Once you’ve been to Charleston during Spoleto, the spell of the city hooks you. Here’s a message from one of the Spoleto interns from last year, who is now longing for the Holy City. She’s also writing a blog for Southern Living.

Hi!

An Alabama native, I interned with Spoleto last year as a public relations apprentice—which meant daily perusings of P&C’s Spoleto Today. Though I’m back in Birmingham these days, I’m craving Spoleto and keeping up with everything thanks to your website!

I’m interning at Southern Living and blogged about weekend’s events on the Travel blog. I just wanted to let you know that there is a link to your website. If there is anything you can do to help drive traffic to our blog, I’d appreciate it—the website is another gateway to a plethora of Charleston  information (decades worth) for visitors.

http://talesfromtheroad.southernliving.com/

Thanks so much! Good luck with the finale—I sure miss The Post & Courier!

Ashlyn

(Thanks Ashlyn!)

If you’re in the mood for scandal and risqué tales of decadence, College of Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Stelle di Domani production of ‘Quills’ will definitely fit the bill. Also, if you’re looking for great, young talent that serves the subject well and makes you forget that they’re still in college, you’re in luck.

After leaving the Theatre 220 show, a few things came to mind. First, make sure that you familiarize yourself with who the Marquis de Sade is. I had imagined that the majority of the patrons would have been familiar with the story of the French aristocrat who sought the ultimate pleasure at all times and whose novels of sadism and other controversial subjects enraged readers during the French Revolution era. Judging by the gasps that I heard when stories were acted out, it seems that this was not the case. To depict the obscene stories that the Marquis was obsessed with, actors stood behind a white sheet and served as Shadow Puppets for the acts, which were very sensational and creatively mastered.

Second, as you’re watching the Marquis de Sade describe these stories as they’re acted out, you realize that they’re not all that far-fetched from some of the horrors that we hear about in the present day. For a man that was considered so depraved that he spent almost half of his life in insane asylums, you start to feel bad for the guy. Was he just ahead of his time or was he really the monster that they made him out to be? Also, the fact that the full frontal nudity lasts for over an hour is quite an undertaking in itself.

A talented cast and an exciting story, ‘Quills’ is an excellent choice for those looking for a thrill.

May 20th, the SpoJos are getting underway in a mindshare session at Kudu’s coffee shop.

Image of the Lowcountry courtesy of bigbonton.org

With Spoleto wrapped, I’m left with a blur of memories, impressions and observations on the festival. Here are just a few of them.

An audience member filming Harvard Sailing Team’s opening night with her cellphone, distracting the people sitting behind her (including me) as she emailed the hilarious sketches to her friends…

Oversized patrons at the Chapel Theatre, trying to squeeze into the small seats. Some of the grossest guests had to ride side saddle.

Rodney Lee Rogers sitting patiently behind a small curtain for 45 minutes, the audience gathering around him before The Tragedian.

Two old dears I met at the first performance of A Devil Inside who’d been to so many shows that they couldn’t remember what they’d seen the night before, and started arguing about it. The festival had been running for two days.

The miserable actors in This War is Live who were fed up with the show and its technical hiccups… one complained about his simplistic character, while another called the whole experience “torturous.” He should have counted himself fortunate – he wasn’t sitting in the audience…

Sitting next to two of the playwrights of Under the Lights: 10×10 – and trying to make mental review notes without making them feel uncomfortable…

Jay Clifford courageously performing at the American Theatre despite suffering from some debilitating lurgy. After the first night, he conked out in his truck… on the second night, his manager Vance McNabb picked up his bug. They put on a great show, they’re both feeling better now and they’re no longer contagious (I hope).

Watching rehearsals with Chen Shi-Zheng, director of Monkey: Journey to the West… and being invited to look at the aftermath of The Great War after Hotel Modern’s show was over. I witnessed chaos on a model train scale.

One of my favorite elements of the festival, though, was bumping into the various local and national theatre performers, artists and filmmakers who collaborate to help make the festival function. Without their hard work and the overwhelming enthusiasm of the audience, there’d be no festival… thanks to them all.

There’s two more videos from Geoff to come, here’s one of them - some quick clips from the Piccolo closing ceremony on Saturday.

Sometimes we amaze ourselves — as with today when we manage to talk about nearly all things Spoleto, even though it’s coming to a gradual end. But we’ve had fun, right - huh? Of course we have.

The awesome Janet is back in the SpoStudio with regular BritBoy Geoff hosting.

Hear today’s podcast direct by following this link, or why not subscribe permanently here throughout the duration of the festival and get it fed to your MP3 player automatically. There’s also our guide to podcasting here.

“Monkey: Journey to the West,” this year’s Spoleto talker, is a visual feast. It gets the kitchen sink treatment in the numbers and kinds of Chinese performance arts thrown in. I saw Friday night’s performance. A few thoughts …

Supertitle translations show that Monkey is quite funny. The 500-year old folk story of a spiritual quest is full of natural and supernatural people and beasts.

It’s 2 hours with no intermission, the anime is great, costuming outrageous (and sometimes scary … plus, Monkey looked like he’d just played basketball), painted sets interesting, and physical performances … martial arts, sword fighting, gymnastic aerials, high wire flying, plate-spinning, silk panel aerials, bamboo pole acrobatics, body contortion, fire stick twirling, umbrella spinning … amazing. Your eye doesn’t know where to go, and if you drink any alchohol before the show you might get dizzy. For me, it was a preview of some of the things we will see in opening ceremonies for this summer’s Beijing Olympics … on a smaller scale of course. For the Olympics, there will be hundreds of acrobats, scores of plate-spinners, thousands of singers …

The orchestra is amplified and so are the singers, so if you have a sensitive ear, take earplugs. The performance is not that loud but Chinese music’s forms and some of the rock repetition of rhythms, plus the squeals the monkey makes (I wanted to wring his neck) and the whanging of sticks on the stage floor (amplified by the wireless mics) can be jarring to a Western ear. (My ear is so sensitive that those things made me feel like I was losing my mind.) Mandarin itself, in fact, can be jarring to a Western ear.

Sometimes you just have to let art wash over you.

(See Alan Hawes’ photo gallery here.)