Arrived in Ashland in the OSF Member Lounge
Happy Friday! I’m very pleased to announce that the Teresa/Tracy Grant Google+ group is starting up again, thanks to the wonderful Betty Strohecker. If you’re a member, be sure to check it out. If you aren’t a member, do consider joining. There’s a icon to join on this site. i’ll be popping in myself, though it’s primarily a group for readers.
At Crater Lake
Lunch at the Crater Lake lodge
Earlier this month Mélanie and I had wonderful trip to Ashland, Oregon. We saw friends, ate some great meals, went shopping, took a great day trip to Crater Lake (Mélanie was fascinated by the model showing how it was formed by a volcano), and my friends and I saw some amazing theatre at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As always those performances were a wonderful source of creative inspiration for my writing. Among the highlights was Sweat, the world premiere of a play by the wonderful Lynn Nottage. Set between 2000 and 2008 in Reading, Pennsylvania, a manufacturing town in which the factories are closing down, the play manages to at once offering a broad social commentary and create vivid, heartrending portraits of specific characters so real you feel you could step on the stage and into their world. A great example of examining complex ideas by showing not telling. It opens in 2008 and with two characters being released from prison and then moves back in a time to the events that got them there. This creates wonderful dramatic tension. I love playing with narrative and timelines and how it can affect how a story unfolds.
Shopping!
Après theatre in Ashland
Another highlight was a brilliant Antony & Cleopatra directed by OSF artistic director Bill Rauch. The tension between personal relationships and the political stage could not be resonate for me with my own writing. Suzanne and Malcolm are minor characters in world events compared to Anthony and Cleopatra, but the tension between personal loyalties and desires and political loyalties (and sometimes sheer political expedience) is one they and many other characters in the series know well. Miriam Laube and Derrick Lee Weeden brought Cleopatra and Anthony to life in fabulous performances that made the two characters at once larger than life and very, very human. In the “One more gaudy night” scene, Anthony, who has just talked boldly about charging back to battle, has a moment the reveals his own qualms about success. A few moments later, Cleopatra’s concern for him flashes across her eyes when he isn’t looking. Anthony and Cleopatra are flawed characters who make flawed choices at times. They aren’t always loyal to each other. But in the end their love for each other survives the political maneuvering, even if they do not.
Dinner at Alchemy, one of our favorite restaurants
Après theatre
Family portrait
At intermission, a friend and I were discussing how wonderfully clear and exciting all the political intrigue felt. John Tufts as another stand out as Octavius. Cold, scheming, but not entirely without empathy. All in all a brilliant night of theatre on a trip filled with wonderful theatrical moments and wonderful writing inspiration.
Drinks on our terrace
Dinner at Amuse, another favorite
In closing, a question inspired by blog discussions the past couple of weeks that perhaps is not unrelated to the love and politics themes of Anthony and Cleopatra. At the end of The Mayfair Affair Raoul tells Laura “I have no right to ask you to feel any sort of obligation. But I feel one.” When the novella opens six weeks later, Laura has been muling what this means. What do you think it means? What if Raoul offering/committing to?
Visiting our friends at Weisinger Winery
Brunch at Brother’s, a favorite haunt
Tracy Grant - Novelist 
September 20, 2015 at 12:57 pm
You and Melanie look gorgeous in your beautiful dresses, as always. However the cats appear not so interested in posing for a family portrait!
September 20, 2015 at 5:38 pm
Too funny, Kim :-). We’re happy if we can just get all three cats in a picture. I don’t think cats ever pose :-).
September 20, 2015 at 11:37 pm
I always love seeing pictures of you and Melanie. The shopping one is priceless! Also, thanks for sharing your adventures.
Your comments about Cleopatra and Antony remind me of two excellent books on the subject.
#1 Margaret George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra – very long at 960 pages, but well worth it and actually a quick read because the story mesmerizes (and I am not a fast reader)
#2 Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra (345 pp) with lots of documentation
Now for the question, I think Raoul is telling Laura how deeply he cares for her, but at the same time letting her know that his feelings come with no strings attached on her part. If she just happens to feel the same, great, but he will not demand anything of her. When she tells him, “I’ll look after them for you, ” I think that is giving him some hope. Guess we’ll soon see!
Thanks for the mention above. A note to all of Tracy’s fans, please consider joining the Google+ group. It should be great fun!
September 20, 2015 at 11:48 pm
The Cleopatra books sound wonderful, Betty! The play definitely made me curious to read more about her.
It’s funny, I wrote the very last lines of Mayfair when I was just starting the book. Usually I leave closing scenes until the end, sometimes in a second or third draft. But “I’ll look after them for you” seemed to sum up where their relationship is. I think he’s trusting her with how important Malcolm and Suzanne are to him and also saying their relationship is in a different category – in effect, making them partners. Lots more to come about both of them both in the novella and the next novel.
And to all reading this, do check out the Google group. It promises to be a lot of fun!
September 20, 2015 at 11:48 pm
I expanded on my thoughts on the brilliant new play Sweat in my blog on History Hoydens this week
http://historyhoydens.blogspot.com/2015/09/sweep-specificity-lynn-nottages-sweat.html
September 21, 2015 at 10:20 pm
I think Raoul wanted Laura to know he wants a relationship with her, but he doesn’t believe he deserves her. She wants him to know that she will be there when he returns and so will those he loves.
September 22, 2015 at 1:29 am
I think that’s a good point, Kim. He’s giving her an out while letting her know he’s committed. She’s letting him know she’ll be there and so will those he loves, and, importantly I think, she’s letting her know she understands that he’s telling her she as a role in his life alongside those people. if that makes sense.
September 22, 2015 at 5:00 pm
It definitely makes sense, I think Raoul understands that for her to go back to her old life she may have to give him up so he is giving her a way out. For Laura, I think she recognizes that Raoul gives her something that nobody else does and that is the ability to be truly herself…and she gives Raoul the freedom to let his guard down especially now with everything out about his true relationships to Malcolm and Suzanne. I think they both see their relationship as giving them something that they can’t get from anyone else.
September 22, 2015 at 6:30 pm
Brilliant way of putting it, Kim! I think in some ways they can both be themselves with each other in ways they can’t with anyone else. There’s a tension between that freedom and the fact that most of their relationship has to take place in private.