THEATER AT ERACLEA MINOA
We are looking forward to celebrating our birthdays by seeing a production of Manhattan Transfer next week in a Greek theater on the north coast of Sicily, Tindari. Yesterday Steve saw an ad in the paper promising a performance of a Greek play by Aristophenes at Eraclea Minoa, a place I have already sent pictures from in the spring. So we assumed it was in the small Greek theater there, we assumed the play time was correct (8:30 PM) and so we made plans to go for the evening. Our plans were based on these erroneous assumptions, it turned out. But the whole evening was not a waste, even though we only watched ½ an hour of the play.
The drive over was lovely because the night was warm but not hot and the air was just a little humid. We stopped to see how the resort of Seccagrande looked in the summer, since we had only seen it in the fall. Well. It was the worst of Atlantic City, Virginia Beach, Daytona, and Myrtle Beach all rolled into one nightmare of a place! Instead of high rise hotels and condominiums, though, there are at least three tiers of buildings rising up from the lungamare (shore road), those behind having barely a glimpse of the sea. Each building has a number of tiny vacation villas that have no privacy and maximum outdoor exposure, so that for example, the setting sun forced homeowners to put up huge beach umbrellas to keep the strong rays out. We passed families eating, kids fighting, teens primping and flirting, little kids coming home dirty and tired from the somewhat rocky, pebbly beach. Nothing looked very promising, for the bars and gelato joints looked dirty and uninviting. We wanted to stop for coffee to keep us awake, but Instead of stopping here, we decided to stop later at the gas station on the main road.
To be fair, I dont think we REALLY expected the performance to start at 8:30 as advertised. But when we got there, it was before 8 and the gate was locked! We saw the park superintendent and he told us to come back at 9. We asked him when the performance would start and he told us about 9:30. So we took a walk to take some pictures.
The last time we were there was spring. I could not believe how dramatic the chalk cliffs looked in the waning light. There were still people on the beach after 8 PM, and the beach itself looked clean and inviting. As for the theater, we watched performers setting up, putting on make-up, limbering up, giving back rubs. The funny thing was the guy getting the back rub? He was the light man! And we were very disappointed because the show was not in the Greek theater, but down the hillside. And although on the hillside, the seats were not graded, as there was very little incline at all in the make shift theater. We did not have very good ones for two other reasons. First, although the show was free, some people had paid $5 to reserve front row seats, and second, because people (in their typical Sicilian bad manners) rushed ahead of us and saved whole rows of seats for friends and relatives who came in 2 hours after we had gotten there. Everyone else knew each other, many bacci were given, small town politics ruled. The performance got under way a little after 10, by the way, and people were still coming in then.
And I wouldnt have minded that if we had been able to see or hear the show. But again, Sicilian bad manners in the form of late comers chatting loudly and blocking the stage, cell phone calls, babies crying and buggies walked in front of my camera-well, you get the picture. There were no mics on the actors, and although the guy in front of me was short, and I still couldnt see much stage action. We left about 10:30 PM, after seeing barely a half hour of the show. It was Aristophanes The Assembly of Women, put on by the students that study at the Greek theater in Siracusa. It involved a revolt of women that included men wearing womens clothing and vice versa. So a white suit with a prominent cod piece was the first costume that we could notice the details of. Since I could get very few pictures of the stage that were in any way clear, I did not even bother. But it was a fun evening all in all.
The drive over was lovely because the night was warm but not hot and the air was just a little humid. We stopped to see how the resort of Seccagrande looked in the summer, since we had only seen it in the fall. Well. It was the worst of Atlantic City, Virginia Beach, Daytona, and Myrtle Beach all rolled into one nightmare of a place! Instead of high rise hotels and condominiums, though, there are at least three tiers of buildings rising up from the lungamare (shore road), those behind having barely a glimpse of the sea. Each building has a number of tiny vacation villas that have no privacy and maximum outdoor exposure, so that for example, the setting sun forced homeowners to put up huge beach umbrellas to keep the strong rays out. We passed families eating, kids fighting, teens primping and flirting, little kids coming home dirty and tired from the somewhat rocky, pebbly beach. Nothing looked very promising, for the bars and gelato joints looked dirty and uninviting. We wanted to stop for coffee to keep us awake, but Instead of stopping here, we decided to stop later at the gas station on the main road.
To be fair, I dont think we REALLY expected the performance to start at 8:30 as advertised. But when we got there, it was before 8 and the gate was locked! We saw the park superintendent and he told us to come back at 9. We asked him when the performance would start and he told us about 9:30. So we took a walk to take some pictures.
The last time we were there was spring. I could not believe how dramatic the chalk cliffs looked in the waning light. There were still people on the beach after 8 PM, and the beach itself looked clean and inviting. As for the theater, we watched performers setting up, putting on make-up, limbering up, giving back rubs. The funny thing was the guy getting the back rub? He was the light man! And we were very disappointed because the show was not in the Greek theater, but down the hillside. And although on the hillside, the seats were not graded, as there was very little incline at all in the make shift theater. We did not have very good ones for two other reasons. First, although the show was free, some people had paid $5 to reserve front row seats, and second, because people (in their typical Sicilian bad manners) rushed ahead of us and saved whole rows of seats for friends and relatives who came in 2 hours after we had gotten there. Everyone else knew each other, many bacci were given, small town politics ruled. The performance got under way a little after 10, by the way, and people were still coming in then.
And I wouldnt have minded that if we had been able to see or hear the show. But again, Sicilian bad manners in the form of late comers chatting loudly and blocking the stage, cell phone calls, babies crying and buggies walked in front of my camera-well, you get the picture. There were no mics on the actors, and although the guy in front of me was short, and I still couldnt see much stage action. We left about 10:30 PM, after seeing barely a half hour of the show. It was Aristophanes The Assembly of Women, put on by the students that study at the Greek theater in Siracusa. It involved a revolt of women that included men wearing womens clothing and vice versa. So a white suit with a prominent cod piece was the first costume that we could notice the details of. Since I could get very few pictures of the stage that were in any way clear, I did not even bother. But it was a fun evening all in all.
posted by Sicilian Mama at 10:59 AM
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