enterprises. EU Integrated Guideline No 21 for growth and jobs for the period 2005-2008, promotes "flexibility combined with employment security and reduce labour market segmentation, having due regard to the role of the social partners".
The balance between labour market flexibility and social security is described using the concept of flexicurity. The concept of flexicurity which is a combination of the words flexibility and security is currently the standard strategy of the management of the European labour market. The EU promotes flexicurity as a strategy to be used in the individual Member States to improve labour productivity, increase employment and guaranteed long-term growth and social cohesion.3
The March 2006 Presidency Conclusions of the European Union is an indication that flexicurity principles are at the core of the EU labour market policy. These conclusions guide the Member States to use integrated flexicurity principles in their labour market reform strategies. According to the aforementioned Conclusions, the benefit of a flexicurity strategy is that employees and organizations are more adaptable and responsive to labour market fluctuations. The EU believes that flexicurity increases productivity in the workplace and that the goals of competitiveness, employment and social security can simultaneously be attained.
1. De Gobb, NS, Flexicurity in developing countries: Perceptions anddetermining factors;Employment Policy Department, ILO, Geneva: P6
2. Eurapean Expert Group on Flexicurity, Flexicurity Pathways – Turning hurdles into stepping stones(2007) P14
3. Kaia Philips and Raul Eamets, Approaches to flexicurity: EU models, European Foundation for the improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2007:P 1


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Here's a dirty little secret: making friends as an adult is hard. Sure, you're all grown up and comfortable with your life and who you are. That should make people flock to you, right? How many times have we heard that confidence is attractive?
I moved to a new city as a 23 year old, and the hardest thing I had to do was make friends. Getting an apartment, getting a job, learning how to navigate the professional world – all of these things were pieces of cake compared to walking up to another adult and trying to convince them they should hang out with me.
Things can get even trickier when you're on a budget. Not having a ton of extra cash to spend at bars or restaurants can make it difficult to get to know people.
If making friends as a regular adult is hard, making friends as a frugal adult is like playing a video game on the expert level. Something as innocuous as a hike can sound an awful lot like, "Hey, I know you don't know me, but come hang out with me in the woods, far away from other people, for a few hours. It's totally safe I promise." Not so cool.
Sticking with your frugality is important, but being a social human being is also important. We're social creatures, and you shouldn't let your budget get in the way of your social needs. So what's a frugal adult to do?
Join a Sports Team
Joining a sports team is a great way to make friends as a frugal adult. At first glance, you're probably thinking that doesn't seem particularly frugal, but you would be wrong, my friend.
Let me explain. Yes, while you're paying to play whatever sport you choose, you're also getting a huge return:
- You're meeting a large group of potential friends, all conveniently located in one place
- You'll play with them for a long period of time, so you'll get some hangouts just in showing up to your games
- You'll save time. By combining exercise and friend time, you can free up other time in your day. BONUS: now you have to exercise! You'll be motivated to get moving and you'll be motivated to make friends
- You have a built-in reason to hang outside of game day. Asking if your new football friends want to go to the park and toss around the pigskin is a great way to get to know them. It's also frugal as heck!
All these add up to a frugal decision. Find a league that runs for at least six weeks if you can. That's a lot of time you get to spend with people, and it gives you plenty of time to let your frugal self impress them.
Have a Make-a-Friend Party
Ask someone you're already friends with to invite some other totally cool people to a party at your place. By asking someone you already like to be in charge of the guest list, you've already vetted the entire invite list. The pressure is off you (the friendless one in the situation) to find people to invite.
If you're truly friendless, start with your coworkers. Invite them to a party and encourage them to bring friends or significant others.
Staying in is always cheaper than going out, and by hosting, you get to greet everyone who comes. That guarantees face time with everyone. If you're struggling with what to say, offer to give them a tour of your place or talk about the neighborhood highlights.
You can also wow people with your world famous homemade snacks, or you can ask everyone to bring something they love. That's another great conversation starter – ask they why they love what they brought and how they made it!
Before you know it, everyone in the room will be friends. And from here on out they'll be talking about how they all met at your place.
The Third Hang Out Means Movie Night
Once you've been able to establish you're not a serial killer, you can put your frugal moves on your new friend. It's early enough in the friendship that you can establish frugality is important to you as a person and is a part of your lifestyle. It's also late enough that you've (hopefully) been able to prove when you ask if they want to go on a hike, you really mean just a hike.
Now's the time to invite them for a movie night at your house rather than a movie theater. Ask them to bring a snack and you can provide the beverages. See if they'd be down for the free open mic night that happens at a bar downtown afterward.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure it's a frugal hang. Don't be afraid to be your frugal self. Part of being an awesome adult is getting over the high school feeling of having to hide part of yourself. These are your new *adult* friends, and they'll like you for who you are. Frugality and all. (If not, it wasn't meant to be! You don't want your friends to be a bad influence on you.)
How have you made friends as a frugal adult? What activities did you do to meet people?


