Whats in a name . . .

Seeing your own name (my name - Sara K. Menssen) in print, spelled correctly with my middle initial (which is how I like it), in a publication that you've dreamed of seeing your name exist on the pages in for years is a pretty surreal feeling.

Oh Deer!

This guy found his way into the neighbors back yard the other evening. The only reason I realized he was there was from the tizzy fit the chickens were having. The five of them are usually quite quiet but that evening they took to squawking like the world was ending. I guess they don't like sharing their territory with deer.

Dog days of summer . . .

91 degrees outside today and all I want to do is sit on the porch steps in the shade

like this guy. He lives somewhere across the street - I see him on various front porches throughout the day depending on which is guarded by the most shade. He moves slow like I imagine sloths do and doesn't seem to mind the chickens, cats or deer that populate the neighborhood. Not the best watch dog if you'd ask Roxy dog who is back in Montana making her daily patrols around the back yard. She certainly would not let this scene happen back home let alone right around the corner from a chosen resting spot:

FAIRexpressions

 The Venue: Carpenter Hall

The project: FAIRexpressions

A look inside before the house was officially open

I'll be honest the thought of blogging the past two weeks has made me extremely tired. Hopefully this post will make up for my lack of enthusiasm.
I've successfully completed the most stressful part of my participation in the program known as FAIR at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival - most stressful in my opinion of course. Those of us that arrived in April as part of FAIR were tasked with creating something relevant to our experience here and to help us FAIR persons get to know each other in an artistic way. That is the best way I can describe this project because even we, during the process, didn't really understand what it was we were doing. What it turned out to be was an evening of staged readings - 3 of the 4 pieces were new works created in part by the director presenting them. At the end of the day the evening went rather well. We had roughly 75 people show up to see what FAIRexpressions had turned in to and then about 25 of them stayed to contribute to a post-show discussion. I was exhausted by 8pm when I peeled the last pieces of spike tape up off of the floor in carpenter hall. The project was accompanied by a lot of stress for a few reasons. The first being the time slot it happened to occupy. RIGHT NOW is the busiest time of the season for basically everyone that works at OSF. There are three shows opening on the Elizabethan stage next week, three days in a row which meant that our project was happening in conjunction with tech week(s) or the weeks that everything comes together on stage - all the sounds, lights, costumes, props, scenic elements - EVERYTHING gets thrown on stage and we give the show a go. This also means that this is a period of learning with a steep curves. Suddenly because we are outside onstage we know that X, Y and Z don't work and need to change and this has be re-painted and this dress is to long etc. etc. So on top of tech-ing my own show (Robin Hood) I also had to schedule, manage, trouble shoot, herd.....a side project which mostly felt like herding cats. Despite all of the frustration/confusion and general madness that I now associate with the project called FAIRexpressions I did find a silver lining. My resume will now read:

FAIRexpressions        Oregon Shakespeare Festival          Stage Manager

and that is pretty cool. I'd like to say that in this final photo we were burning the scripts from the evening or using up the last of the unclaimed programs but I am not THAT much of a rebel and was mostly waiting for people to go home so I could go to bed. We did however manage to procure the ingredients to make s'mores. I am happy to report that I was the expert on s'more making and taught more than one person how to roast a marsh mellow to a nicely browned exterior and gooey melty interior.