Up and running and off to the Shaw and Stratford

 I made my first post on this new interactive journal almost a week ago, then took a long July 4th weekend, spending time in New England with the kids and the grandkids (not to mention the golf course), but now I'm back in the saddle, determined to become a regular communicant, which I'll define as at least four times per week.

This week it'll be easy to hit that mark, since I'm off to the Shaw and Stratford Festivals in the morning and I plan to keep a daily journal, such as I've done on the most recent theater trips to New York (in May) and London (March). You can access those old journals at post-gazette.com/theater (scroll down the right column), where you'll also find Montae Russell's journal from the Kennedy Center's August Wilson Cycle and Andrew Paul's from Katowice, Poland, where he directed "Stuff Happens."

[The cartoon (left) by Tim Menees combines a Daumier caricature of a self-important critic with The Bard and GBS. It was originally the logo for a 2006 American Theatre Critics Association conference at the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, but it might as well do duty also for my current foray northward -- without implicating me as the Daumier, of course.]

Right now it's the middle of the night and I'm racing to get my "Mame" review and In the Wings column done in time to get home, finish packing, grab my golf clubs (there's a nice little 9-hole course in Niagara-on-the-Lake) and meet the PG theater trippers in the early a.m. -- early, that is, for a theatrical night owl.

But first, this tid-bit from Michael Kahn, artistic director of the big Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. He was explaining why his classical company (just as the Shaw and Stratford festivals are classical, in their different ways) also does modern plays: "The actors like to do something other than Shakespeare -- it gives them a chance to sit down occasionally and speak a few sentences as short as this one."

Now off I go. I'll report from Canada later tonight.

LATER: I didn't exactly hit the mark as I proposed -- using the new software proved more of a challenge than I expected (duh). But I'm learning, sort of.