Last night at Middleton was a blast. I hope you were there to celebrate another end to Spoleto with us!

Yesterday, we asked our Twitter faithful our last question, what they would change about Spoleto. Here’s what they said:

Only three more days to go before the end of another Spoleto USA season and Charleston Scene continues to ask a question a day as a countdown to the finale.

Want in on the conversation? Follow Charleston Scene (@chasscene) this week and have your say.

Four more days to go before the end of another Spoleto USA season and Charleston Scene continues to ask a question a day as a countdown to the finale.

Want in on the conversation? Follow Charleston Scene (@chasscene) this week and have your say.

Happy Wednesday, folks! 5 more days to go before the end of another Spoleto USA season and Charleston Scene continues to ask a question a day as a countdown to the finale.

Want in on the conversation? Follow Charleston Scene (@chasscene) this week and have your say.

Yesterday, we asked our Twitter faithful: If you were in charge of programming, who would you bring to Spoleto USA 2011? Here’s what they said:

Charleston Scene kicked off “7 questions in 7 days,” where readers weigh in on their Spoleto experience. We’ll ask one question a day in a countdown to the finale on Sunday.  So, follow Charleston Scene (@chasscene) this week and have your say.

We asked our Twitter faithful: What’s been your favorite Spoleto event so far? Here’s what they said :

It’s 7 days to go before Spoleto USA Festival 2010 ends. We hope you had fun because we surely did. In celebration, we’d like to ask you, our readers and followers, to help us summarize the whole experience by answering 7 questions in 7 days.

Tweets by Sonaite Debebe-Kumssa. Written by Bethany E. Larson. Video by Jason Fox Berger.

At the historic Dock Street Theatre, where both Flora: An Opera and Present Laughter are performed for this year’s Spoleto Festival USA, there are massive, elaborate sets that have to be torn down and set up between shows multiple times a day. To find out exactly how smooth–or not–this process is, Sonaite Debebe-Kumssa sat with Dock Street Theatre’s Technical Director Rhys Williams to talk about the logistics of changing the sets, while watching it all happen, which you can always watch happen, thanks to the time lapse video shot by Jason Fox Berger. Sonaite live-tweeted the entire conversation, which we have compiled for you after the jump.

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The Tweet Wall at Gaillard Auditorium

Have you seen our Tweet wall? It will be making appearances around town at special events. It is the brainchild of Sarah Zimmerman, a Goldring Arts Journalism writer who studies design. It is the Twitter feed for all items Spoleto and Piccolo.

Tweet and join the conversation. Use #spoto to appear on the wall. (Hint: It changes every 6 seconds.)

As you no doubt read in today’s review by Carol Furtwangler of the College of Charleston’s production of “Quills” for Piccolo Spoleto, there’s more than an hour’s worth of full-frontal male nudity onstage there. That beats the blink-and-you-might-miss-it naked moment in the Big Festival’s production of “Don John,” although “Don John” has plenty of R-rated material. “Quills” is about the Marquis de Sade. “Don John” is about, you know, Don Juan. So … similar perversions abound.

So far, I’ve heard of no MORE  naked moments in Spoleto or Piccolo Spoleto productions. If you see one, quick, Tweet it to me. We were all a little disappointed  to find that the WOW! costume moment in the opera “Louise” was NOT a naked moment, but a costume made of (SPOLER ALERT!) lightbulbs.

Meanwhile, over at Chamber Music, cell phones have been going off … in quiet moments … in the middle of cello solos. Chamber maestro Charles Wadsworth  had to issue a reminder during one performance to turn off the jingle-jangler in your pocket. Only a few forgetful souls are to blame. This is probably not The End of Concert Etiquette As We Know It.

Overheard at King and Calhoun today: “It’s HOT here. Where’s that breeze that’s supposed to blow ALL the time?” Heat outside is one thing, but what is going on with the air-conditioning at Gaillard Auditorium? House air  is usually set to Arctic there, particularly in advance of a sellout crowd. It’s a well-worn Spoleto warning to wear a a jacket or take a pashmina to Gaillard Spoleto concerts; over the years, it’s been downright refrigerated. But this year I’ve heard several people say that all the performances of Alvin Ailey last weekend were uncomfortably hot and sticky.

Spoleto has said it ain’t them asking for the AC to be cut at Gaillard. But they might not 1) have a say or 2) know about it. Is the building trying to save energy and therefore money? Does it have anything today with today’s Page 1 story about the $105 million makeover that Gaillard needs? Spoletians are used to feeling like freshly sprayed spring vegetables in the cooler bins at the Piggly Wiggly. Is the lack of AC the city’s fault? Is this part of a Recessionista Conspiracy?

I’m just sayin’ …

“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.)