text: Maddy (York-Stephens) Zeringue, '98, is an Emmy award-winning producer who works in communications at Red Bull Media House, which is headquartered in Salzburg, Austria, with an office in Santa Monica, California. In her eight years with the company, Maddy spearheaded global communications for the historic Red Bull Stratos mission, which saw Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space, and which still holds the record for the most watched live stream in Internet history, with 9.5 million concurrent views. Most recently, she has overseen communications strategy for Red Bull Media House's worldwide product portfolio, including the release of feature films "McConkey" and "On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter," marketing of premium programming on the media company's digital video service, Red Bull TV, and publicity efforts for the 550,000 circulation consumer men's lifestyle magazine, The Red Bulletin. When not on the road to support a film premiere or conduct a media tour in New York or Los Angeles, Maddy resides in Eastern Tennessee with her daughter, Zoe, 1, and husband Chris, who is a COO for LifePoint Hospitals. She received a bachelor of arts in communications and sociology from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas in 2002, and a Master's degree in strategic public relations from the University of Southern California in 2004.


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Hey guys,
I've decided that I'm going to attempt the Raw Paleo Diet. I'm going to slowly introduce a lot of raw foods and meats into my diet because it is said to work a lot faster than the regular Paleo diet, so I'm hoping if it does work I can see results quicker 🙂
My skin is okay at the moment, a bit bad on my arms, better on my back and my legs, a bit red on my face but not too bad. I've just done a coconut milk hair mask on my scalp so maybe it will help, but I won't know the results until my hair is dry. So I'm really hoping the raw diet will kick in soon, because I've read so much about it and it's supposed to be really good for your body, although the first few days of introducing it will probably take a tole on my body, it may be worth it 🙂
Hope everyone is good,
bye guys!
Brooke x


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The cold opening of the show delivered the big plot point of the show: mysterious murders. As the team investigates the murder, caused by an electrostatic impulse roughly twice as strong as a lighting bolt, they pick up another, similar event. Rushing to investigate the impulse, the team arrives moments too late to prevent another murder; however, they discover the two victims are linked: both were firefighters that were apart of the alien invasion of New York and it seems someone is out to get them. A quick cut away shows the cause of the murders: a Chitauri helmet which is generating some electrostatic energy.
While we are briefly led to believe that a fellow fire fighter is behind the murders, the team soon piece together the facts: the Chitauri helmet, which has been kept in the fire hall as a trophy, was infected with an alien virus and all those who have recently come into contact with it are dying. A third fireman dies as a result and the helmet is taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody to a place called "The Sandbox."
Once back aboard The Bus and in the midst of discovering the true nature of the alien virus, the show takes a turn for the dramatic. In an effort to remain spoiler free, I will just say that one of the agents has contracted the virus and, in the face of it being 3 for 3 in kills, things do not look good. Clearly, the devastation that Jeph Loeb teased in an earlier interview seems imminent. A conversation with Agent Blake, played again by Titus Welliver, who first assumed the role in the One Shot, Item 47, seems to add to the impending doom for the team.
It seems needless to say, but things shake out well for the team as it's far too early in the season to lose a member of the team, though they eventually will. The end of the episode does some exploration into the Coulson mystery and does some nice denouement for the episode, which can easily be considered one of the series' best. The show had some serious drama and continued to build some connections to the MCU proper. The last scene establishes something important going forward: Coulson, and his team, are evolving and they aren't going to lay down for anyone. Going forward the team is going to be a part of some big things and the show seems to be headed on the right path.
I've embedded the tweets of some fans of the show below; feel free to tweet @CBBrainSplatter
@CBBrainSplatter Heart pounding ......says the wife! the 9 yrd just said " level eight" sooooooo their hooked! Lol!!!
— the HULK (@CaptainHulk3) November 6, 2013